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79-665: Jasenovac ( pronounced [jasěnoʋat͡s] ) was a concentration and extermination camp established in the village of the same name by the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II . The concentration camp, one of the ten largest in Europe , was established and operated by the governing Ustaše regime, Europe's only Nazi collaborationist regime that operated its own extermination camps, for Serbs , Romani , Jews , and political dissidents. It quickly grew into

158-611: A handgun . Another bullet struck Barthou in the arm, passing through and fatally severing an artery. He died of blood loss less than an hour later. The assassination had been planned in Rome by Ante Pavelić , head of the Croatian Ustaše , in August 1934. Pavelić was assisted by Georg Percevic, a former Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces officer. France unsuccessfully requested the extradition of Percevic and Pavelić. This assassination ended

237-485: A mecca for tourists and collectors, and enhanced the nation's stature worldwide as the exemplar of truth and beauty. In turn, the arts community honoured Barthou by dubbing him the "minister of poets". As Foreign Minister, Barthou met King Alexander I of Yugoslavia during his state visit to Marseille in October 1934. On 9 October, King Alexander was assassinated by Vlado Chernozemski , a Bulgarian terrorist wielding

316-488: A motion similar to swinging a baseball bat: a child gripped by the legs would be swung so forcefully that the head's impact against the wall was fatal. These claims could not be verified or certified. On the night of 29 August 1942, prison guards made bets among themselves as to who could slaughter the largest number of inmates. One of the guards, Petar Brzica , boasted that he had cut the throats of about 1,360 new arrivals. Other participants who confessed to participating in

395-592: A particularly brutal kind", and prisoners were primarily murdered with the use of knives, hammers, and axes, or shot. In Jasenovac, the majority of victims were Serbs (as part of the genocide of the Serbs ); others were Romani ( the Porajmos ), Jews ( The Holocaust ), and socialists. Jasenovac was a complex of five subcamps spread over 210 km (81 sq mi) on both banks of the Sava and Una rivers. The largest camp

474-653: 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 , in which it is stated that the Jews will first be collected in Stara-Gradiška, and that "Jews would be employed in 'forced labor' in Ustaše camps", mentioning only Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška, "will not be deported". The Nazis found interest in

553-577: A result, the term "concentration camp" is sometimes conflated with the concept of an " extermination camp " and historians debate whether the term "concentration camp" or the term "internment camp" should be used to describe other examples of civilian internment. Also during World War II, concentration camps were established by Italian , Japanese , US , and Canadian forces. The former label continues to see expanded use for cases post- World War II , for instance in relation to British camps in Kenya during

632-419: 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. At

711-598: Is more than 56% Serbs, 45,923 out of 80,914. In some cases, inmates were immediately killed upon acknowledging Serbian ethnicity, and most considered it to be the sole reason for their imprisonment. The Serbs were predominantly brought from the Kozara region, where the Ustaše captured areas that were held by Partisan guerrillas. Although the Germans were not directly present in Jasenovac concentration camp, they participated in

790-619: The Communist Party of Germany and the Social Democratic Party of Germany , in 1933, detaining tens of thousands of prisoners. Many camps were closed following releases of prisoners at the end of the year, and the camp population would continue to dwindle through 1936; this trend would reverse in 1937, with the Nazi regime arresting tens of thousands of " anti-socials ", a category that included Romani people as well as

869-824: The Joint State Political Directorate , and the camps were greatly expanded to the point that they comprised a significant portion of the Soviet economy. This Gulag system consisted of several hundred camps for most of its existence and detained some 18 million from 1929 until 1953. As part of a series of reforms during the Khrushchev Thaw , the Gulag shrank to a quarter of its former size and receded in its significance in Soviet society. The Nazis first established concentration camps for tens of thousands of political prisoners, primarily members of

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948-748: The Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960), and camps set up in Chile during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). According to the United States Department of Defense as many as 3 million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups are being held in China 's internment camps which are located in the Xinjiang region and which American news reports often label as concentration camps . The camps were established in

1027-557: The Philippine–American War also used concentration camps. The term "concentration camp" and "internment camp" are used to refer to a variety of systems that greatly differ in their severity, mortality rate, and architecture; their defining characteristic is that inmates are held outside the rule of law . Extermination camps or death camps, whose primary purpose is killing, are also imprecisely referred to as "concentration camps". The American Heritage Dictionary defines

1106-639: The Wannsee Conference , Germany offered the Croatian government transportation of its Jews southward, but questioned the importance of the offer as "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

1185-856: The reconcentration camps (Spanish: reconcentrados ) which were set up by the Spanish military in Cuba during the Ten Years' War (1868–1878). The label was applied yet again to camps set up by the United States during the Philippine–American War (1899–1902). And expanded usage of the concentration camp label continued, when the British set up camps during the Second Boer War (1899–1902) in South Africa for interning Boers during

1264-537: The "Jewish problem", the killing of Roma people and the elimination of political opponents, but its most significant purpose for the Ustaše was as a means to achieve the destruction of Serbs inside the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). Jasenovac was located in the German occupation zone of the Independent State of Croatia . The Nazis encouraged Ustaše anti-Jewish and anti-Roma actions and showed support for

1343-564: The 3,358 Danica inmates Dizdar was able to trace by name, he found that 2,862, i.e. 85%, were later killed by the Ustaše at the Jadovno and Jasenovac concentration camps, the vast majority Serbs, but also hundreds of Jews and some Croats. In June 1941, the Ustaše established a new system of concentration camps, stretching from Gospič to the Velebit mountains, to the island of Pag. Ustaše sources state that they sent 28,700 people to these camps in

1422-488: The Croatian people always despised the Jews and felt towards them natural revulsion". The first mass killing of Serbs was carried out on April 30, when the Ustaše rounded up and killed 196 Serbs at Gudovac . Many other mass killings soon followed. Here is how the Croatian Catholic Bishop of Mostar, Alojzije Mišić , described the mass killings of Serbs just in one small area of Herzegovina , just during

1501-478: The Italians sent medical officers to investigate. They found multiple death pits and mass graves, in which they estimated some 12,000 victims were killed. At Slana Concentration Camp on the island of Pag they dug up one mass grave, with nearly 800 corpses, of whom half were women and children, the youngest being 5 months old. The majority of these victims were Serbs, but among them were also 2,000–3,000 Jews. Thus

1580-618: The Jasenovac complex, specifically designed for women and children, as well as associated camps in Jablanac and Mlaka , while children were also held in other Ustaše concentration camps for children at Sisak and Jastrebarsko . Many of the children in the camps were among the tens-of-thousands of Serb civilians captured during the German-Ustaše Kozara offensive , after which many of their parents sent to forced labor in Germany, while

1659-473: 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

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1738-534: The Jews". Hans Helm was in charge of deporting Jews to concentration camps. He was tried in Belgrade in December 1946, along with other SS and Gestapo officials, and was sentenced to death by hanging, along with August Meyszner , Wilhelm Fuchs , Josef Hahn, Ludwig Teichmann, Josef Eckert, Ernst Weimann, Richard Kaserer and Friedrich Polte. Jadovno concentration camp was the first camp used for extermination by

1817-471: The Kozara region. They were brought to Jasenovac and taken to area III-C, where nutrition, hydration, shelter and sanitary conditions were all below the rest of the camp's own abysmally low standards. The figures of murdered Roma are estimated between 20,000 and 50,000. Anti-fascists consisted of various sorts of political and ideological opponents or antagonists of the Ustaše regime. In general, their treatment

1896-583: The Nation and the State" of 17 April 1941, which mandated the death penalty for the offence of high treason if a person did or had done "harm to the honor and vital interests of the Croatian nation or endangered the existence of the Independent State of Croatia". This was a retroactive law, and arrests and trials started immediately. It was soon followed by a decree prohibiting the use of the Cyrillic script , which

1975-599: The Ustaše as "Communists"). Upon arrival at the camp, the prisoners were marked with colors, similar to the use of Nazi concentration camp badges : 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 constituted

2054-530: The Ustaše imprisoned in Jasenovac for one year, described Jasenovac as a huge killing machine, whose main purpose, like that of Auschwitz, was "extermination", although "the primitivistic cruelties of Jasenovac distinguished this Balkan Auschwitz." According to Jaša Almuli, the former president of the Serbian Jewish community, Jasenovac was a much more terrifying concentration camp in terms of brutality than many of its German counterparts, even Auschwitz. In

2133-478: The Ustaše initiated the mass killing of Jews at approximately the same time as Nazi Einsatzgruppen in Eastern Europe, and months before the Nazis started the mass killings of German Jews. On 10 April 1941, the Independent State of Croatia was established, supported by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, and it adopted similar racial and political doctrines. Jasenovac contributed to the Nazi "final solution" to

2212-549: The Ustaše were more concerned with the extermination of Serbs than Jews, and that Italian and Catholic pressure was dissuading the Ustaše from killing Jews. The Nazis revisited the possibility of transporting Jews to Auschwitz, 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

2291-461: The Ustaše. Dike construction work was the most feared. 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

2370-478: The Ustaše. Jadovno was operational from May 1941 but was closed in August of the same year, coinciding with the formation of the camp at Jasenovac in the same month. The Jasenovac complex was built between August 1941 and February 1942. The first two camps, Krapje and Bročice, were closed in November 1941. Three newer camps continued to function until the end of the war: At the top of the Jasenovac command chain

2449-595: The Vatican's representative in the NDH, considered Kvaternik the worst of Ustaše, noting he told him Croatian Jews committed "300,000 abortions, rapes and deflorations of young girls." As the Ustaše terror against Serbs and others, of which Jasenovac was the apogee, ignited wider Partisan resistance, the Germans in October 1942 pressured Pavelić to remove and exile Dido Kvaternik. Kvaternik later blamed Pavelić for Ustaše crimes, claiming he merely executed Pavelić's orders. The camp

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2528-489: The atrocities, such as survivors Ilija Ivanović, Dr Nikola Nikolić and Đuro Schwartz, all of whom 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 extremely difficult. Schwartz said that a father and his three sons were killed for writing. The witness wrote his memories on a piece of paper in tiny script and hid it in his shoe. The Croatian anti-Communist émigré, Ante Ciliga , whom

2607-457: The basis for Ustaše policies of genocide against Jews and Roma, while against Serbs – as proclaimed by an Ustaše leader, Mile Budak – the policy was to kill a third, expel a third, and forcefully convert to Catholicism a third, which many historians also describe as genocide. The decrees were enforced not only through the regular court system, but also through new special courts and mobile courts-martial with extended jurisdiction. Almost immediately

2686-526: The bet included Ante Zrinušić-Sipka, who killed some 600 inmates, and Mile Friganović, who gave a detailed and consistent report of the incident. Friganović admitted to having killed some 1,100 inmates. He specifically recounted his torture of an old man named Vukasin Mandrapa ; he attempted to compel the man to bless Ante Pavelić , which the old man refused to do, even after Friganović had cut off both his ears and nose after each refusal. Ultimately, he cut out

2765-529: The camps, of whom about a million died during their imprisonment. The total number of casualties in these camps is difficult to determine, but the deliberate policy of extermination through labor in many of the camps was designed to ensure that the inmates would die of starvation, untreated disease and summary executions within set periods of time. In addition to the concentration camps, Nazi Germany established six extermination camps , specifically designed to kill millions of people, primarily by gassing . As

2844-577: The careers of the Bouches-du-Rhone prefect, Pierre Jouhannaud  [ fr ] , and of the director of the Surete Nationale , Jean Berthoin . A ballistic report on the bullets found in the car was made in 1935, but its results were not made available to the public until 1974. The report revealed that Barthou had been hit by an 8 mm Modèle 1892 revolver round, commonly used in weapons carried by French police. Thus Barthou

2923-496: The children were separated from the parents and placed in Ustaše concentration camps. In addition nearly all the Roma women and children in the NDH were exterminated at Jasenovac, as well as thousands of Jewish women and children, among the up to two-thirds of all Croatian Holocaust victims killed at Jasenovac. The terrible conditions the children were held in were described by one of the female inmates Giordana Friedländer: When I entered

3002-519: The commandant of the camp, Ante Vrban, ordered the room sealed and with a mask on his face inserted zyklon gas into the room, killing the remaining children. At his trial the commandant of Ante Vrban, admitted to these killings. The living conditions in the camp evidenced the severity typical of Nazi death camps: a meager diet, deplorable accommodation, and the cruel treatment by the Ustaše guards. As in many camps, conditions would be improved temporarily during visits by delegations – such as

3081-516: The control of the Cheka . These camps, as Lenin envisioned them, had a distinctly political purpose. These concentration camps were not identical to the Stalinist, but were introduced to isolate war prisoners given the extreme historical situation following World War 1 . In 1929, the distinction between criminal and political prisoners was eliminated, administration of the camps was turned over to

3160-583: The creation of the NDH, the Ustaše established the first concentration camp, Danica , at Koprivnica. In May 1941, they rounded up 165 Jewish youth in Zagreb, members of the Jewish sports club Makabi, and sent them to Danica (all but 3 were later killed by the Ustaše). The Croatian historian, Zdravko Dizdar, estimates that some 5,600 inmates passed through the Danica camp, mostly Serbs but also Jews and Croat Communists. Of

3239-553: The end of April 1941, months before the Nazis implemented similar measures in Germany, the Ustaše required all Jews to wear insignia, typically a yellow Star of David. The Ustaše declared the "Legal Provision on the Nationalization of the Property of Jews and Jewish Companies", on 10 October 1941, and with it they confiscated all Jewish property. The Ustaše enacted many other decrees against Jews, Roma and Serbs, which became

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3318-744: The entry of the Soviet Union into the League of Nations in September 1934. In response to the withdrawal of Nazi Germany from the League in 1933 , he began a program of rearmament, which focused initially on the Navy and the Air Force . Barthou was a lover of the arts, and in power he worked with leaders of the arts to publicize their fields. He felt that world-class leadership in the arts made Paris

3397-679: The features which were associated with labor-camp imprisonment. According to historian Anne Applebaum , katorga was not a common sentence; approximately 6,000 katorga convicts were serving sentences in 1906 and 28,600 in 1916. These camps served as a model for political imprisonment during the Soviet period. In the midst of the Russian Civil War , Lenin and the Bolsheviks established "special" prison camps and "special" gas chambers, separate from its traditional prison system and under

3476-592: The first 6 months of the war: People were captured like beasts. Slaughtered, killed, thrown live into the abyss. Women, mothers with children, young women, girls and boys were thrown into pits. The vice-mayor of Mostar, Mr. Baljić, a Mohammedan, publicly states, although as an official he should be silent and not talk, that in Ljubinje alone 700 schismatics [i.e. Serb Orthodox Christians] were thrown into one pit. Six full train carriages of women, mothers and girls, children under age 10, were taken from Mostar and Čapljina to

3555-549: The first concentration camps were set up, and in July 1941 the Ustaše government began clearing ground for what would become the Jasenovac concentration camp. Actions against Jews began immediately after the Independent State of Croatia was founded. On 10–11 April 1941, Ustaše arrested a group of prominent Zagreb Jews and held them for ransom. On 13 April the same was done in Osijek, where Ustaše and Volksdeutscher mobs also destroyed

3634-455: The following: The Poglavnik asks General Bader to realize that the Jasenovac camp cannot receive the refugees from 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. Stara-Gradiška was the primary site from which Jews were transported to Auschwitz, but Kashe's letter refers specifically to the subcamp Ciglana in this regard. In all documentation,

3713-661: The future Croat state. In 1936, in The Croat Question , Pavelić called Jews "the enemy of the Croat people". Some of the first decrees issued by the leader of the NDH Ante Pavelić reflected the Ustaše adoption of the racist ideology of Nazi Germany . The regime rapidly issued a decree restricting the activities of Jews and seizing their property. These laws were followed by a decree for "the Protection of

3792-440: The homeless, mentally ill, and social non-conformists. Jews were increasingly targeted beginning in 1938. Following the Nazi invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II, the camps were massively expanded and became increasingly deadly. At its peak, the Nazi concentration camp system was extensive, with as many as 15,000 camps and at least 715,000 simultaneous internees. About 1.65 million people were registered prisoners in

3871-746: The idols, these are bells that will announce the dawning and the resurrection of the independent state of Croatia". Ustaše terrorists set off bombs on international trains bound for the Kingdom of Yugoslavia , and Pavelić and other Ustaše leaders were sentenced to death in absentia by French courts, for organising the assassination of Alexander I of Yugoslavia and French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou in 1934 in Marseilles. The Ustaše were virulently anti-Serb and antisemitic . In their 17 Principles , they proclaimed that those who were not "of Croat blood" (i.e. Serbs and Jews) would not have any political role in

3950-422: The imprisonment or transfer of inmates to Jasenovac. Kasche's emissary, Major Knehe, visited the camp on 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. Kasche wrote

4029-453: The intended extermination of the Serb people. Soon, the Nazis began to make clear their genocidal goals, as in the speech Hitler gave to Slavko Kvaternik at a 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

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4108-481: The internment of peoples after the "cleansing actions" from the Partisan war-affected areas, especially during the Kozara offensive, in addition they were also taking inmates to forced labor in Germany and other camps in the occupied Europe. These were brought to the camp without sentence, almost destined for immediate execution, accelerated via the use of machine-guns . Jews, the primary target of Nazi genocide, were

4187-559: The introduction (in July 1913) of allowances to families with children. In 1917 and in 1934, Barthou also served as Minister of Foreign Affairs . Louis Barthou was born on 25 August 1862 in Oloron-Sainte-Marie , Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France. Barthou served as a deputy from his home constituency and was an authority on trade-union history and law. He served as prime minister from 22 March 1913 to 9 December 1913. In social policy, Barthou's time as prime minister saw

4266-500: The last few decades, a consensus has formed in support of estimates of the Ustaše regime having murdered somewhere near 100,000 people in Jasenovac between 1941 and 1945. The Independent State of Croatia (NDH) was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers . The NDH consisted of the present-day Republic of Croatia and modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina together with Syrmia in modern-day Serbia . It

4345-465: The late 2010s under Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping 's administration . Louis Barthou Jean Louis Barthou ( French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ lwi baʁtu] ; 25 August 1862 – 9 October 1934) was a French politician of the Third Republic who served as Prime Minister of France for eight months in 1913. In social policy , his time as prime minister saw

4424-648: The late summer of 1942, tens of thousands of ethnic Serb villagers were deported to Jasenovac from the Kozara region in Bosnia , where NDH forces were fighting the Partisans . Most of the men were murdered in Jasenovac, and the women were sent to forced labor camps in Germany . Children were either murdered or dispersed to Catholic orphanages. According to survivors' testimonies, at the special camp designed for children, Catholic nuns murdered children under their watch with

4503-425: The majority of inmates in Jasenovac. Serbs were generally brought to Jasenovac concentration camp after refusing to convert to Catholicism . In many municipalities around the NDH , warning posters declared that any Serb who did not convert to Catholicism would be deported to a concentration camp. The Ustaše regime's policy of mass killings of Serbs constituted genocide . The Jasenovac Memorial Area list of victims

4582-414: The old man's eyes, tore out his heart, and slashed his throat. This incident was witnessed by Dr Nikolić. Concentration camp The term concentration camp originates from the Spanish–Cuban Ten Years' War when Spanish forces detained Cuban civilians in camps in order to more easily combat guerrilla forces. Over the following decades the British during the Second Boer War and the Americans during

4661-414: The passage of a law in June 1913 aimed at safeguarding women workers before and after childbirth. He also held ministerial office on 13 other occasions. He served as Foreign Minister in 1917 and 1934. He was the primary figure behind the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance of 1935, but it was signed by his successor, Pierre Laval . As a national World War I hero and a recognized author, Barthou

4740-443: The press delegation that visited in February 1942 and a Red Cross delegation in June 1944 – and reverted after the delegation left. 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

4819-586: The rest. The Ustaše 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 Ustaše 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. All inmates suffered psychological trauma to some extent: obsessive thoughts of food, paranoia, delusions, day-dreams, lack of self-control. Some inmates reacted with attempts at documenting

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4898-428: The room I had something to see. One child was lying with his head in feces, the other children in urine were lying on top of each other. I approached one of the girls with the intention of lifting her out of the pool of dirt, and she looked at me as if smiling. She was already dead. One 10-year-old boy, completely naked, was standing by the wall because he could not sit down. Out of him hung his gut covered in flies. Later

4977-435: The same time period. The German Empire also established concentration camps during the Herero and Namaqua genocide (1904–1907); the death rate of these camps was 45 per cent, twice that of the British camps. The Russian Empire used forced exile and forced labour as forms of judicial punishment. Katorga , a category of punishment which was reserved for those who were convicted of the most serious crimes, had many of

5056-731: The second-largest category of victims of Jasenovac. The number of Jewish casualties is uncertain, but ranges from about 8,000 to almost two thirds of the Croatian Jewish population of 37,000 (meaning around 25,000). Most of the executions of Jews at Jasenovac occurred prior to August 1942. Thereafter, the NDH deported them to Auschwitz . In general, Jews were initially sent to Jasenovac from all parts of Croatia after being gathered in Zagreb , and from Bosnia and Herzegovina after being gathered in Sarajevo . Some, however, were transported directly to Jasenovac from other cities and smaller towns. Roma in Jasenovac consisted of both Roma and Sinti , who were captured in various areas in Bosnia, especially in

5135-458: The summer of 1941. Of these, Ustaše records show only 4,000 returned, after the Ustaše were forced by the Italians to shut down the camps and withdraw from the area, because of the strong resistance their mass killings had sparked. Thus the likely death toll for these camps is around 24,000, although some sources put it as high as 40,000. After residents reported the contamination of drinking water due to large numbers of corpses rotting across Velebit,

5214-481: The synagogue and Jewish graveyard. This process was repeated multiple times in 1941 with groups of Jews. Simultaneously, the Ustaše initiated extensive antisemitic propaganda, with Ustaše papers writing that Croatians must "be more alert than any other ethnic group to protect their racial purity, ... We need to keep our blood clean of the Jews". They also wrote that Jews are synonymous with "treachery, cheating, greed, immorality and foreigness", and therefore "wide swaths of

5293-410: The term concentration camp as: "A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group which the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable." Although the first example of civilian internment may date as far back as the 1830s, the English term concentration camp was first used in order to refer to

5372-488: The term "Jasenovac" relates to either the complex at large or, when referring to a specific camp, to camp nr. III, which was the main camp since November 1941. The extermination of Serbs at Jasenovac was precipitated by General Paul 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

5451-479: The third largest concentration camp in Europe. The camp was established in August 1941, in marshland at the confluence of the Sava and Una rivers near the village of Jasenovac, and was dismantled in April 1945. It was "notorious for its barbaric practices and the large number of victims". Unlike German Nazi-run camps , Jasenovac lacked the infrastructure for mass murder on an industrial scale, such as gas chambers. Instead, it "specialized in one-on-one violence of

5530-491: 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

5609-454: The Šurmanci station, where they were unloaded and taken into the hills, with live mothers and their children tossed down the cliffs. Everyone was tossed and killed. In the Klepci parish, from the surrounding villages, 3,700 schismatics were killed. Poor souls, they were calm. I will not enumerate further. I would go too far. In the city of Mostar, hundreds were tied up, taken outside the city and killed like animals. On April 15, only 5 days after

5688-641: Was an integral part of the rites of the Serbian Orthodox Church . On April 30, 1941, the Ustaše proclaimed the main race laws, patterned after Nazi race laws – the "Legal Decree on Racial Origins", the "Legal Decree on the Protection of Aryan Blood and the Honor of the Croatian People", and the "Legal Provision on Citizenship". These decrees defined who was a Jew, and took away the citizenship rights of all non-Aryans, i.e. Jews and Roma. By

5767-791: Was constructed, managed and supervised by Department III of the "Ustaše Supervisory Service" ( Ustaška nadzorna služba , UNS ), a special police force of the NDH. Among the main Jasenovac commanders were the following: Other individuals managing the camp at different times included Ivica Matković , Ante Vrban , and Dinko Šakić . The camp administration also used Ustaše battalions, police units, Domobrani units, auxiliary units made up of Bosnian Muslims, as well as Germans and Hungarians. The Ustaše interned, tortured and executed men, women and children in Jasenovac. The largest number of victims were Serbs, but victims also included Jews, Roma (or "gypsies"), as well as some dissident Croats and Bosnian Muslims (i.e. Partisans or their sympathizers, all categorized by

5846-636: Was elected to the Académie française at the end of that war. In 1934 he tried to create an Eastern Pact , which would have included Germany (in some proposals) the Soviet Union , Poland , Czechoslovakia and the Baltic states on the basis of guarantees – of the European borders of the Soviet Union by France, and of the eastern borders of Nazi Germany by the Soviet Union. He succeeded in obtaining

5925-637: Was essentially an Italo–German quasi- protectorate , as it owed its existence to the Axis powers , who maintained occupation forces within the puppet state throughout its existence. However, its day-to-day administration was composed almost exclusively of Croatians, including monks and nuns, under the leadership of the Ustaše . Before the war, the Ustaše were an ultranationalist , fascist , racist , and terrorist organization, fighting for an independent Croatia. In 1932, Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić proclaimed: "The knife, revolver, machine gun and time bomb; these are

6004-531: Was kept under strict house arrest. Unique among the fascist states during World War II, Jasenovac contained a camp specifically for children in Sisak . Around 20,000 Serb, Jewish and Roma children perished at Jasenovac. Of the 83,145 named victims listed in the Jasenovac Memorial Site, more than half are women (23,474) and children (20,101) below age 14. Most were held at Stara Gradiška camp of

6083-423: Was similar to other inmates, although known communists were executed right away, and convicted Ustaše or law-enforcement officials, or others close to the Ustaše in opinion, such as Croatian peasants, were held on beneficial terms and granted amnesty after serving a duration of time. The leader of the banned Croatian Peasant Party , Vladko Maček was held in Jasenovac from October 1941 to March 1942, after which he

6162-560: Was the "Brickworks" camp at Jasenovac, about 100 km (62 mi) southeast of Zagreb . The overall complex included the Stara Gradiška sub-camp , the killing grounds across the Sava river at Gradina Donja , five work farms, and the Uštica Roma camp. There has been much debate and controversy regarding the number of victims killed at the Jasenovac concentration camp complex during its more than three-and-a-half years of operation. Over

6241-626: Was the Ustaše leader, Ante Pavelić , who signed the Nazi-style Race Laws, and led the Ustaše genocides against Jews, Serbs and Roma. Jasenovac inmate, Ante Ciliga , wrote that “Jasenovac was the original 'Balkan' creation of Ante Pavelić. Hitler's camps were only…the starting point”. Pavelić entrusted the organization of mass killing in the camps to the Ustaše Surveillance Service (UNS), placing at its head his close associate, Dido Kvaternik . Giuseppe Masucci, secretary to

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