new state. Zemun, the town where the Sajmište fairgrounds were located, was ceded to the NDH. The occupation of Zemun – during which non-Croats such as Serbs, Jews and Roma were relentlessly persecuted by the Ustaše – would last until late 1944. By this point, more than 25 percent of Zemun's pre-war population of 65,000 had perished. A large-scale uprising erupted in Serbia following the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Although they took no part in the rebellion, Jews were targeted for retaliatory execution by the Germans. The Germans soon implemented a number of anti-Jewish laws, and by the end of August 1941, all Serbian Jewish males were interned in concentration camps, primarily at Topovske Šupe in Belgrade. History Establishment In the fall of 1941, Turner ordered that all Jewish women and children in Serbia be concentrated in a camp. At first the Germans considered creating a ghetto for the Jews in the Gypsy quarter of Belgrade, but this idea was quickly dismissed due to the area being considered "too filthy and unhygenic." When several other plans to intern the Jewish and Romani populations of Belgrade failed, a concentration camp was established on a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the Sava river, and located in full view of Belgrade's central Terazije Square. The camp was positioned in a manner which made escape almost impossible. It was located near administrative and police centres, as well as the Belgrade central railway station, which allowed for the efficient transport of Jews to the camp from the many towns in the region. Its purpose was to detain Jewish women and children that the Germans claimed "endangered" public safety and the Wehrmacht. The Germans dubbed Sajmište the "Jewish camp in Zemun" (). The camp was intended to hold as many as 500,000 people captured from rebels areas across occupied Yugoslavia. The name "Semlin" was derived from the German word for the former Austro-Hungarian frontier town of Zemun, where the camp was located. Despite being located on the territory of the NDH, it was controlled by the German military police apparatus in occupied Serbia. NDH authorities did not object to its establishment and told the Germans that it could be located on NDH territory as long as its guards were German rather than Serb. Soon after the camp was established, SS-Scharführer Edgar Enge of the Belgrade Gestapo became its commander. Initially,