Staro Sajmište () is an urban neighborhood of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It is located in Belgrade's municipality of New Belgrade, and it was the site of the World War II Sajmište concentration camp from 1941 to 1944, when the area was under control of the Nazi puppet state Independent State of Croatia. Location Staro Sajmište is located in the Novi Beograd's Block 17, between the street of Zemunski put (extension of the Old Sava Bridge), the Mihajlo Pupin boulevard (extension of the Branko's bridge) and the Sava river. It extends into the non-residential neighborhood of Ušće on the north and into the newly developed Savograd on the west. Sajmište street curves within the settlement. In the south it extended into the former informal settlement Cardboard city, and further into industrialized neighborhood of Savski Nasip. Although this is what is usually considered as the Staro Sajmište, local community (sub-municipal administrative unit) of the same name also includes the entire Block 18 to the south, which is located between the streets of Vladimira Popovića and Zemunski put, Gazela Bridge and the left bank of the Sava. History Before 1941 In the period between the World Wars, settlements began to form on the left bank of the Sava river, closer to Belgrade, as the only existing settlement on the marshy territory of today's Novi Beograd at that time was the village of Bežanija, quite far away from Belgrade. Construction of the King Alexander Bridge lasted from 1930 to 1934, and the filling and embankment of the Sava bank began in 1936. In the 1930s members of Belgrade's affluent elite began to buy land from the villagers of Bežanija, which at that time, administratively spread all the way to the King Alexander Bridge, which was a dividing point between Bežanija and Zemun. From 1933 a settlement, consisting mostly of individual villas, began to develop. Also, a group of White Russian emigrants built several small buildings, mostly rented by the carters who carried goods across the river. As the settlement, which became known as New Belgrade, was built without building permits, authorities threatened to demolish it, but in 1940 government officially "legalized the informal settlement of New Belgrade". Prior to that, the city already semi-officially recognized the new settlement, as it helped with building its streets and pathways. By 1939 it already had several thousands inhabitants, a representative in the city hall, and