 The
first Kalmyk refugees arrived in Serbia at the end of March and the beginning
of April 1920 and settled mainly in the eastern part of the country. The
second and the largest group (some 300 people) arrived towards the end
of 1920 and settled at the outskirts of Belgrade. This was the largest
Kalmyk colony in Europe. Since most of them were lacking necessary skills
for a good job, they used to be engaged in physical labor: as workers at
brick plants, or construction workers, or as porters, hired coachmen etc.,
while the women 'sewed for the army', and made the slippers. They used
to be poorly paid.
In the first five or six years the Kalmyk did not form any sort of organization in Serbia. The Kalmyk Association came into being in 1928 and it immediately took the steps to build a home for social gathering and the place of worship. They finished them in December 1929. The Kalmyk colony in Belgrade disintegrated at the end of WW II when all of them retreated to Germany and later on either to the USA or Western Europe. A deserted temple was heavily damaged during the battle for Belgrade (October 1944) when the upper part of the roof ("the tower") was turned down. A few years later, the whole building was demolished and a new building was erected on temple's foundations. N.B.
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