Jasenovac concentration camp

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Jasenovac concentration camp (in Croatian: Logor Jasenovac, in Serbian: Логор Јасеновац) 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 (150 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.

[edit] 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)

[edit] The camp

Jasenovac gate, with the inscription "Work service of Ustaša defence / Collection camp no. 3"

The system of Ustaša camps in the Jasenovac area included five camps and nine stations and other outposts, spread near the confluence of Una into Sava.

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, 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.

Children in 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: yellow for Jews, blue for Serbs, and red for communists, while Gypsies had no marks. This was later abandoned.

[edit] Mass murder and cruelty

The acts of murder and of 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 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 in orphanages throughout the country.

"Srbosjek", the Serb-cutter knife

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 named Petar Brzica reportedly cut the throats of 1,360 prisoners with a specially designed butcher knife called srbosjek (Serb-cutter). Having been proclaimed the prize-winner of the competition, he was dubbed "King of the Cut-throats". A golden watch, a silver service, a roasted suckling pig, and wine were among his rewards. There was also a unique child and infant sub-camp where babies were burned. Children were taken to woods and then killed one by one manualy with a "malj" - mallet in head. The Germans said that the Ustasha were the worst (or, for them, "the best") and most cruel murderers in the whole world. Prisoners in Jasenovac were forced to drink water from Sava river with "ren". At the last moment, in January, 1945, more than 50,000 prisoners who were able to walk were led from the camp.

[edit] End of the camp

In April 1945 the partisan army approached the camp. The Ustaša attempted to erase traces of the atrocities. The death camp worked at full capacity all the way until the end of April 1945. 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. An escape attempt by the prisoners failed, and only a few survived.

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.

[edit] Victim counts

Many victims were thrown into the Sava river.

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. 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.

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.

[edit] Victim count estimations

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. Some of the following are: as reported in the world's eminent authority on Holocaust victims, the Yad Vashem Center, 600,000 mainly Serbs [1]. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the victims figures are as follows [2]:

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. The most reliable figures place the number of Serbs killed by the Ustaša between 330,000 and 390,000, with 45,000 to 52,000 Serbs murdered in Jasenovac. 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 Romany 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 Romany people 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. Between 5,000 and 12,000 Croats are believed to have died in Jasenovac.

A progression of astonishingly high 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 Lehr); 350,000 Serbs (Lothar von Rendulitz); 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." Many consider these statements to belong to the drunk bragging of a mass murderer, and therefore of dubious value as a historical testimony.

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 1980s, independent calculations were done by Croat Vladimir Žerjavić and Serb Bogoljub Kočović, and each of these showed that the Jasenovac complex death count was closer to 80,000 people, usually with margins of error of up to 30%. Žerjavić and Kočević had claimed that the count of death in the Independent State of Croatia is between 300,000 and 350,000. They also listed thousands of deaths in other camps and prisons. However, these numbers were accused of artificial deflation because of the rise of nationalism in Yugoslav republics and the number of victims remains questionable for some circles. According to this opinion, Žerjavić and Kočović used 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 the actual growth rate was 2.4% (in 1921-1931) and 3.5% (in 1949-1953). However, no published works that would back such claims have appeared yet, so such claims are frequently considered to belong to the ideological circles affiliated with some currents of Serbian nationalism.

The estimates of these two expert researchers haven't been disputed by any scientifically founded arguments to this day so they are generally accepted until further research, especially those which list victims by name do not give even more precise data. Modern independent researchers have pegged the victim count to between 56,000 and 97,000.

[edit] Demise of the Ustaše

Ante Pavelić fled via Bleiburg to Austria, and few months later was transferred to Rome. It is alleged that he was hidden there by members of the Roman Catholic Church. Upon his arriving in Argentina, he became security advisor to Juan Peron. In April 1957 he was shot twice by a Montenegrin, Blagoje Jovović, and forced to flee Argentina. Pavelić found refuge in Spain, where he died of his wounds in Madrid in late 1959.

Miroslav Majstorović was captured by the Yugoslav communist forces, tried 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 US to Zagreb in the 1980s. There he was tried and sentenced to death May 14, 1986, but died of natural causes in prison on January 16, 1988.

Dinko Šakić fled to Argentina but was eventually brought to justice in the 1990s 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 organization to the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the 1970s. Brzica has remained unrevealed.

[edit] Later events

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.

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. Helena Njirić won the first prize for the 2006 Zagreb Architectural Salon for her work on the museum.

[edit] Bibliography

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 Vierteljahreshefte fűr Zeitgeschichte, by L. Horry and M. Broszat, Stuttgart.

[edit] External links

• Holocaust Encylopedia: Jasenovac, hosted at USHMM
• US Holocaust Memorial Museum: Jasenovac
• Spomen Područje Jasenovac
• Jasenovac Memorial Museum
• 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
• expanded Jasenovac Memorial opened