Balkan-Yugoslavia Killing and Atrocity Centers

Jasenovac
HISTORY
LOCATION
STATISTICS
STAFF & COMMANDANTS
PICTURES
LINKS
" screams and wails of despair, broken by intermittent shooting,acompained all my waking hours and followed me into sleep at night" Vladko Macek- Croatian Peasant Party Leader."

Called, the "Auschwitz of the Balkans" Jasenovac was among the cruelest and most sadistic of the Killing Centers of WWII. In the area of Zagreb in Yugoslavia, Jasenovac was a system of a large camp with several sub-camps, the most notable of which were a children's camp: Sisak, and a woman's camp, Stara Gradiska, run by the wife of Commandant Luburic of Jasenovac. The sheer number of deaths at Jasenovac is staggering, but estimates range from @80,000 to 600,000, the larger figure determined in 1946 by a Croatian Investigation team. The reason for the uncertainty in numbers lies at the end of the war, when an intense cover-up included a death march evacuation, the bombing of the facility and the burning of everything including corpses. The tolls of the number sent to Auschwitz are also not clear, as records were burned in '43 and 45.1

Conditions at the Camp located 63 km South of Zagreb were deplorable including starvation, stranglings, throat-cuttings, axings, and mass executions at the sites of Granik and Gradinov. Most killed were Jews, but Serbs, and Gypsies and other opponents of the Ustache, the reigning Nazi-backed regime were executed and interred also. The two notable traits of the Lager were that

  • 1) it preferred sadistic deaths such as beatings, knifings and hangings over gassings, and that
  • 2) Catholic Clergy in full clergical dress participated in the killings, most notably a Father Brzica called "King of the Cut-throats" who killed close to 1400 people in this manner. Live burnings and burials took place as well, and thouse not killed were sent into forced servitude 2

    The Jews from Zagreb, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sarjevo were imprisoned there; additionally many small islands such as Rab held smaller concentration camps, but many of these were not staffed by the Ustache and the inmates received better treatment.

    1 Jewish Virtual Library: jasenovac 2Croatian Reunion Survivors Mark Passage 3 Pavelic Papers 4 "jasenovac", Jewish Gen: Forgotten Camps. 5 jasenovac:USHMM