Goli otok

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Goli otok in Adriatic sea
Goli otok in Adriatic sea

Goli otok (literal translation: "barren island", Italian: Isola Calva) is an island off the northern Adriatic coast, located between Rab's northeastern shore and the mainland, in what is today Croatia's Primorje-Gorski Kotar county.

The island is barren and uninhabited. Its northern shore is almost completely bare, while the southern one has small amounts of vegetation as well as a number of coves.

Contents

[edit] The Prison Camp

Humans first took notice of the island during modern times. Throughout World War I, Austria-Hungary sent Russian prisoners of war from Eastern Front to Goli Otok.

In 1949, the entire island was officially made into a high-security, top secret prison and labor camp run by the authorities of SFR Yugoslavia. Until 1956, throughout the Informbiro period, it was used to incarcerate political prisoners. They included known and alleged Stalinists, but also other Communist Party members or even regular citizens accused of exhibiting any sort of sympathy or leanings towards the Soviet Union. Non-political prisoners were also sent to the island. Some were sent to serve out simple criminal sentences.[1]

Goli otok's Jail
Goli otok's Jail

The prison inmates were forced to do heavy labor in a stone quarry, regardless of the weather conditions: in the summer the temperature would rise as high as 35-40 °C, while in the winter they were subjected to the chilling bora wind and freezing temperatures. Inmates were also regularly beaten and humiliated.

After Yugoslavia normalized its relations with the Soviet Union, Goli Otok prison passed to the provincial jurisdiction of the Socialist Republic of Croatia (as opposed to the Yugoslav federal authorities).

The prison was shut down in 1988, and completely abandoned in 1989. Since then it has been left to ruin. Today it is frequented by the occasional tourist on a boat trip and populated by sheep-herders from Rab. Former Croatian prisoners are organized into the Association of former political prisoners of Goli Otok.[2] In Serbia, they are organized into the Society of Goli Otok.[3]

[edit] Famous prisoners

[edit] Goli Otok in literature

The first book, published in 1984 in the USA, describing the conditions of the prison, was Goli Otok-The Island of Death, written by the Bulgarian poet Venko Markovski. Ligio Zanini (1927-1993), a poet born in Rovinj, wrote Martin Muma (1990), an autobiographical book about his imprisonment on the island. Other significant literary reference to Goli Otok include Night till Morning, by the Slovenian writer Branko Hofman, Goli Otok. Italiani nel Gulag di Tito, by Giacomo Scotti, an ethnic Italian living in Croatia[4], and Brioni, by the Slovenian writer Drago Jančar. The first Yugoslav novel which raised the purges against Stalinists in 1950s Yugoslavia was "Kad su cvetale tikve" (When Pumpkins Blossomed) by Dragoslav Mihailović. It is set in Belgrade and tells the demise of a boxer, Ljuban, who eventually flees Serbia for a new life in Sweden. His brother and father both vanish at the hands of the UDBA and his brother spends time on Goli Otok.

[edit] References

  1. ^ I was on Goli Otok
  2. ^ Slobodna Dalmacija
  3. ^ Spomen žrtvama Golog otoka na Adi | Glas javnosti
  4. ^ [1]

[edit] External links

Coordinates: 44°51′N, 14°49′E