Sibila Petlevski and David Albahari Interviews
This week, more in our special series about the Balkans, with Croatian poet and novelist, Sibila Petlevski, and from Serbia, award-winning writer David Albahari.
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Background to Sibila Petlevski's references:
Ordan Petlevski – (1930-1997), Macedonian-Croatian, Modernist visual artist; work officially registered as "Croatian national treasure"; represented in collections of the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, Museums of Modern Arts in New York, Johannesburg, Caracas, etc.
Giulio Clovio (Julius Clovius Croatus) – (1498-1578), illuminator, miniaturist and painter born in the Kingdom of Croatia, mostly active in Renaissance Italy; from the village of Sibila's maternal family
Viktor Tausk – (1879-1919), writer, lawyer, psychoanalyst, associate of Sigmund Freud; committed suicide by placing a pistol against his right temple and firing, hanging himself as he fell
Background to David Albahari's references:
Zemun – one of Belgrade's oldest neighborhoods; a separate town until 1934; home to the Jewish community from the 18th century
Belgrade Fairgrounds – site of the Semlin concentration camp established by Nazi Germany in 1941, in the pavilions of the former fairgrounds; between 1941 and 1944, approximately 20,000 Jews (largely women, children and elderly) were interned there.
Gotz and Meyer – two noncommissioned SS officers who were assigned to drive a hermetically sealed truck in which Jews were systematically taken from the Semlin camp and asphyxiated
