Jasenovac (death camp)

During the Second World War, the genocide of Serbs , Jews and Gypsies , as well as the persecution and discrimination of the aforementioned peoples, were waged in the occupied Kingdom of Yugoslavia . The main organizers of the genocide were the fascist Ustash regime in the Independent State of Croatia (NGH) and the German occupation administration ^[1] .

A significant part of the victims of the genocide died or suffered in the numerous concentration camps created by the Croatian Ustash. Immediately after the proclamation of a new state, the Ustashi began to create two types of camps: deportation and concentration camps. The first people were sent for subsequent deportation to Serbia, etc. Such camps were located in Tsapraga near Sisak , Bjelovar and Slavonska Požeg . The latter became the site of massacres and a symbol of terror by the Ustashi.

In April - May 1941, the first concentration camps began to be created in the National Palace of Artists. They were legalized on November 23 of the same year under the name "Internment and Work Camps" by a special decree of Pavelich and Artukovich ^[2] . The camps were scattered throughout the territories controlled by the Ustashi. Of these, only 2 survived until the end of the war - in Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska . Their management was assigned to the Ustash Supervision Service. Millo Babic became the first camp manager, but in June 1941 he was killed by Serb partisans. He was replaced by the new Ustash functionary Vekoslav Lyuburich, who remained in his post until the end of the war.

The Jasenovac concentration camp was established in May 1941 ^[3] . It was a complex of five closely interconnected camps, known under numbers I to V ^{[4] [5]} .

Camp I was located near the village of Krapie, 12 kilometers west of Jasenovac. Camp II was located on the banks of the Sava and Struga , about 3 kilometers northwest of Jasenovac, by the road between him and Brochice. Camp III was located at the former brick factory of Ozren Bacic, at the mouth of the Loni River, three kilometers downstream from Jasenovac. Camp IV was located in the city itself, at the Kozara factory. Camp V was located in Stara Gradiska ^[6] .

Initially, it consisted of barracks that were built by his first prisoners. The camp consisted of four sections intended for Serbs, Jews, suspected of disloyalty of Croats and Gypsies. It was originally designed for 4,000 prisoners. After some time, the complex was expanded by the construction of camp II. In November 1941, overlooking the banks of the Sava and Strug rivers, they flooded the camp complex, after which the prisoners built camp III. During construction, approximately 650 of them were unable to perform heavy work and were killed with iron hammers and axes ^[3] . In December 1941, before a visit to the camp of foreign journalists, accompanied by a delegation from the authorities of the NHC, the head of the concentration camp Vekoslav Lyuburich ordered the selection of 400 children aged 4 to 14 years old, who were provided with a special hut where teachers from other prisoners taught them to read writing and singing. Four days after the camp was examined by journalists, these children and their teachers were killed ^[7] .

Throughout its existence, the camp was continuously replenished with prisoners, many of whom were immediately killed. Prisoners of Jasenovac dug pits every day to bury the dead. The jailers of the camp threw some bodies to Sava or Strug ^[7] .

At the end of January 1942, another concentration of journalists and observers visited the concentration camp. One of them, Italian Alfio Russo, unsuccessfully tried to talk with prisoners who were forbidden to answer visitors' questions. Rousseau described what he saw in Jasenovac ^[8] :

In addition to journalists, the camp was also visited by the Secretary of the Vatican's diplomatic mission Giuseppe Mazucci and the Secretary of the Archbishop Stepinac Stepan Laskovich. However, they did not comment on the camp ^[8] .

In January - February 1942, two new cremation furnaces designed by Ustash Colonel Hinko Pichilli were installed in Jasenovac. They worked non-stop until May of the same year, when they were stopped for an unknown reason. During this time, 15,000 bodies were burned in them ^[9] .

On August 24, 1942, competitions for the killing of prisoners were held among the camp overseers. They were defeated by Petar Brzitsa , a member of the Catholic organization Krizhari, who cut a throat with a special knife “ serborez ” in 1360 in one day by a prisoner. For this, he received a gold watch from the hands of the camp chaplain, a silver service from the camp administration, and from the Ustash who served with him in the camp — baked pig and wine ^[10] .

On November 19, 1943, about 800 Jews were transported across the Sava River, where overseers forced them to dig several holes. Then they were all clogged with clubs and buried in the same pits. At the end of November of the same year, the new head of the camp, Ivica Matkovich, conducted an experiment on 160 people, mostly former teachers. His goal was to find out how long a person would last without food and water. Most of them died in the very first days, about 40 people survived, eating field grass. It was recorded and eating the meat of the dead. Before Christmas, they tried to escape, crossing the Sava. 35 people were caught naked and locked in barracks, after which they died from frostbite ^[11] .

In December 1944 - April 1945, the Ustash accelerated the destruction of prisoners of Jasenovac. 15,000 new prisoners were exterminated at the camp immediately upon arrival. Those who survived were forced to bury thousands of corpses. Then the Ustashi set fire to part of the camp to hide the traces of crime. On April 22, the last surviving prisoners made two attempts to escape. The first attempt occurred at 10:00 in camp III, about 80 of 1000 prisoners escaped. The second attempt took place in camp IV at about 20:00, 11 out of 167 people survived ^[12] .

On April 23, 1945, partisans of the 25th shock mountain brigade of the 28th division of the 2nd Yugoslav army occupied camp V. On May 2, units of the 4th Serbian brigade of the 21st Serbian shock division of the 1st Yugoslav army liberated the remaining territory of the camp complex ^{[13 ] [5]} .

The exact number of victims of the Jasenovac camp system is unknown. At the same time, in the works of historians dedicated to Jasenovac, completely different figures are found.

The lowest numbers of victims in the 1980s were published by the Montenegrin historian Bogolyub Kochovic and the Croatian historian Vladimir Zheryavich. According to their data, about 83,000 Serbs were killed in Jasenovac ^[14] . The site of the memorial museum of the death camp reports that as of March 2013 the names of 83,145 victims were known ^[15] . Relatively similar numbers of deaths in Yasenovac are called by the site of the Holocaust Memorial Museum , according to its data, from 77,000 to 99,000 Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and Croats died in Jasenovac ^[5] . The works of Serbian historians refer to much larger numbers.

According to the site of the Jasenovac Memorial Museum, in addition to Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Slovenes, Slovaks, Czechs, Ukrainians, Ruthenians, Italians, Germans, Hungarians, Montenegrins, Poles and Romanians were also killed in the camp ^[16] .

The Council of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church glorified the cathedral of the New Martyrs Jasenovatsky. Their names are included in the months of the words of the Russian Orthodox Church with the establishment of the celebration of their memory on August 31 (September 13) ^[17] . Among the dead in the concentration camp was canonized in 1998, Vukashin Yasenovatsky .

During the collapse of Yugoslavia, the territory of the Jasenovac concentration camp and the memorial built there were temporarily abandoned. In November 1991, the former deputy director of the memorial, Simo Bbar, took the museum documents and transferred them to Bosnia and Herzegovina , where he stored them until in 2001, with the help of SFOR forces and the then leadership of the Republika Srpska, he transferred them to the American Holocaust Memorial Museum .

In April 2005, a monument to the victims of Jasenovac was unveiled in New York - the only public monument in their memory outside the Balkans.

The memorial museum in Jasenovac itself was reopened in November 2006. It features a new exhibition designed by Croatian architect Helena Paver Nyirich, who received the first prize of the Zagreb Architectural Salon 2006 for her work. Glass panels with the names of the dead are installed above the exposition.

In 2015, the film “Yugoslavia. Blood for Blood ”from the 10-episode series“ Liberated Europe ”(ONT TV channel, Republic of Belarus , director - Ilya Baranov, script writers - Boris Gersten, Vyacheslav Bondarenko )

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  Monument to the victims of Jasenovac

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  Table with the number of victims

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  A train delivering prisoners to the camp

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  Jasenovac Monastery dedicated to the New Martyrs

• List of concentration camps of the Independent State of Croatia
• Hammer hammer
• Serbosek
• Monument "Poplar of horror"

• Marc Aurelio Riveli. Archbishop of genocide. Monsignor Stepinac, Vatican and Ustas dictatorship in Croatia 1941-1945. - 2011 .-- 224 p. - ISBN 978-5-91399-020-4 .
• Lukeјiћ, Lazar. Fratri and ustasho koљu . - Beograd: Foundation for the abrogation of genocide, 2005. - 672 p.
• Berger Egon. 44 mjeseca u Jasenovacu. - Zagreb: Graficki zavod Hrvatske, 1966 .-- 93 p.
• Dedijer Vladimir. Vatikan i Jasenovac. Documenti. - Beograd: Izdavacka radna organizacija "Rad", 1987.
• Mirkovic Jovan. Objavljeni izvori i literatura o jasenovačkim logorima. - Laktasi: Grafomark, 2000 .-- 555 p. - 500 copies.
• Popović Jovo. Suđenje Artukoviću i što nije rećeno. - Zagreb: Stvarnost Jugoart, 1986 .-- 199 p.
• Trivuncic Radovan. Jasenovac i jasenovački logori. - 1977. - 38 p.
• David Bruce Macdonald. Balkan Holocausts ?: Serbian and Croatian Victim Centered Propaganda and the War in Yugoslavia . - Manchester University Press, 2002 .-- 308 p. - ISBN 0-7190-6466X .

• Website of the Committee of the Holy Bishops' Council of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Jasenovac (Serb.) . Date of treatment July 2, 2015.
• Jasenovac memorial site . Date of treatment July 2, 2015.