Remembrance Day in 2024

Serbia Remembrance Day is a working public holiday in Serbia observed on October 21st each year.

This holiday is a day of remembrance for the Serbian victims of the second world war. Observed as a memorial to the Kragujevac massacre which took place on October 21st 1941, when 2,700 Serb men and boys were killed in Kragujevac by Nazi German troops.

The massacre was a retaliation to resistance attacks on the Germans. The number of those killed was calculated as a ratio of 100 hostages executed for every German soldier killed and 50 hostages executed for every German soldier wounded. This was a formula devised by Adolf Hitler with the intent of suppressing anti-Nazi resistance in Eastern Europe.

The cruel ratio proved ineffective in stopping Serb resistance and it was abolished in 1943.