Former Hotel Esplanada

One hundred citizens were apparently selected at random from the streets of Pancevo on Monday, April 21. It was claimed that several of these civilians were armed and that they had fired upon German soldiers from a cemetery close to the main road, which they had reached by crawling through tunnels from a nearby restaurant and hiding in the catacombs.
The hostages were taken to the magistracy courts and the City Hall prison, where forty were selected for trial. They were then transferred to the nearby requisitioned Hotel Esplanada, where a regular German military trial was held. Ten men were marched into the court at once and were given no opportunity to speak in their defense. Any attempt to do so was immediately silenced. Four men were found not guilty and released through the intercession of the city's prominent Swabian German residents. Thirty-six were sentenced to death. Four Serbs were immediately found guilty of 'rioting and unlawful possession of weapons' and immediately brought out to be summarily executed.
The next morning, the remaining prisoners were led to the lobby of the Hotel Esplanada and sentenced. They were taken to the old Serbian Orthodox cemetery.
Fourteen men were lined up against the wall of the cemetery and summarily shot by an execution squad from the Grossdeutschland regiment.
Even more gruesome than the shootings were the hangings of 17 men and one woman carried out as a public entertainment.

It is still a hotel.

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Source

• Text: TracesOfWar
• Photos: Koos Winkelman