JASENOVAC CONCENTRATION CAMP

'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 Ustaša (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 and Gypsies, 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 to horror

The camp

Mass murder and cruelty

End of the camp

Number of victims

Ustaše escape and their post-War destiny

Later events

Bibliography

Footnotes

See also

External links

Prelude to horror

Some of the first legal orders of newly established, satelite pro-Nazi country reflected the acceptance of the Nazi ideology, with an emphasis placed on Croatian national issues.
Croatian Catholic Church and Zagreb's archbishop Stepinac have given the spiritual support, in the first year of Croatian Nazi puppet state, to the ustase leaders and their genocidal ideas ( one of Stepinac speeches from , March 28th 1941: "All in all, Croats and Serbs are of two worlds, northpole and southpole, never will they be able to get together unless by a miracle of God. The schism-Eastern Orthodoxy is the greatest curse in Europe, almost greater than Protestantism. Here there is no moral, no principles, no truth, no justice, no honesty."), though their support for the Nazi regime's 'racial agenda and policies' bleached from the year 1942, once when they were presented with the scale of genocide committed against the Serbs.[1][2]
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 'rasistic 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 and produce death until the end of the war:[[3]]

★ Ciglana (Jasenovac III)

★ Kozara (Jasenovac IV)

★ Stara Gradiška (Jasenovac V)
Ustases leader, Ante Pavelic statement that 'one third of the Serbs in Croatia should be converted to Catholicism, one third to be expelled and one third to be exterminated" was about to became the horrific reality.

The camp

The creation of the camp and its management and supervision were entrusted to, so called, 'Department III' of a special police force called ''Ustaška Narodna Služba'' or ''UNS'' (translated as "Ustaše People's Service"). This organization was led by Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić. Several others were involved in commanding the camp at different times, including Miroslav Majstorović and Dinko Šakić.
The targets of Ustaše regime were mostly Serbs living on the territory of WWII Nazi Independent State of Croatia. Other included Jews, Bosniaks^[1],Gypsies, and opponents of the Ustaše Nazi regime, particularly communists.
Jews have been sent to Jasenovac from all parts of Croatia after being gathered in Zagreb, and from Bosnia and Herzegovina after being gathered in Sarajevo. Some were taken directly from other cities and smaller towns. On their arrival most were killed at execution sites near the camp: Granik, Gradina, and other execution areas. Those kept alive were mostly skilled doctors, pharmacists, electricians, shoemakers, goldsmiths...being used as slaved labour at Jasenovac.
From the end of 1942, Jews have been started being deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Following the practice of other Nazi concentration camps around Europe prisoners werer marked with 'racial badges'. At first they were marked with colors: blue for the Serbs, red for communists, while Gypsies had no marks. In the later stages of the camp this way of marking the prisoners was neglected.[4]
Upon arrival in the camp prisoners were systematically stolen of their possessions, forced to the slave labour, while they were waiting for the certain death.[5][6][7]
The conditions in the camp were catastrophic: hardly any food, barn accommodations, and sadistic cruel regime implemented by the Ustaše guards. Average prisoners life expectancy in the camp was not longer then 60 days.
[[8]]
Horrors of Jasenovac and numbers of victims closely followed horrors of most notorious concentration camps of Europe, Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Mass murder and cruelty

Jasenovac is known for having been one of the most barbaric death camps of the Holocaust, due the extreme cruelty in which its victims were tortured and murdered. It did not have operational gas chambers, meaning that the camp prisoners were executed in front of the firing squads, or having being subjected to the horror executions by the ustase humans butchers.[9][10]
[11]
The acts of murder and cruelty in the camp reached their peak in the late summer of 1942, when tens of thousands of Serbian villagers were deported to Jasenovac from the area where ustase and Nazis have been fighting against the partisans, in the area of Kozara mountains (Bosnia and Herzegovina).[[12]] Most of deported men were brutally killed at Jasenovac. The women, who haven't been killed, were sent to forced labor camps in Germany, children were taken from their mothers: some were murdered and others were dispersed in orphanages throughout the country. The names of some 20,000 murdered children of all three nationalities collected, thus far by historians, provides only a hint of the scale of the crimes committed there against children.[13][14][][15][16]
[17][18][19][20]
From the historic references: "On the night of August 29, 1942, bets were made among the prison guards as to who could liquidate the largest number of camp prisoners. One of the guards named Petar Brzica reportedly cut the throats of 1,360 prisoners with a especially designed butcher knife.^[3] Having been proclaimed the prize-winner of the competition, he was named "King of the Cut-throats". A gold watch, a silver service, a roasted suckling pig, and wine were among his rewards."...report ends.[21]
There was also a unique child and infant sub-camp where babies were executed by being burned. Also children have been taken to the neighbouring forest and then killed, one by one, using the hit by the"malj"— mallet in to the children's head.[[22]]
Level of atrocities and brutality was unprecedented yet.[23][24][25]

End of the camp

In April 1945 the Tito's partisan army and Soviets were approaching the camp. The Ustaše regime attempted to erase traces of the atrocities.[26][27]
Just few days before liberation, on April 22nd, 600 prisoners revolted: 520 have been killed, 80 managed to escape.[28]
Before leaving the camp towards the end of the April, 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 ruins, soot, smoke, and dead bodies.[29]
During the following months of 1945, the grounds of Jasenovac were destroyed by forced labourers, composed of 200 to 600 Domobran soldiers captured by the Tito's partisans, making the area a labor camp. They levelled the camp to the ground and destroyed a two-kilometer long, four-meter high wall that surrounded it.

Number of victims

There are various statistics and estimates about the number of victims who died in the Jasenovac camp, mainly due to lack of exact records.
In the 60s, a death toll was estimated by exhumations and sampling of grave sites to be around 700,000, by a team which had experience from similar research in Auschwitz and was using similar methods. Although this was comparable to the official figure given at the time, the research was not published until Yugoslav wars and the communist Tito government has not supported continuation of this research, as the priority of the daily Tito's politic became the policy of brotherhood and unity and the government was trying to move past the WWII atrocities of the Ustashe. [30][31]
The world's eminent authority on Holocaust victims, Yad Vashem Center estimates more than 500,000 were killed, with the majority of the victims being Serbs.
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.^[4] 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.
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the victims figures are as follows [32]:

Further research on the victims of the Ustaša regime in Croatia during World War II is necessary to enable historians and demographers to determine more precisely the number of those who perished under the rule of the Independent State of Croatia.
Due to differing views and lack of documentation, estimates for the number of Serbian victims in Croatia range widely, from 25,000 to more than one million. The estimated number of Serbs killed in Jasenovac ranges from 25,000 to 700,000.
Germans and Ustaša killed approximately 32,000 Jews from Croatia between 1941 and 1945. The precise number of Jews murdered in the Jasenovac complex is not known, but estimates range from 8,000 to 20,000 victims. These numbers do not include Jews whom the Ustaša authorities turned over to the Germans for deportation to Auschwitz and other camps.
Statistics for Romani people victims are difficult to assess, as there are no firm estimates of their number in pre-war Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The best estimates calculate the number of Romani victims at about 26,000, of whom between 8,000 and 15,000 perished in Jasenovac.
There are only loose estimates for the number of Croats murdered by the Ustaša. This group included political and religious opponents of the regime, both Catholic and Muslim. Minimal number of Croats killed in Jasenovac is 12,000 because there is this number of known victims.

Another source were, given during the War reports to Berlin and post-War 'War tribunals' testimonies, by German generals. 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 von Rendulic); between 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).
Vjekoslav 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.
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. 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.
In the 60s, exhumations of bodies and use of sampling method suggested gave strong support to the victim counts of over 500,000, with estimates of 700,000-800,000 being realistic. 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. The results were only made public recently, as Tito government started to suppress the Jasenovac research in the name of brotherhood and unity, and less accent was put on the crimes of the Ustashe. [33][34]
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 national composition of the victims, even giving a figure for Jasenovac complex death count of 80,000 people, which was almost under margin of error of this method. 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 without going into minimising Jasenovac death toll, accused Žerjavić of being motivated by nationalism. Also, these numbers were accused of artificial deflation because the total growth rate of all nations in Yugoslavia together (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.
'Death counting' research completed by Vladimir Zerjavic and Bogoljub Kocovic, often called Holocaust denial, have risen the numbers of scientific and moral objections and have been widely condemned, for inaccuracy and unprofessionals in its scientific approach, in the World and have been rejected by World Holocaust Memorial and 'Simon Wiesenthal Center' (which have confirmed the number of Serbs victims murdered in Jasenovac at 700,000).
Following the words of prominent:"The crimes of the fascist Ustashe against the Serbs in the notorious camp of Jasenovac must be known - crimes that are the worst ones along with those committed against the Jews in the Holocaust." - by Simon Wiesenthal.

Ustaše escape and their post-War destiny

Among the others, one of the concentration camp founders and ustase leader Ante Pavelić fled via Bleiburg to Austria, and few months later was transferred to Rome. There are serious allegations and documentations by CIA that he was hidden and helped by the Vatican and the members of the Roman Catholic Church. Upon his arrival in Argentina, he served the high post and became security adviser to Juan Peron. In April 1957 he was shot twice by Blagoje Jovović, Argentinian of Serbian origin, and forced to flee Argentina. Pavelić found refuge in Spain, where he died of the wounds inflicted, in Madrid in late 1959.
Miroslav Majstorović was captured by the Yugoslav communist forces, trialled and executed in 1946.
Maks Luburić fled to Spain, but was assassinated by a Yugoslav agent in 1969.
Andrija Artuković fled to America, but was extradited by the USA to Yugoslavia in the 1980-s. He was trialled in Zagreb and sentenced to death on May 14th, 1986. He died of natural causes in prison on January 16th, 1988.
Dinko Šakić fled to Argentina, but was eventually brought to justice in the 1990-s and sentenced, by Croatian authorities, to 20 years in prison.
Petar Brzica fled to the United States. His name was on a list of 59 Nazis living in the US given by a Jewish organisation to the Immigration and Naturalisation Service during the 1970-s. Brzica has remained unrevealed.
Ivo Rojnica, ustase leader and major of Dubrovnik in 1941, still is at large living freely in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Croatia commited itself, in conection with request by 'Simon Wiesenthal Center' to ask for his extradition and trail him, but still have not fulfilled to obligation.
More then 1000 top-ranking Croatian War criminals managed to escape, in the aftermath of the War, and have never been accounted and trialled for the crimes against the humanity and related to Jasenovac Holcoast.[35]

Later events

During the wars in ex-Yugoslavia, the grounds of Jasenovac concentration camp and the Memorial area were vandalised by Croatian nationalists as per fact of informations by the United Nations observers, being at the time on the ground, and documented in the numbers of video and TV testimonies.
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.
In 1999, Jasenovac survivors and their families filed a class action lawsuit against the Vatican Bank and the Franciscan Croatians for post war laundering of loot taken from Jasenovac victims - as of 2007 the lawsuit was still pending in US Federal Court [36].
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. Its unveiling was attended by some ten Survivors of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia 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 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.

Bibliography

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

Footnotes

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. Wanted! The Search for Nazis in America by Howard Blum. Quadrangle. 1977 p153-154
4. Southeast Times: Exhibition aims to show truth about Jasenovac

See also

★ Stara Gradiška concentration camp

★ Kragujevac massacre

★ List of Nazi-German concentration camps

★ Holocaust

★ World War II casualties

External links

★ Holocaust Encyclopedia: Jasenovac, hosted at USHMM

★ US Holocaust Memorial Museum: Jasenovac

★ Spomen Područje Jasenovac

★ Jasenovac Memorial Museum

★ Jasenovac victims list

★ Balkan Repository Project - Jasenovac

★ Jasenovac commander Šakić trial documents by Republic of Croatia

★ Concentration camp Jasenovac, Archive of Republika Srpska

★ Jasenovac at the Simon Wiesenthal Center 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'', 6 December 2006

★ New expanded Jasenovac Memorial opened

★ Lawsuit against Vatican Bank and Croatian Franciscans by Jasenovac survivors and their families