Jasenovac concentration camp - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Jasenovac concentration camp (Croatian

Croatian language

Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...

, Serbian

Serbian language

Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....

: Logor Jasenovac; Serbian Cyrillic: Логор Јасеновац. Yiddish: יאסענאוואץ, Hebrew: יסנובץ, sometimes spelled "Yasenovatz") was the largest extermination camp in the Independent State of Croatia

Independent State of Croatia

The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany, established on a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. All of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed to NDH, together with some parts...

(NDH) and occupied Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. The camp was established by the Ustaše

Ustaše

The Ustaša - Croatian Revolutionary Movement was a Croatian fascist anti-Yugoslav separatist movement. The ideology of the movement was a blend of fascism, Nazism, and Croatian nationalism. The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span to the River Drina and to the border...

(Ustasha) regime in August 1941 and dismantled in April 1945. In Jasenovac, the largest number of victims were ethnic Serbs

Serbs of Croatia

Višeslav of Serbia, a contemporary of Charlemagne , ruled the Županias of Neretva, Tara, Piva, Lim, his ancestral lands. According to the Royal Frankish Annals , Duke of Pannonia Ljudevit Posavski fled, during the Frankish invasion, from his seat in Sisak to the Serbs in western Bosnia, who...

, whom Ante Pavelić

Ante Pavelic

Ante Pavelić was a Croatian fascist leader, revolutionary, and politician. He ruled as Poglavnik or head, of the Independent State of Croatia , a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia...

considered the main racial opponents of the NDH, alongside the Jews

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

and Roma peoples.

Jasenovac was a complex of five subcamps spread over 240 km² (92.7 sq mi) on the banks of the Sava River

Sava River

The Sava is a river in Southeast Europe, a right side tributary of the Danube river at Belgrade. Counting from Zelenci, the source of Sava Dolinka, it is long and drains of surface area. It flows through Slovenia, Croatia, along the northern border of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and through Serbia....

. The largest camp was at Jasenovac

Jasenovac, Sisak-Moslavina County

Jasenovac is a village and a municipality in Croatian Slavonia, in the southern part of the Sisak-Moslavina county at the confluence of the river Una into Sava.The name means "ash tree" or "ash forest" in Croatian, the area being ringed by such a forest....

, about 100 km (62.1 mi) southeast of Zagreb

Zagreb

Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...

. The complex also included large grounds at Donja Gradina

Gradina Donja

Gradina Donja is a village in the municipality of Bosanska Dubica, Bosnia and Herzegovina.-References:...

directly across the Sava River, a camp for children

Sisak children's concentration camp

Sisak children's concentration camp was a concentration camp during World War II, set up by the Croatian pro-nazi Ustaše government for Serbian, Jewish and Roma children. The camp was located in Sisak, Croatia...

in Sisak

Sisak

Sisak is a city in central Croatia. The city's population in 2011 was 33,049, with a total of 49,699 in the administrative region and it is also the administrative centre of the Sisak-Moslavina county...

to the northwest, and a women's camp in Stara Gradiška

Stara Gradiška concentration camp

Stara Gradiška was the most notorious concentration and extermination camp in Croatia during World War II, mainly due to the crimes which were committed against women and children. The camp was specially constructed for women and children of Serb, Jew, and Romani ethnicity...

to the southeast.

NDH legislation

Some of the first legal orders issued by the NDH reflected the acceptance of the ideology of Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

and Fascist Italy

Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)

The Kingdom of Italy was a state forged in 1861 by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which was its legal predecessor state...

, with an emphasis placed on Croatian national issues. The "Legal order for the defense of the people and the state" dated 17 April 1941 ordered the death penalty for "infringement of the honour and vital interests of the Croatian people and the survival of the Independent State of Croatia". It was soon followed by the "Legal order of races" and the "Legal order of the protection of Aryan blood and the honour of the Croatian people" dated 30 April 1941, as well as the "Order of the creation and definition of the racial-political committee" dated 4 June 1941. These decrees were enforced not only through the regular court system, but also through new special courts and mobile courts-martial with extended jurisdiction. In July, 1941, when existing jails could no longer contain the growing number of new inmates, the Ustaša government began clearing ground for what would become the Jasenovac concentration camp.

Nazi Germany

On 10 April 1941, the Independent State of Croatia was established, supported by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. It adopted their racial and political doctrines. Jasenovac's role in the Nazi "final solution" was as the ethnic cleansing of the Serbian, Romany and Jewish inhabitants.

The Ustase's death camps were directed by numerous Nazi sources:

The office of foreign affairs, represented in Croatia by Siegfried Kasche
Siegfried Kasche
Siegfried Kasche was an SA Obergruppenführer and ambassador of the Third Reich to the allied Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War. He was tried for "complicity in deportations and murders" by a Yugoslav court and was executed in June 1947.Kasche was born in Strausberg in...

.
The S.S., represented by a Gestapo official whose identity has not been fully established, but whom Jewish witnesses knew as "Miller".
The Reichsfuhrung and the Wehrmacht.

The competition between the different authorities would not usually benefit the Jews, but actually caused each to try and excel past its competitors in maltreatment of Jews and others.
The Nazis encouraged the Ustase's anti-Jewish and anti-Roma actions and showed support for the extermination of Serb policy. Soon, the Nazis began to make clear their genocidal goals, as shown by the speech Hitler gave to Slavko Kvaternik

Slavko Kvaternik

Slavko Kvaternik was a Croatian military commander and a collaborator with Nazi Germany. He was noted for military service in World War I, later as a deputy leader and founding member of the Croatian Ustaša movement in the 1930s who then became one of the leaders of the "Independent State of...

, at their meeting on 21 July 1941:

The Jews are the bane of mankind. If the Jews will be allowed to do as they will, like they are permitted in their Soviet heaven, then they will fulfill their most insane plans. And thus Russia became the center to the world's illness... if for any reason, one nation would endure the existence of a single Jewish family, that family would eventually become the center of a new plot. If there are no more Jews in Europe, nothing will hold the unification of the European nations... this sort of people cannot be integrated in the social order or into an organized nation. They are parasites on the body of a healthy society, that live off of expulsion of decent people. One cannot expect them to fit into a state that requires order and discipline. There is only one thing to be done with them: To exterminate them. The state holds this right since, while precious men die on the battlefront, it would be nothing less than criminal to spare these bastards. They must be expelled, or – if they pose no threat to the public – to be imprisoned inside concentration camps and never be released."

In the Wannsee Conference

Wannsee Conference

The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of the Nazi German regime, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference was to inform administrative leaders of Departments responsible for various policies relating to Jews, that Reinhard Heydrich...

, Germany offered the Croatian government transportation of its Jews southwards, but questioned the importance of the offer, saying that: "the enactment of the final solution of the Jewish question is not crucial, since the key aspects of this problem were already solved by radical actions these governments took".

In addition to specifying the means of extermination, the Nazis often arranged the imprisonment or transfer of inmates to Jasenovac. Kasche's emissary, Major Knehe, visited the camp in 6 February 1942. Kasche thereafter reported to his superiors:

Capitan Luburic, the commander-in-action of the camp, explained the construction plans of the camp. It turns out that he made these plans while in exile. These plans he modified after visiting concentration-camps installments in Germany.

It thus appears that the Nazis inspected Jasenovac, possibly due to doubts they had about Ustase devotion to the extermination of Jews. Kasche wrote the following:"The Poglavnik asks General Bader to realize that the Jasenovac camp cannot receive the refugees of Kozara. I agreed since the camp is also required to solve the problem in deporting the Jews to the east. Minister Turina can deport the Jews to Jasenovac".

It is unclear whether Jasenovac was to be used primarily as a death camp in its own right, like Sajmiste

Sajmište concentration camp

Sajmište concentration camp was a German run Nazi concentration camp located on the outskirts of Belgrade whilst part of NDH . It was established in December 1941 and shut down in September 1944...

, or more as a collection depot from which Jews would be transported to Auschwitz. Stara-Gradiska was the primary site from which Jews were transported to Auschwitz, but Kashe's letter refers specifically to the subcamp Ciglana in this regard.
The extermination of Serbs at Jasenovac was precipitated by General Bader, who ordered that refugees be taken to Jasenovac. Although Jasenovac was expanded, officials were told that "Jasenovac concentration and labor camp cannot hold an infinite number of prisoners".

Soon thereafter, German suspicions were renewed that the Ustaše was more concerned with the elimination of Serbs than Jews, and that Italian and Catholic pressure was dissuading the Ustase from killing Jews.

The Nazis revisited the possibility of transporting Jews to Auschwitz for liquidation, not only because extermination was easier there, but also because the profits produced from the victims could be kept in German hands, rather than being left for the Croats or Italians. Instead Jasenovac remained a place where Jews who could not be deported would be interned and killed: In this way, while Jews were deported from Tenje, two deportations were also made to Jasenovac. It is also illustrated by the report sent by Hans Helm to Adolf Eichmann

Adolf Eichmann

Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...

, saying that the Jews will first be collected in Stara-Gradiska,and that "Jews employed in 'forced labor' in Ustase camps", mentioning only Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska," will not be deported". The Nazis also found interest in the Jews that remained inside the camp, even in June 1944, after the visit of a Red Cross delegation. Kasche wrote: "Schmidllin showed a special interest in the Jews... Luburic told me that Schmidllin told him that the Jews must be treated in the finest manner, and that they must survive, no matter what happens... Luburic suspected Schmidllin is an English agent and therefore prevented all contact between him and the Jews"

Creation and operation of Jasenovac concentration camp

The Jasenovac complex was built between August 1941 and February 1942. The first two camps, Krapje

Krapje

Krapje is a settlement on the right bank of the river Mura in the Ljutomer Municipality in northeastern Slovenia. It is divided into two distinct villages, Zgornje Krapje and Spodnje Krapje...

and Bročica, were closed in November 1941.

The three newer camps continued to function until the end of the war:

Ciglana (Jasenovac III)
Kozara (Jasenovac IV)
Stara Gradiška
Stara Gradiška concentration camp
Stara Gradiška was the most notorious concentration and extermination camp in Croatia during World War II, mainly due to the crimes which were committed against women and children. The camp was specially constructed for women and children of Serb, Jew, and Romani ethnicity...

(Jasenovac V)

The camp was constructed, managed and supervised by Department III of the Ustaška
Ustaše
The Ustaša - Croatian Revolutionary Movement was a Croatian fascist anti-Yugoslav separatist movement. The ideology of the movement was a blend of fascism, Nazism, and Croatian nationalism. The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span to the River Drina and to the border...

Narodna Služba or UNS (lit. "Ustaše

Ustaše

People's Service"), a special police force of the NDH. Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić

Maks Luburic

Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić was a Croatian Ustaše, a war criminal, and the commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp.- Biography :...

was head of the UNS. Individuals managing the camp at different times included Miroslav Majstorović and Dinko Šakić

Dinko Šakic

Dinko Šakić was a convicted Croatian war criminal, an army leader of the fascist Independent State of Croatia , established under Third Reich and Italian tutelage, and commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp during World War II.-Biography:He was born in Studenci, in the Kingdom of Serbs,...

. The camp administration in times used other Ustase battalions, police units, domobrani units, auxiliary units made up of Muslims, and even the aid of German and Hungarian Nazis.

The Ustaše interned, tortured and executed men, women and children in Jasenovac. The largest number of victims were Serbs

Serbs

The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...

, but other victims included Jews,Romani people, as well as Croatian

Croats

Croats are a South Slavic ethnic group mostly living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and nearby countries. There are around 4 million Croats living inside Croatia and up to 4.5 million throughout the rest of the world. Responding to political, social and economic pressure, many Croats have...

and Bosnian

Bosnian

Bosnian may refer to:*Anything related to Bosnia or its inhabitants*Anything related to the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina or its inhabitants* Bosnian language, a South Slavic language spoken mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina...

resistance members opposed to the regime (i.e., Partisans or their sympathizers, categorized by the Ustaše as "communists"). Upon arrival at the camp, the prisoners were marked with colors, similar to the use of Nazi concentration camp badges

Nazi concentration camp badges

Nazi concentration camp badges, primarily triangles, were part of the system of identification in Nazi camps. They were used in the concentration camps in the Nazi-occupied countries to identify the reason the prisoners had been placed there. The triangles were made of fabric and were sewn on...

: blue for Serbs, and red for communists (non-Serbian resistance members), while Roma had no marks. (This practice was later abandoned.) Most victims were killed at execution sites near the camp: Granik, Gradina, and other places. Those kept alive were mostly skilled at needed professions and trades (doctors, pharmacists, electricians, shoemakers, goldsmiths, and so on) and were employed in services and workshops at Jasenovac.

Serbs

Serbs constituted the absolute majority of inmates in Jasenovac. In several instances, inmates were immediately killed for confessing their Serbian ethnicity and most considered it to be the reason for their imprisonment. The Serbs were predominantly brought from the Kozara

Kozara

Kozara is a mountain in western Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the Bosanska Krajina region. It is bounded by the rivers Sava - north, Vrbas - east, Sana - south and Una - west...

region, where the Ustasa captured areas along with partisan guerrillas. These were brought to camp without sentence, almost destined to immediate liquidation, accelerated via use of a machine-gun. Estimated deaths of Serb inmates range up to over 700,000 depending on sources. The Jewish virtual library estimates the number of Serbs killed by the Ustaša between 330,000 and 390,000, with 45,000 to 52,000 Serbs murdered in Jasenovac.
Jasenovac is the largest extermination camp in the Balkans and among the largest in Europe. The camp alone accounts for about 10% of the total number of killed persons in wartime Yugoslavia. Another researcher, Bogoljub Kocevic, estimates roughly 1,000,000 victims in entire Yugoslavia, one half of whom (mostly ethnic Serbs) were killed in wartime Croatia's genocide

Genocide

Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...

campaign. This researcher seems to support the Tomislav Dulic, an independent historian, in terms of the size of Jasenovac camp:

Recent victim lists of the Jasenovac concentration camp (as of 2007) are composed of 70,000 to 80,000 names. The list is however subject to a constant update and has been constantly expanding.

Jews

Jews, being the primary target of Nazi-oriented Genocide, were the second-largest category of victims of Jasenovac. The number of Jewish casualties is uncertain, but ranges from about 8,000 up to 25,000.
Most of the executions of Jews at Jasenovac occurred prior to August 1942. Thereafter, the NDH started to deport them to Auschwitz

Auschwitz concentration camp

Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...

. In general, Jews were initially sent to Jasenovac from all parts of Croatia after being gathered in Zagreb

Zagreb

, and from Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...

after being gathered in Sarajevo

Sarajevo

Sarajevo |Bosnia]], surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans....

. Some, however, were transported directly to Jasenovac from other cities and smaller towns.

Roma

Roma in Jasenovac consisted of both Roma and Sinti, who were captured in various areas in Bosnia, especially in the Kozara region. They were brought to Jasenovac and taken to area III-C, under the open sky, in terms of nutrition, hydration, shelter and sanitary that were below the camp's standards. The figures of murdered Roma are the most controversial, save figures of Serbian casualties, and they range between 20,000 and 50,000.

Croatian and Bosnian anti-fascists

Anti-fascists consisted of various sorts of political and ideological antagonists of the Ustasa. In general, their treatment was similar to other inmates, although known communists

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

were executed right away, and convicted Ustasa or law-enforcement officials, or others close to the Ustasa in opinion, such as Croatian peasants, were held on beneficial terms and granted amnesty after serving a duration of time.

Children

Jasenovac camp also consisted of a unique camp for children in Sisak

Sisak

. Around 20,000 children of Serbian, Jewish and Roma nationalities perished in Jasenovac.

Various

The Ustasa also imprisoned various sorts of other ethnicities: Ukrainians, Romanians,Slovenes and Montenegrians.

Living conditions

The living conditions in the camp evidenced the severity typical in Nazi death camps: a meager diet, deplorable accommodations, and cruel behavior by the Ustaše guards. Also, as in many camps, conditions would be improved temporarily during visits by delegations – such as the press delegation that visited in February 1942 and a Red Cross delegation in June 1944 – and reverted after the delegation left.

Food: Again, typical of Nazi death camps, the diet of inmates at Jasenovac was insufficient to sustain life: The sorts of food they consumed changed during the camp's existence. In camp Brocice, inmates were given a "soup" made of hot water with starch for breakfast, and beans for lunch and dinner (served at 6:00, 12:00 and 21:00). Food in Camp No. III was initially better, consisting of potatoes instead of beans; however, in January the diet was changed to a single daily serving of thin "turnip soup". By the end of the year, the diet had been changed again, to three daily portions of thin gruel made of water and starch. Food changed repeatedly thereafter.
Water: Jasenovac was even more severe than most death camps in one respect: a general lack of potable water. Prisoners were forced to drink water from the Sava river, which was contaminated with ren (horseradish
Horseradish
Horseradish is a perennial plant of the Brassicaceae family, which also includes mustard, wasabi, broccoli, and cabbages. The plant is probably native to south eastern Europe and the Arab World , but is popular around the world today...

).
Accommodations: In the first camps, Brocice and Krapje, inmates slept in standard concentration-camp barracks, with three tiers of bunks. In Camp No. III, which housed some 3,000 inmates, inmates initially slept in the attics of the workshops, in an open depot designated as a railway "tunnel", or simply in the open. A short time later, eight barracks were erected. Inmates slept in six of these barracks, while the other two were used as a "clinic" and a "hospital", where ill inmates were concentrated to die or be liquidated.
Forced labor: As in all concentration camps, Jasenovac inmates were forced daily to perform some 11 hours of hard labor, under the eye of the Ustasa captors, who would execute any inmate for the most trivial reasons, allegedly for "sabotaging labor". The labor section was overseen by Ustasas Hinko Dominik Picilli and Tihomir Kordic. Picillii would personally lash inmates to work harder. He divided the "Jasenovac labor force" into 16 groups, including groups of construction, brickworks, metal-works, agriculture, etc. The inmates would perish from the hard work. Work in the brickworks was hard. Blacksmith work was also done, as the inmates forged knives and other weapons for the Ustasa. Dike construction work was most feared.
Sanitation: Inside the camp, squalor and lack of sanitation reigned: clutter, blood, vomit and bodies filled the barracks, which were also full of pests and of the foul scent of the often overflowing latrine bucket. Due to exposure to the elements, inmates suffered from impaired health leading to epidemics of typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...

, typhoid, malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...

, pleuritis, influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...

, dysentery
Dysentery
Dysentery is an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the faeces with fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal.There are differences between dysentery and normal bloody diarrhoea...

and diphtheria
Diphtheria
Diphtheria is an upper respiratory tract illness caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae, a facultative anaerobic, Gram-positive bacterium. It is characterized by sore throat, low fever, and an adherent membrane on the tonsils, pharynx, and/or nasal cavity...

. During pauses in labor (5:00-6:00; 12:00-13:00, 17:00-20:00) inmates had to relieve themselves at open latrines, which consisted of big pits dug in open fields, covered in planks. Inmates would tend to fall inside, and often died. The Ustase encouraged this by either having internees separate the planks, or by physically drowning inmates inside. The pit would overflow during floods and rains, and was also drained into the lake, from which inmate drinking water was taken. The inmate's rags and blankets were too thin to prevent exposure to frost, as was the shelter of the barracks. The clothes and blankets were rarely and poorly cleansed, as inmates were only allowed to wash them briefly in the lake's waters once a month save during winter time, when the lake froze. Then, a sanitation device was erected in a warehouse, where a few clothes were insufficiently boiled.
Lack of personal possessions: The inmates were stripped of their belongings and personal attire. As inmates, only ragged prison-issue clothing was given to them. In winter, inmates were given thin "rain-coats" and they were allowed to make light sandals. Inmates were given a personal food bowl, designated to contain 0.4ltrs of "soup" they were fed with. Inmates whose bowl was missing (stolen by another inmate to defecate in) would receive no food. During delegation visits, inmates were given bowls twice as large with spoons. Additionally, at such times, inmates were given colored tags.
Anxiety: The fear of death, and the paradox of a situation in which the living dwell next to the dead, had great impact on the internees. Basically, an inmate's life in a concentration camp can be viewed in the optimal way when looking at it in three stages: arrival to camp, living inside it, and the release. The first stage consisted of the shock caused by the hardships in transit to camp. The Ustase would fuel this shock by murdering a number of inmates on arrival and by temporarily housing new-arrivals in warehouses, attics, in the train tunnel and outdoors. After the inmates grew familiar with the life in camp, they would enter the second and most critical phase: living through the anguish of death, and the sorrow, hardships and abuse. The peril of death was most prominent in "public performances for public punishment" or selections, when inmates would be lined in groups and individuals would be randomly pointed out to receive punishment of death before the rest. The Ustase would intensify this by prolonging the process, patrolling about and asking questions, gazing at inmates, choosing them and then refrain and point out another. As inmates, people could react to the Ustase crimes in an active or passive manner. The activists would form resistance movements and groups, steal food, plot escapes and revolts, contacts with the outside world. The passive inmates, the majority, would react by attempt to survive, to go through the day unharmed. This is not "going in line to slaughter", but rather another approach to survival, which deprived the Ustase of the possibility of completely dehumanizing the inmates. However, some of these inmates became in this way utterly primitive, as their whole life revolved around following orders and eating a bowl of soup. Thus they became "musselmans": physically appearing as living skeletons, but mentally stripped of their humanity beyond hope of salvation. All inmates suffered from psychological phenomena to some extent: obsessive thoughts of food, paranoia, delusions, day-dreams, lack of self-control. Some inmates reacted with attempts at documenting the atrocities, such as Nikola Nikolic, Djuro Schawrtz and Ilija Ivanovic, who all tried to memorize and even write of events, dates and details. Such deeds were perilous, since writing was punishable by death and tracking dates was hard.

Mass murder and cruelty

According to Jaša Almuli, former president of the Serbian Jewish community, Jasenovac was a much more terrifying concentration camp, in terms of cruelty, compared with Auschwitz. In the late summer of 1942, tens of thousands of Serbian villagers were deported to Jasenovac from the Kozara

Kozara

Kozara is a mountain in western Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the Bosanska Krajina region. It is bounded by the rivers Sava - north, Vrbas - east, Sana - south and Una - west...

mountain area (in Bosnia

Bosnia and Herzegovina

) where NDH forces were fighting against the Yugoslav Partisans. Most of the men were killed at Jasenovac, but women were sent to forced labor in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. Children were taken from their mothers and either killed or dispersed to Catholic orphanages.

On the night of 29 August 1942, the prison guards made bets among themselves as to who could liquidate the largest number of inmates. One of the guards, Petar Brzica

Petar Brzica

Father Petar "Pero" Brzica was a Croatian fascist and World War II war criminal. Before the war he was a scholarship student at the Franciscan college of Široki Brijeg in Herzegovina and a member of The Great Brotherhood of Crusaders....

, boasted cutting the throats of about 1,360 new arrivals. Other participants who confessed to participating in the bet included Ante Zrinusic, who killed some 600 inmates, and Mile Friganovic, who gave a detailed and consistent report of the incident. Friganovic admitted to having killed some 1,100 inmates. He specifically recounted his torture of an old man named Vukasin; he attempted to compel the man to bless Ante Pavelic

Ante Pavelic

, which the old man refused to do, although Friganovic cut off his ears, nose and tongue after each refusal. Ultimately, he cut out the old man's eyes, tore out his heart, and slashed his throat. This incident was witnessed by Dr. Nikola Nikolic.

Srbosjek

Brzica and others used a knife that became known as srbosjek, meaning "Serb-cutter" ("cutthroat").

This knife was originally a type of agricultural knife manufactured for wheat sheaf cutting.

The upper part of the knife was made of leather, as a sort of a glove, designed to be worn with the thumb going through the hole, so that only the blade protruded from the hand. It was a curved, 12 cm long knife with the edge on its concave side. The knife was fastened to a bowed oval copper plate, while the plate was fastened to a thick leather bangle. Its agricultural purpose was to make it easier for the field workers to cut wheat sheaves open before threshing them. The knife was fixed on the glove plate in order to prevent injuries and to prevent taking care of a separate knife in order to improve the work speed.

Such a type of wheat sheaf knife was manufactured prior to and during World War II by German factory Gebrüder Gräfrath from Solingen-Widderit

Solingen

Solingen is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located on the northern edge of the region called Bergisches Land, south of the Ruhr area, and with a 2009 population of 161,366 is the second largest city in the Bergisches Land...

under the trademark "Gräwiso".
Gebrüder Gräfrath was taken over in 1961 by Hubertus Solingen.

Systematic extermination of prisoners

Besides sporadic killings and deaths due to the poor living conditions, many inmates arriving at Jasenovac were scheduled for systematic liquidation. An important criterion for selection was the duration of a prisoner's anticipated detention. Strong men capable of labor and sentenced to less than three years of incarceration were allowed to live. All inmates with indeterminate sentences or sentences of three years or more were immediately scheduled for liquidation, regardless of their fitness.

Systematic extermination varied both as to place and form. Some of the executions were mechanical, following Nazi methodology, while others were manual. The mechanical means of extermination included:

Cremation: The Ustase cremated living inmates, who were sometimes drugged and sometimes fully awake, as well as corpses. The first cremations took place in the brick factory ovens in January, 1942. Engineer Hinko Dominik Picilli perfected this method by converting seven of the kiln's furnace chambers into more sophisticated crematories. Crematories were also placed in Gradina, across the Sava River. According to the State Commission, however, "there is no information that it ever went into operation.". Later testimony, however, say the Gradina crematory had become operational. Some bodies were buried rather than cremated, as shown by exhumation of bodies late in the war.

Gassing and poisoning: The Ustase, in following the Nazi example, as set in Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...

and Sajmiste
Sajmište concentration camp
Sajmište concentration camp was a German run Nazi concentration camp located on the outskirts of Belgrade whilst part of NDH . It was established in December 1941 and shut down in September 1944...

, tried to employ poisonous gas to kill inmates that arrived in Stara-Gradiska. They first tried to gas the women and children that arrived from camp Djakovo with gas van
Gas van
The gas van or gas wagon was an extermination method devised by Nazi Germany to kill victims of the regime. It was also rumored that analog of such device was used by the Soviet Union on an experimental basis during the Great Purge-Nazi Germany:...

s that Simo Klaic called "green Thomas". The method was later replaced with stationary gas-chambers with Zyklon B
Zyklon B
Zyklon B was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide infamous for its use by Nazi Germany to kill human beings in gas chambers of extermination camps during the Holocaust. The "B" designation indicates one of two types of Zyklon...

and sulfur dioxide
Sulfur dioxide
Sulfur dioxide is the chemical compound with the formula . It is released by volcanoes and in various industrial processes. Since coal and petroleum often contain sulfur compounds, their combustion generates sulfur dioxide unless the sulfur compounds are removed before burning the fuel...

.

Manual methods, the Ustase's favorites, were liquidation that took part in utilizing sharp or blunt craftsmen tools: knives, saws, hammers, et cetera. These liquidations took place in various locations:

Granik: Granik was a ramp used to unload goods of Sava boats. In winter 1943-44, season agriculture laborers became unemployed, while large transports of new internees arrived and the need for liquidation, in light of the expected Axis defeat, were large. Therefore, "Maks" Luburic devised a plan to utilize the crane as a gallows on which slaughter would be committed, so that the bodies could be dumped into the stream of the flowing river. In the autumn, the Ustase NCO's came in every night for some 20 days, with lists of names of people who were incarcerated in the warehouse, stripped, chained, beaten and then taken to the "Granik", where weights were tied to the wire that was bent on their arms, and their intestines and neck were slashed, and they were thrown into the river with a blow of a blunt tool in the head. The method was later enhanced, so that inmates were tied in pairs, back to back, their bellies were cut before they were tossed into the river alive.
Gradina: The Ustase utilized empty areas in the vicinity of the villages Donja Gradina and Ustice, where they encircled an area marked for slaughter and mass graves in wire. The Ustase slew victims with knives or smashed their skulls with mallets. When gypsies arrived in the camp, they did not undergo selection, but were rather concentrated under the open skies at a section of camp known as "III-C". From there the gypsies were taken to liquidation in Gradina, working on the dike (men) or in the corn fields in Ustice (women) in between liquidations. Thus Gradina and Ustica became Roma mass grave sites. Furthermore, small groups of gypsies were utilized as gravediggers that actually participated in the slaughter at Gradina. Thus the extermination at the site grew until it became the main killing-ground in Jasenovac. Grave sites were also located in Ustica and in Draksenic.
Mlaka and Jablanac: Two sites used as collection and labor camps for the women and children in camps III and V, but also as places where many of these women and children, as well as other groups, were liquidated at the Sava bank in between the two locations.
Velika Kustarica: According to the state-commission, as far as 50,000 people were killed here in the winter amid 1941 and 1942. There is more evidence suggesting that killings took place there at that time and afterwards.

Inmate help

In 1942, Diana Budisavljević

Diana Budisavljević

Diana Budisavljević was a humanitarian of Austrian descent who saved 12,000 children from the Jasenovac death camps during World War II.-Life:...

came into contact with German officers at Stara Gradiška about releasing children from the camp. With the help of the Ministry of Social Affairs, especially prof. Kamil Bresler, she was able to relocate child inmates from the camp to Zagreb, and other places.
The Red-Cross is in times accused of insufficient aid of the persecuted Jews in Nazi Europe. In the NDH, however, the operation of the Red-Cross was ambivalent, and although the assistance was perhaps late or insufficient, it was the most help the victims ever got. The local representative, Julius Schmidllin, was contacted by the Jewish community, which sought financial aid. The organisation helped to release Jews from camps, and even debated with the Croatian government in relation to visiting the Jasenovac camp. The wish was eventually granted in July 1944. The camp was prepared for the arrival of the delegation, so that it found nothing incriminating.
The inmates also received help from Croat citizens and even of Ustase. Borislav Seva was rescued by an Ustase Vladimir Cupic. Inmate resistance groups were aided by contacts amongst the Ustase: one of these groups, operating in the tannery, was assisted by Ustase Dr. Marin Jurcev and his wife, and by an Ustase that defected to the Partisan side with information of the atrocities of Jasenovac. Ustase found guilty of tender handling of inmates were killed. Civilians were mostly kind towards inmates that did exterior labor.

End of the camp

In April 1945, as Partisan units approached the camp, the Ustaše camp supervisors attempted to erase traces of the atrocities by working the death camp at full capacity. On 22 April, 600 prisoners revolted; 520 were killed and 80 escaped. Before abandoning the camp shortly after the prisoner revolt, the Ustaše killed the remaining prisoners, blasted and destroyed the buildings, guardhouses, torture rooms, the "Picili Furnace", and the other structures. Upon entering the camp, the partisans found only ruins, soot, smoke, and dead bodies.

During the following months of 1945, the grounds of Jasenovac were thoroughly destroyed by prisoners of war. The Allied forces

Allies of World War II

The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...

captured 200 to 600 Home Guard

Croatian Home Guard

Croatian Home Guard or also, known as the "Homeland Defenders," was the name used for the armed forces of the Independent State of Croatia which existed during World War II.- Formation :...

members.
Laborers completed destruction of the camp, leveling the site and dismantling the two-kilometer long, four-meter high wall that surrounded it.

Victims

Total number

Historians have had difficulty calculating and agreeing on the number of victims at Jasenovac. An accurate number might not ever be known but current estimates range between 49,600 to 600,000. Other sources place it at around 100,000.
The first figures to be offered by the state-commission of Croatia ranged around 500,000 and even 600,000. The official estimate of the number of victims in SFRY was 700,000; however, beginning in the 1990s, the Croatian side began suggesting substantially smaller numbers. The exact numbers continue to be a subject of great controversy and hot political dispute, with the Croatian government and institutions pushing for a much lower number even as recently as September 2009.

The estimates vary due to lack of accurate records, the methods used for making estimates, and sometimes the political biases of the estimators. In some cases, entire families were exterminated, leaving no one to submit their names to the lists. On the other hand, it has been found that the lists include the names of people who died elsewhere, whose survival was not reported to the authorities, or who are counted more than once on the lists.

The casualty figures for the whole of Yugoslavia sways between the maximum 1,700,000 and the more conservative figures between 1,500,000 or one million.

Historical documentation sources

The documentation from the time of Jasenovac revolves around the different sides in the battle for Yugoslavia: The Germans and Italians on the one hand, and the Partisans on the other. There are also sources originating from the documentation of the Ustase themselves and of the Vatican. These sources are at times considered contemporary because German and Ustase sources tend to exaggerate, but the comparison of all different sources can give a reliable portrait of the historical truth.

German generals issued reports of the number of victims as the war progressed. German

Germany

military commanders gave different figures for the number of Serbs

Serbs

, Jews

Jews

and others killed on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia

Independent State of Croatia

. They circulated figures of 400,000 Serbs (Alexander Löhr

Alexander Löhr

Alexander Löhr was an Austrian Air Force commander during the 1930s and, after the "Political Union of Germany and Austria" , he was a German Air Force commander...

); 350,000 Serbs (Lothar Rendulic

Lothar Rendulic

Generaloberst Lothar Rendulic was an Austro-Hungarian and Austrian Army officer of Croatian origin who served as a German general during World War II. He commanded the 14. Infanterie-Division, 52. Infanterie-Division, XXXV Armeekorps, 2. Panzer-Armee, 20...

); around 300,000 (Edmund Glaise von Horstenau

Edmund Glaise-Horstenau

Edmund Glaise-Horstenau was an Austrian officer in the Bundesheer, last Vice-Chancellor of Austria before the 1938 Anschluss, and general in the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War.- Life :Born in Braunau am Inn the son of an officer, Glaise-Horstenau attended the Theresian Military...

); in 1943; "600-700,000 until March 1944" (Ernst Fick); 700,000 (Massenbach). Hermann Neubacher

Hermann Neubacher

Hermann Neubacher was an Austrian Nazi politician who held a number of diplomatic posts in the Third Reich. During the Second World War, he was appointed as the leading German official for the Balkans.-Austrian activism:...

calculates:

The recipe, received by the Ustashe leader and poglawnik, the president of the Independent State of Croatia, Ante Pavelic, resembles to the bloodiest religious wars: "A third must become Catholic, a third must leave the country, and a third must die!" This last point of their program was accomplished. When prominent Ustasha leaders claimed that they slaughtered a million Serbs, that is, in my opinion, a boastful exaggeration. On the basis of the reports submitted to me, I believe that the number of defenseless victims slaughtered to be three quarters of a million.

Italian generals, who were more overwhelmed by the atrocious Ustase slaughter, also reported similar figures to their commanders. The Vatican's sources also speak of similar figures, that is, for an example, of 350,000 Serbs slaughtered by the end of 1942 (Eugen Tisserant) and "over 500,000 people" in all (Godfried Danneels.)

The Ustase themselves gave more exaggerated assumptions of the number of people they killed. Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić

Maks Luburic

Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić was a Croatian Ustaše, a war criminal, and the commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp.- Biography :...

, commander-in-chief of all the Croatian camps, announced the great "efficiency" of the Jasenovac camp at a ceremony as early as 9 October 1942. During the banquet which followed, he reported with pride, intoxicated: "We have slaughtered here at Jasenovac more people than the Ottoman Empire was able to do during its occupation of Europe." Other Ustase sources give more canon estimations: a circular of the Ustase general headquarters that reads: "the concentration and labor camp in Jasenovac can receive an unlimited number of internees". In the same spirit, Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic, once captured by Yugoslav forces, admitted that during his three months of administration, 20,000 to 30,000 people died. Since it became clear that his confession was an attempt to somewhat minimize the rate of crimes committed in Jasenovac, having, for an example, claimed to have personally killed 100 people, extremely understated, Miroslav's figures are evaluated so that in some sources they appear as 30,000-40,000.

A report of the National Committee of Croatia

Croatia

Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...

for the investigation of the crimes of the occupation forces and their collaborators, dated 15 November 1945, which was commissioned by the new government of Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito

Josip Broz Tito

Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...

, stated that 500,000-600,000 people were killed at the Jasenovac complex. These figures were cited by researchers Israel Gutman and Menachem Shelach in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust from 1990 and Simon Wiesenthal Center

Simon Wiesenthal Center

The Simon Wiesenthal Center , with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, was established in 1977 and named for Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter. According to its mission statement, it is "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time...

. Menachem Shelach will in his book speak that number, of some 300,000 bodies being found and exhumed is reliable
Mosa Pijade and Eduard Kardelij used this number in the war reparations meetings. Thus the proponents of these numbers were subsequently accused of artificially inflating them for purpose of obtaining war reparations

War reparations

War reparations are payments intended to cover damage or injury during a war. Generally, the term war reparations refers to money or goods changing hands, rather than such property transfers as the annexation of land.- History :...

. All in all, The state-commission's report has been the only public and official document about number of victims during 45 years of second Yugoslavia.

The state's total war casualties of 1,700,000 as presented by Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Treaties

Paris Peace Treaties, 1947

The Paris Peace Conference resulted in the Paris Peace Treaties signed on February 10, 1947. The victorious wartime Allied powers negotiated the details of treaties with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland .The...

, were produced by a math student, Vladeta Vučković, at the Federal Bureau of Statistics. He later admitted that his estimates included demographic losses (i.e., also factoring in the estimated population increase), while actual losses would have been significantly less. This number of victims has been refused by Germany during war reparations talks.

Živanović: a contemporary forensic source

Between 22 and 27 June 1964, exhumations of bodies and use of sampling methods was conducted at Jasenovac by Vida Brodar and Anton Pogačnik from Ljubljana university and Srboljub Živanović from Novi Sad university. During the Yugoslav Wars

Yugoslav wars

The Yugoslav Wars were a series of wars, fought throughout the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995. The wars were complex: characterized by bitter ethnic conflicts among the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, mostly between Serbs on the one side and Croats and Bosniaks on the other; but also...

, Serbian anthropologist, Srboljub Živanović, published during war between Croatia and Serbia what he claimed were the full results of the studies, which in his words has been suppressed by Tito's government in the name of brotherhood and unity

Brotherhood and unity

Brotherhood and Unity was a popular slogan of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia that was coined during the Yugoslav People's Liberation War , and which evolved into a guiding principle of Yugoslavia's post-war inter-ethnic policy....

, in order to put less emphasis on the crimes of the Ustashe. According to Živanović, the research gave strong support to the victim counts of more than 500,000, with estimates of 700,000-800,000 being realistic, stating that in every mass grave there are 800 skeletons.

Victim lists

The Jasenovac Memorial Area maintains a list of the names of 80,914 Jasenovac victims, including 45,923 Serbs, 16,045 Romanies, 12,765 Jews, 4,197 Croats, and 1,984 people of some other ethnicities. The memorial estimates total deaths at 85,000 to 100,000.

The Belgrade Museum of the Holocaust keeps a list of the names of 80,022 victims (mostly from Jasenovac), including approximately 52,000 Serbs, 16,000 Jews, 12,000 Croats and 10,000 Romanies..

Antun Miletić, a researcher at the Military Archives in Belgrade, has collected data on Jasenovac since 1979. His list contains the names of 77,200 victims, of which 41,936 are Serbs.

In 1998, the Bosniak Institute published SFR Yugoslavia's final List of war victims from the Jasenovac camp (created in 1992). The list contained the names of 49,602 victims at Jasenovac, including 26,170 Serbs, 8,121 Jews, 5,900 Croats, 1471 Romanies, 787 Muslims (nationality unknown), 6,792 of unidentifiable ethnicity, and some listed simply as "others". Another list from that institution, naming victims that died between April and November 1944, lists 4,892 names.

Estimates by Holocaust institutions

The Yad Vashem center claims that more than 500,000 Serbs were murdered in Croatia in horribly sadistic ways, 250,000 were expelled, and another 200,000 were forced to convert to Catholicism in the NDH including those who were killed at Jasenovac. The same figures are concluded by the Simon-Wiesentall center. Thus Menachem Shelach and Israel Gutman conclude at "the encyclopedia of the holocaust":

"Some six hundred thousand people were murdered at Jasenovac, mostly Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and opponents of the Ustase regime. The number of Jewish victims was between twenty thousand and twenty-five thousand, most of whom were murdered there up to August 1942, when deportation of the Croatian Jews to Auschwitz for extermination began." (Entry in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, edited by Israel Gutman, vol.1, 1995, pp.739-740)"

On the other hand, however, as of 2009, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that the Ustaša regime murdered between 66,000 and 99,000 people of all ethnicities (but mostly Serbs) in Jasenovac between 1941 and 1945, and that during the period of Ustaša rule, a total of between 330,000 and 390,000 ethnic Serbs and more than 30,000 Croatian Jews were killed either in Croatia or at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Statistical estimates

In the 1980s, calculations were done by Serb statistician Bogoljub Kočović

Bogoljub Kocovic

Bogoljub Kočović is a Bosnian jurist and statistician, Yugoslav by ethnic affiliation.Kočović was born in Sarajevo; his father was a Serb and mother French by origin. He obtained a MA in economy at the Roosevelt University in Chicago, and a Ph. D. in law in Paris...

, and by Croat economist Vladimir Žerjavić

Vladimir Žerjavic

Vladimir Žerjavić was a Croatian economist and a United Nations expert. He published a series of historical articles and books during the 1980s and 1990s in which he argued that the scope of the Holocaust in World War II-era territory of Yugoslavia was intentionally exaggerated...

, who claimed that total number of victims in Yugoslavia was less than 1.7 million, an official estimate at the time, both concluding that the number of victims was around one million. Žerjavić calculated furthermore, claiming that the number of victims in the Independent State of Croatia

Independent State of Croatia

was between 300,000 and 350,000, including 80,000 victims in Jasenovac, as well as thousands of deaths in other camps and prisons. Kočović, who made an estimate of the total number of victims, accused Žerjavić of being motivated by nationalism.

However, these estimates have been dismissed as biased and unreliable especially on the Serbian side. The mere 0.1% change of the (unknown) birth rate would contribute more to the number of victims than the Žerjavić's claim of the number of Serbs killed in Jasenovac (50,000) and his calculation has a deficiency rate of 30%. Žerjavić has been dismissed as a nationalist even by Kočović, and his estimates of number of victims in the Bosnian war of the 90s (300,000 killed) was three times greater than ICTY data and Bosnian official estimates after the war, and sheds light on problems with his credibility. Accused by some Croatian historians of being a plagiarist and the 'court statistician'.

Commentators in Serbia criticized these estimates as far too low, since the demographic calculations assumed arbitrarily that the growth rate for Serbs in Bosnia (which was part of the Independent State of Croatia during the war time) was equal to the total growth rate throughout the former Yugoslavia (1.1% at the time). According to Serbian sources, however, the actual growth rate in this region was 2.4% (in 1921-1931) and 3.5% (in 1949-1953). This method is considered very unreliable by critics because there is no reliable data on total births during this period, yet the results depend strongly on the birth rate - just a change of 0.1% in birth rate changes the victim count by 50,000. According to the census, the number of Serbs between last prewar ([1931]) and first post war (1948) census has gone up from 1,028,139 to around 1,200,000

History of the demographics of Bosnia and Herzegovina

This article is about the Demographic history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and deals with the country's documented demographics over time. For an overview of the various ethnic groups and their historical development, see Nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina....

. The Yugoslav Federal Bureau of Statistics has in 1964 created list of World War II victims with 597,323 names and deficiency estimated at 20-30% which is giving between 750,000 and 780,000 victims. Together with estimated 200,000 killed collaborators and quislings, the total number would reach about one million. This Yugoslav Federal Bureau of Statistics list was declared a state secret in 1964 and it was published only in 1989.

Camp officials and their fate

Some of the camp officials and their post-war fate are listed below:

Miroslav Majstorović, an Ustaša infamous for his command periods in Jasenovac and Stara-Gradiska, named "Fra Satana" (Father Satan) for his cruelty and Christian upbringing, was captured by the Yugoslav communist forces, tried and executed in 1946.
Maks Luburić
Maks Luburic
Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić was a Croatian Ustaše, a war criminal, and the commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp.- Biography :...

was the commandant of the Ustaška Odbrana, or Ustaše defense, thus being held responsible for all crimes committed under his supervision in Jasenovac, which he visited two-three times a month or so, fled to Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, but was assassinated by a Yugoslav agent in 1969.
Dinko Šakić
Dinko Šakic
Dinko Šakić was a convicted Croatian war criminal, an army leader of the fascist Independent State of Croatia , established under Third Reich and Italian tutelage, and commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp during World War II.-Biography:He was born in Studenci, in the Kingdom of Serbs,...

fled to Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, but was eventually extradited, tried and sentenced, in 1999, by Croatian authorities to 20 years in prison, dying in prison in 2008.
Petar Brzica
Petar Brzica
Father Petar "Pero" Brzica was a Croatian fascist and World War II war criminal. Before the war he was a scholarship student at the Franciscan college of Široki Brijeg in Herzegovina and a member of The Great Brotherhood of Crusaders....

was an Ustaša officer who, in the night of 29 August 1942, allegedly slaughtered 1,360 people or so, Brzica's fellow Ustaša also took part in that crime, as part of a competition of throat cutting. Brzica is also known for having killed an inmate by beating him, on the departure of administrator Ivica Matkovic, in March 1943. Brzica's post-war fate is unknown; he was born in 1917, which would presently place him at the age of 94, if still alive.

Later events

Yugoslav Marshal Josip Broz Tito

Josip Broz Tito

never visited the site, as he sought to make the people of Yugoslavia forget the Ustaše crimes in the name of "brotherhood and unity" in Yugoslavia. This policy continued to modern times.

The Socialist Republic of Croatia

Socialist Republic of Croatia

Socialist Republic of Croatia was a sovereign constituent country of the second Yugoslavia. It came to existence during World War II, becoming a socialist state after the war, and was also renamed four times in its existence . It was the second largest republic in Yugoslavia by territory and...

adopted a new law on the Jasenovac Memorial Area in 1990, shortly before the first democratic elections

Croatian parliamentary election, 1990

Parliamentary elections were held in Croatia on 22 April 1990, with a second round of voting on 6 May. The first free elections since multi-party politics were introduced, they resulted in a victory for the Croatian Democratic Union, which won 55 of the 80 seats...

in the country. The Jasenovac Memorial Museum was temporarily abandoned during the Yugoslav wars

Yugoslav wars

when it was taken over by the rebel Republic of Serb Krajina. In November 1991, Simo Brdar, a former associate director of the Memorial, stole the documentation from the museum and brought it to Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina

. Brdar kept the documents until 2001, when he transferred them to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history...

, with the help of SFOR

SFOR

The Stabilisation Force was a NATO-led multinational peacekeeping force in Bosnia and Herzegovina which was tasked with upholding the Dayton Agreement. It replaced the previous force IFOR...

and the government of Republika Srpska

Republika Srpska

Republika Srpska is one of two main political entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina...

.

Moshe Katsav, traveled to Jasenovac in 2003, as the first Israeli head of state to officially visit the country.

The New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

Parks Department, the Holocaust Park Committee and the Jasenovac Research Institute, with the help of US Congressman Anthony Weiner, established a public monument to the victims of Jasenovac in April 2005 (the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the camps.) The dedication ceremony was attended by ten Yugoslavian Holocaust survivors, as well as diplomats from Serbia, Bosnia and Israel. It remains the only public monument to Jasenovac victims outside of the Balkans. Annual commemorations are held there every April.

The Jasenovac Memorial Museum reopened in November 2006 with a new exhibition designed by the Croatian architect, Helena Paver Njirić, and an Educational Center designed by the firm Produkcija. The Memorial Museum features an interior of rubber-clad steel modules, video and projection screens, and glass cases displaying artifacts from the camp. Above the exhibition space, which is quite dark, is a field of glass panels inscribed with the names of the victims. Helena Njirić won the first prize of the 2006 Zagreb Architectural Salon for her work on the museum. The new exhibition is however seen as scandalous by some, notably Efraim Zuroff

Efraim Zuroff

Efraim Zuroff is an Israeli historian of American origin, who has played a role in bringing Nazis indicted for war crimes to trial...

, due to the removal of the Ustaše killing instruments from the display and a possible intent to minimise the crimes committed there.

Israeli President Shimon Peres visited Jasenovac on 25.07.2010 dubbing it "demonstration of sheer sadism".

External links

Holocaust Encyclopedia: Jasenovac, hosted at USHMM
US Holocaust Memorial Museum: Jasenovac
Spomen Područje Jasenovac
Jasenovac Memorial Museum
Jasenovac commander Šakić trial documents by Republic of Croatia
Concentration camp Jasenovac, Archive of Republika Srpska
Jasenovac at the Simon Wiesenthal Center
Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center , with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, was established in 1977 and named for Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter. According to its mission statement, it is "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time...

Museum of Tolerance
Pavelic Papers' Documents on Jasenovac (includes "Encyclopedia of the Holocaust" quotes)
Jasenovac Committee of the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church
Kosta Brandic Archives: Jasenovac
Jasenovac Research Institute
Eichmann Trial - Alexander Arnon testimony
Unscrambling the History of a Nazi Camp, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, 6 December 2006
New expanded Jasenovac Memorial opened
Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team Jasenovac Page
Jadovno,Slana and Metajna Concentration camps

NDH legislation

Nazi Germany

Creation and operation of Jasenovac concentration camp

Serbs

Jews

Roma

Croatian and Bosnian anti-fascists

Children

Various

Living conditions

Mass murder and cruelty

Srbosjek

Systematic extermination of prisoners

Inmate help

End of the camp

Victims

Total number

Historical documentation sources

Živanović: a contemporary forensic source

Victim lists

Estimates by Holocaust institutions

Statistical estimates

Camp officials and their fate

Later events

See also

External links

See Also