PROFESOR ĐORĐE TASIĆ KAO ANTIFAŠISTA
PROFESSOR ĐORĐE TASIĆ AS AN ANTI-FASCIST

Summary/Abstract: The founder of the Society for Sociology and Social Sciences – the predecessor of the Serbian Sociological Association – and the journal Sociological Review — Professor Đorđe Tasić (Vranje, 1892 — Belgrade, 1943) is known to have been a leftist by his convictions and a member of the left-wing faction of the Agrarian Party. It is also known that he was executed by shooting in Belgrade, in 1943. The paper, based on the documents from the Historical Archives of the City of Belgrade, the State Archives of Serbia, the Archives of Yugoslavia and the Military Archives of Serbia, shows that, from the very beginning of World War Two (WW2) in Yugoslavia, he was constantly followed by the Special Police and Gestapo, as well as that he was arrested twice. He was accused both by Gestapo and by German and Serbian informants of being a mason, a participant in the events of 27 March 1941 a communist, an anti-fascist and an anti-Nazi, whereas the last two accusations were absolutely true. The first time he was arrested in November 1941, when he was taken hostage with a large group of intellectuals. He was taken to the Banjica concentration camp, but was released 23 days later. Afterwards he was also interrogated by the collaborationist Special Police, which is proved by the records kept. Since there is various information in the literature regarding the date and the place of Tasić's execution, and there are no related documents in the archives or those documents are rather scarce, according to the reconstruction and the comparison of the data sources, we can quite certainly claim that he was not executed in the Banjica camp in 1944. The most reliable information was submitted in 1953 by his pre-war assistant and subsequently academician Radomir Lukić – that Professor Đorđe Tasić was arrested by Gestapo the second time on 25 August 1943 and executed by shooting the following day. It is highly probable, in the light of historical research regarding this location, to say that the execution occurred in the Sajmište concentration camp, which is also a hypothesis by Lukić published in 1984. The free spirit and the anti-fascist orientation of this great Yugoslav and Serbian intellectual were a sufficient reason to Gestapo to execute him by shooting.

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