1941Officers' Beach
Crossing the Danube by Raft, 1941
The viewer stands aboard a raft crowded with soldiers and civilians in hats and overcoats, mid-crossing of the Danube. A military vehicle in the foreground carries a plate marked WH, a German army designation, and officers check papers among the passengers. On the far bank a large crowd waits beside low sheds and parked lorries, with the sagging span of a broken bridge at the left. Behind them a low wooded hill carries a long hipped roof and a slender spire among bare trees.
About this place
Oficirska plaža, the Officers' Beach, known locally as Oficirac, is a stretch of the Danube shore on the Srem bank at Petrovaradin, north of the fortress and below the Žeželj bridge. Local press accounts say it is first mentioned in 1828 and took its name from the army officers who came here to bathe with their wives. It has stayed an unregulated beach with free entry, the largest and best known on the Srem side of the city. In April 1941 three platoons of the Yugoslav army held the bank from Oficirska plaža to Ribnjak, and the Novi Sad bridges were blown late on 11 April. This archive files here its photograph of a crowded raft crossing to the Srem bank in 1941, after the bridges had gone.
- Date
- 1941
- Source
- Fortepan
- Credit
- Fortepan / Martin Djemil
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Size
- 2814 × 3310 px