German troops registering people from Kragujevac and its surrounding areas prior to their execution
The Kragujevac massacre was the mass murder of between 2,778 and 2,794 mostly Serb men and boys in Kragujevac by German soldiers on 21 October 1941. It occurred in the German-occupied territory of Serbia during World War II, and came as a reprisal for insurgent attacks in the Gornji Milanovac district that resulted in the deaths of ten German soldiers and the wounding of 26 others. The number of hostages to be shot was calculated as a ratio of 100 hostages executed for every German soldier killed and 50 hostages executed for every German soldier wounded, a formula devised by Adolf Hitler with the intent of suppressing anti-Nazi resistance in Eastern Europe.
After a punitive operation was conducted in the surrounding villages, during which over 400 males were shot and four villages burned down, another 70 male Jews and communists who had been arrested in Kragujevac were killed. Simultaneously, males between the ages of 16 and 60, including high school students, were assembled by German troops and local collaborators, and the victims were selected from amongst them. The selected males were then marched to fields outside the city, shot with heavy machine guns, and their bodies buried in mass graves. Contemporary German military records indicate that 2,300 hostages were shot. After the war, inflated estimates ranged as high as 7,000 deaths, but German and Serbian scholars have now agreed on the figure of nearly 2,800 killed, including 144 high school students. As well as Serbs, massacre victims included Jews, Romani people, Muslims, Macedonians, Slovenes, and members of other nationalities. (Full article...)
... that Elena Mikhnenko was born in a prison in Warsaw where her mother had been detained for allegedly plotting an anti-Polish uprising?
... that Serbian landowner Marija Trandafil spent a single day hungry, but she remembered the experience and became a major philanthropist in Novi Sad?
Novak Djokovic (Serbian: Новак Ђоковић, Novak Đoković, pronounced[nôʋaːkdʑôːkoʋitɕ]ⓘ; born 22 May 1987) is a Serbian professional tennis player who is currently ranked world No. 1 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). Djokovic has been ranked No. 1 for a record total of 424 weeks in a record 13 different years, and finished as the year-end No. 1 a record eight times. Djokovic has won a record 24 Grand Slam men's singles titles, including a record ten Australian Open titles. Overall, he has won 98 singles titles, including a record 71 Big Titles: 24 majors, a record 40 Masters, and a record seven ATP Finals. Djokovic is the only man in tennis history to be the reigning champion of all four majors at once across three different surfaces. In singles, he is the only man to achieve a triple Career Grand Slam, and the only player to complete a career Golden Masters, a feat he has achieved twice.
Djokovic began his professional career in 2003. In 2008, at age 20, he disrupted Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal's streak of 11 consecutive majors by winning his first major title at the Australian Open. By 2010, Djokovic had begun to separate himself from the rest of the field and, as a result, the trio of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic was referred to as the "Big Three" among fans and commentators. In 2011, Djokovic ascended to No. 1 for the first time, winning three majors and a then-record five Masters titles while going 10–1 against Nadal and Federer. He remained the most successful player in men's tennis for the rest of the decade. In 2015, Djokovic had his most successful season, reaching a single-season record 15 consecutive finals, winning a season-record 10 Big Titles while having a record 31 victories over the top-10 players. His dominant run extended through to the 2016 French Open, where he completed his first Career Grand Slam and a non-calendar year Grand Slam, becoming the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to hold all four majors simultaneously and setting a rankings points record of 16,950. In 2017, Djokovic suffered from an elbow injury that weakened his results until the 2018 Wimbledon Championships, where he won the title while ranked No. 21 in the world. Djokovic has continued to be a dominant force on the tour since then, winning 12 major titles and completing his second and third Career Grand Slams. Due to his opposition to COVID-19 vaccine, Djokovic was forced to skip many tournaments in 2022, notably the Australian Open and the US Open; two major events he was the favourite to win. One year after the Australian visa controversy, Djokovic made a successful comeback to reclaim the 2023 Australian Open trophy, and shortly after he claimed the French Open to take the outright record for most men's singles majors won in history. (Full article...)