of power in the camp were reprimanded or removed from their posts by the Serbian collaborationist government. When prisoners complained of lack of food, Vujković and his associates replied by saying: "[You] didn't come here for spa therapy and food, but to be executed. To eat more or less will not save your lives." The Belgrade Circuit Court sentenced him to death on November 1949. The first mass execution in Banjica occurred on 17 December 1941, when 170 prisoners were shot. By the end of 1941 the camp held between 2,000 and 3,000 prisoners. By 1942, most Jews in occupied Serbia were taken to Banjica and shot at Jajinci, Marinkova Bara and the Jewish cemetery. Thousands were killed at those execution sites. According to survivors, the SP UGB and Serbian State Guard were responsible for executions including the killing of children, but records indicate that the majority of executions were carried out by the Germans, with the assistance of the Serbian State Guard. In the spring of 1942 the Germans used a gas van brought from the Sajmište to murder Jewish inmates on two separate occasions. A number of Chetnik guerrillas were imprisoned in the camp that autumn. Executions continued throughout the war, and many inmates were shot as hostages. By September 1944, collaborationists of the Serbian State Guard, Serbian Volunteer Corps and Chetniks captured about 455 of the remaining Jews in the occupied territory who were sent to the camp where they were killed immediately. In late 1944 the Germans forced a chain gang of Yugoslav prisoners to incinerate the remains of those killed in Banjica. A surviving member of the chain gang, Momčilo Damjanović, testified that the incineration of the corpses was organized by a unit of the Kommando 1005, headed by SS-Standartenführer [Colonel] Paul Blobel, the man responsible for erasing traces of German atrocities throughout German-occupied Europe. According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust: All Germans left Banjica on October 2. All the camp prisoners of the second and third category were set free on October 3. The last 31 prisoners (the first category) were released on October 4, 1944. Legacy Throughout the war, 23,697 individuals were detained in Banjica, including 688 Jews. At least 3,849 inmates—including a minimum of 382 Jews—died at the camp. Of these, 3,420 were men and 429 were women. Prisoners were mostly Serbian by origin, 73% of them, the others were Jews,