Jasenovac concentration camp

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"Jasenovac" redirects here. For municipality in Croatia, see Jasenovac municipality. For other uses, see Jasenovac (disambiguation).

Jasenovac concentration camp (in Croatian: Logor Jasenovac in Serbian: Логор Јасеновац / Logor Jasenovac) was the largest concentration and extermination camp in Croatia during World War II. It was established by the Ustaše (Ustasha) regime of the Independent State of Croatia in August 1941. It was dismantled in April 1945. Unlike other concentration and extermination camps, in Jasenovac the main victims were ethnic Serbs, whom Ante Pavelić considered the main racial enemy of NDH, although other groups, like Jews, Gypsies and Croats opposed to the regime were also the victims there.

Jasenovac was a complex of five subcamps and three smaller camps spread out over 240 square kilometers (93 square miles), in relatively close proximity to each other, on the bank of the Sava river. Most of the camp was at Jasenovac, about 100 km (62 miles) southeast of Zagreb. The complex also included large grounds at Donja Gradina directly across the Sava river, a camp for children in Sisak to the northwest, and a women's camp in Stara Gradiška to the southeast.

Contents

Prelude

Some of the first legal orders of the new country reflected the acceptance of the ideology of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, with an emphasis placed on Croatian national issues.

The first "Legal order for the defence of the people and the state" dated April 17, 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 April 30, 1941, as well as the "Order of the creation and definition of the racial-political committee" dated June 4, 1941. The enforcement of these legal acts was done not only through normal courts but also new out-of-order courts as well as mobile court-martials with extended jurisdictions.

The normal jails could no longer sustain the rate of new inmates and the Ustaša government started preparing the grounds what would become the Jasenovac concentration camp by July 1941.

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

The camp

The creation of the camp and its management and supervision were entrusted to Department III of a special police force called Ustaška Narodna Služba or UNS (lit. "Ustaše People's Service"). This organization was headed by Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić. Several others were involved in commanding the camp at different times, including Miroslav Majstorović and Dinko Šakić.

The Ustaše interned mostly Serbs in Jasenovac. Other victims included Jews, Bosniaks[1],Gypsies, and opponents of the Ustaša regime. Most of the Jews were murdered there until August 1942, when they started being deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Jews were sent to Jasenovac from all parts of Croatia after being gathered in Zagreb, and from Bosnia and Herzegovina after being gathered in Sarajevo. Some came directly from other cities and smaller towns. On their arrival most 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. The living conditions in the camp were extremely severe: a meager diet, deplorable accommodations, a particularly cruel regime, and cruel behavior by the Ustaše guards. The conditions improved only for short periods during visits by delegations, such as the press delegation that visited in February 1942 and a Red Cross delegation in June 1944.

Similar to Nazi concentration camp badges, at first the prisoners were marked with colors: blue for Serbs, and red for communists, while Gypsies had no marks. This was later abandoned.[citation needed]

Mass murder and cruelty

A knife worn over the hand that was used by the Ustasa militia for the fast killing of inmates in concentration camps.
A knife worn over the hand that was used by the Ustasa militia for the fast killing of inmates in concentration camps.[2]

These acts of murder and cruelty reached their peak in the late summer of 1942, when tens of thousands of Serbian villagers were deported to Jasenovac from the area of the fighting against the partisans in the Kozara mountain (in Bosnia). Most of the men were killed at Jasenovac. The women were sent to forced labor in Germany, and the children were taken from their mothers; some were murdered and others were dispersed to Catholic orphanages.

On the night of August 29, 1942, bets were made among the prison guards as to who could liquidate the largest number of inmates. One of the guards,Petar Brzica reportedly cut the throats of 1,360 prisoners with a butcher knife.[citation needed] Having been proclaimed the prize-winner of the competition, he was dubbed "King of the Cut-throats".[citation needed] A gold watch, a silver service, a roasted suckling pig, and wine were among his rewards[citation needed]. The type of knife used for cutting prisoners' throats became known as srbosjek ("Serb-cutter").

Prisoners in Jasenovac were forced to drink water from Sava river with ren (horseradish). At the last moment, in January 1945, more than 50,000 prisoners who were able to walk were led from the camp.

End of the camp

In April 1945 the partisan army approached the camp. The Ustaša attempted to erase traces of the atrocities by working the death camp at full capacity.

On April 22, 600 prisoners revolted: 520 were killed and 80 escaped.[1] Before leaving the camp around April 22, the Ustaša killed the remaining prisoners, blasted and destroyed the buildings, guard-houses, torture rooms, the "Picili Furnace" and the other structures. Upon entering the camp, the liberators found only ruins, soot, smoke, and dead bodies.

During the following months of 1945, the grounds of Jasenovac were thoroughly destroyed by forced labourers, composed of 200 to 600 Domobran soldiers captured by the Partisans, thereby making the area a labor camp. They levelled the camp to the ground and among other things dismantled a two-kilometer long, four-meter high wall that surrounded it.

Victim counts

There are various statistics and estimates about the number of victims who died in the Jasenovac camp, mainly due to lack of exact records, and to various interests involved in estimating them. The numbers mentioned most often range from the tens of thousands, which is the most common cited contemporary figure, to the hundreds of thousands, which was the most frequently quoted assessment until the 1990s. Serbs constituted the majority of victims. The actual number of victims killed in the Jasenovac camp is impossible to ascertain definitely, so the figures vary widely.

The approximations in the death count also come from the fact that in cases where entire families were exterminated, no one was left to submit their names to the lists. Additionally, sometimes it happened that some people from the lists were killed elsewhere, or that they survived but were not heard of, or that there were duplicates.

Victim list counts

The Jasenovac Memorial Area keeps a list of 69,842 names of Jasenovac victims: 39,580 Serbs, 14,599 Roma, 10,700 Jews, 3,462 Croats as well as people of some other ethnicities.[3] Several other partial lists from other sources exist. The Belgrade Museum of the Holocaust keeps a list of 80,022 names of the victims (mostly from Jasenovac): around 52,000 Serbs, 16,000 Jews, 12,000 Croats and nearly 10,000 Roma.[citation needed]

Antun Miletić, a researcher at the Military Archives in Belgrade, has collected data on Jasenovac since 1979.[4] His list contains 77,200 victims, of which 41,936 are Serbs.[4]

In 1998, the Bosniak Institute published SFR Yugoslavia's last List of war victims from the Jasenovac camp from 1992.[5] The list contained 49,602 total victims at Jasenovac with 26,170 Serbs, 8,121 Jews, 5,900 Croats, 1471 Roma, 787 Muslims, 6,792 of unidentifiable ethnicity and the rest others.[5]

Holocaust insitutions

Memorial signs with Serbian claims of victim counts, situated on the Republika Srpska side of the Sava river
Memorial signs with Serbian claims of victim counts, situated on the Republika Srpska side of the Sava river

The Yad Vashem center claims that over 500,000 were killed in the entire NDH [2], including Jasenovac, of which apparently 600,000 in that one camp. [3] Yad Vashem According to some Croatian sources, victim counts were exaggerated. [6][7] It is also not clear how the Center has reached this figure.

According to other world's authority on Holocaust victims the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the victims figures are as follows [4]:

Between its establishment in 1941 and its evacuation in April 1945, Croat authorities murdered thousands of people at Jasenovac. Among the victims were: between 45,000 and 52,000 Serb residents of the so-called Independent State of Croatia; between 8,000 and 20,000 Jews; between 8,000 and 15,000 Roma (Gypsies); and between 5,000 and 12,000 ethnic Croats and Muslims, who were political and religious opponents of the regime. The Croat authorities murdered between 330,000 and 390,000 ethnic Serb residents of Croatia and Bosnia during the period of Ustaša rule; more than 30,000 Croatian Jews were killed either in Croatia or at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Jewish Virtual Library which is 3rd world's authority on Holocaust victims agree with United States Holocaust Memorial Museum about Jasenovac victim count [8]

Contemporary sources

A progression of numbers were reported by various German generals as the war was progressing. Various German military commanders gave different figures for the number of Serbs, Jews and others killed on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia. They circulated figures of 400,000 Serbs (Alexander Löhr); 350,000 Serbs (Lothar Rendulic); around 300,000 (Edmund Glaise von Horstenau); more than "3/4 of million of Serbs" (Hermann Neubacher) in 1943; "600-700,000 until March 1944" (Ernst Fick); 700,000 (Massenbach).[citation needed]
Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić, commander-in-chief of all the Croatian camps, announced the great "efficiency" of this slaughterhouse at a ceremony on October 9, 1942. During the banquet which followed, he reported with pride: "We have slaughtered here at Jasenovac more people than the Ottoman Empire was able to do during its occupation of Europe."[citation needed]

A report made by the new government under Tito, the National Committee of Croatia for the investigation of the crimes of the occupation forces and their collaborators, dated November 15, 1945 stated that 500,000-600,000 people were killed at the Jasenovac complex. These numbers were officially supported while Yugoslavia existed.[citation needed] The figures were cited by researcher Israel Gutman in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and others. The proponents of these numbers were subsequently accused of artificial inflation because of the war reparations. The state's total war casualties of 1,700,000 as presented by Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Treaties were produced by a math student, Vladeta Vučković, at the Federal Bureau of Statistics.[9] He later revealed that his estimates included demographic losses (i.e. also factoring in the estimated population increase of the time), while actual losses would have been significantly less.[9]

Forensic sources ?

In the 1960s, exhumations of bodies and use of sampling methods was conducted at Jasenovac by a team of researchers. The team consisted of anthropologists, medical doctors, archaeologists and other experts, who have had experience in similar research at Auschwitz and used the same methods. Alleged full results were made public during Yugoslav Wars by a Serbian anthropologist Srboljub Živanović, as Tito's government allegedly started to suppress the Jasenovac research in the name of brotherhood and unity, and allegedly less accent was put on the crimes of the Ustashe. [5][6] 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. Other team members assert that the Jasenovac researchers never discussed victim counts in preparing their report.[10]

Statistical estimates

In the 1980s, independent calculations were done by Croat economist Vladimir Žerjavić and Serb statistician Bogoljub Kočović, who claimed that total number of victims in Yugoslavia was less than 1.7 million, an official figure at the time, both coming to similar figure of around one million. Žerjavić went much further into the national composition of the victims, even giving the death count figure for Jasenovac as only 80,000 people. Žerjavić claimed that the count of death in the Independent State of Croatia is between 300,000 and 350,000, also listing thousands of deaths in other camps and prisons. Kočović, who made general estimate of total number of victims accused Žerjavić of being motivated by nationalism.[citation needed]

These figures were viewed with suspicion in Serbia as being too low due to the total growth rate throughout the former Yugoslavia (the value of 1.1% at the time) as the growth rate for Serbs in Bosnia (which was part of the Independent State of Croatia during the war time) while according to Serbian sources the actual growth rate was 2.4% (in 1921-1931) and 3.5% (in 1949-1953). The problem with this method is that there is no reliable data on growth rate and results depend strongly on the birth rate - just a change of 0.1% in birth rate gives up to 50,000 error in victim count. For this reason the demographic method is not considered very reliable by Serbia.

Fates of camp officials

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

Later events

Yugoslav Marshal Josip Broz never visited the site, despite its reputation.[11]

During the Yugoslav wars, the grounds of Jasenovac concentration camp and the Memorial area were temporarily abandoned due to the military conflict. In November 1991, Simo Brdar, a former associate director of the Memorial area collected the documentation from the museum and brought it with him to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he kept it until it was transferred to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2001 with the help of SFOR and the then government of Republika Srpska. Upon the site's liberation by Croatian forces, Croatian president Franjo Tudjman made an official visit.[12]

In April 2005 in New York City on the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the camps, a public monument to the victims of Jasenovac was established by the New York City Parks Department, the Holocaust Park Committee and the Jasenovac Research Institute with the help of US Congressman Anthony Weiner. It remains the only public monument to Jasenovac established outside of the Balkans in the world. It was unveiled and attended by ten Yugoslavian Holocaust survivors and diplomats from Serbia, Bosnia and Israel. Annual commemorations are held there every April.

The Jasenovac Memorial Museum re-opened in November 2006 with a new exhibition designed by the Croatian architect, Helena Paver Njirić, and an Educational Center 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 for the 2006 Zagreb Architectural Salon for her work on the museum.

Notes

  1. ^ *Bosniaks in Jasenovac Concentration Camp—Congress of Bosniak Intellectuals, Sarajevo. ISBN 9789958471025. October 2006. (Holocaust Studies)
  2. ^ US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph #46725
  3. ^ Southeast Times: Exhibition aims to show truth about Jasenovac
  4. ^ a b Anzulovic, Branimir. Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide, Hurst & Company. London, 1999
  5. ^ a b Bošnjački Institut. Jasenovac: Žrtve rata prema podacima statističkog zavoda Jugoslavije. Bošnjački Institut Sarajevo, Sarajevo 1998.
  6. ^ Professor Josip Pecaric, Serbian myth about Jasenovac (summary)
  7. ^ Marijana Cota, “The Šakić Case - Disinformation and Ill Will”, The Home Club of the Bosnian Posavina, Zagreb 1999, p. 136.
  8. ^ Jasenovac
  9. ^ a b Vladimir Zerjavic - How the number of 1.7 million casualties of the Second World War has been derived
  10. ^ Vladimir Zerjavic - Anthropological Survey
  11. ^ President Mesić in Vojnić
  12. ^ Clear denouncement of crimes in Jasenovac and Bleiburg will stabilize Croatia and its position in the world, Nacional

References

  1. The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican, Vladimir Dedijer (Editor), Harvey Kendall (Translator) Prometheus Books, 1992.
  2. Witness to Jasenovac's Hell Ilija Ivanovic, Wanda Schindley (Editor), Aleksandra Lazic (Translator) Dallas Publishing, 2002
  3. Crimes in the Jasenovac Camp, State Commission investigation of crimes of the occupiers and their collaborators in Croatia, Zagreb, 1946.
  4. Ustasha Camps by Mirko Percen, Globus, Zagreb, 1966. Second expanded printing 1990.
  5. Ustashi and the Independent State of Croatia 1941-1945, by Fikreta Jelic-Butic, Liber, Zagreb, 1977.
  6. Romans, J. Jews of Yugoslavia, 1941- 1945: Victims of Genocide and Freedom Fighters, Belgrade, 1982
  7. Antisemitism in the anti-fascist Holocaust: a collection of works, The Jewish Center, Zagreb, 1996.
  8. The Jasenovac Concentration Camp, by Antun Miletic, Volumes One and Two, Belgrade, 1986. Volume Three, Belgrade, 1987. Second edition, 1993.
  9. Hell's Torture Chamber by Djordje Milica, Zagreb, 1945.
  10. Die Besatzungszeit das Genozid in Jugoslawien 1941-1945 by Vladimir Umeljic, Graphics High Publishing, Los Angeles, 1994.
  11. Srbi i genocidni XX vek (Serbs and XX century, Ages of Genocide) by Vladimir Umeljić, (vol 1, vol 2), Magne, Belgrade, 2004. ISBN 86-903763-1-3
  12. Magnum Crimen, by Viktor Novak, Zagreb, 1948.
  13. Caput, by Curzio Malaparte, Napoli, 1943.
  14. Der koatische Ustasa-Staat 1941-1945, Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte fűr Zeitgeschichte, by L. Horry and Martin Broszat, Stuttgart.

See also

External links


Coordinates: 45°16′54″N 16°56′06″E / 45.28167, 16.935