Jasenovac concentration camp (Croatian, Serbian: Logor Jasenovac; Serbian Cyrillic: Логор Јасеновац; Yiddish: יאסענאוואץ; Hebrew: יסנובץ, sometimes spelled "Yasenovatz") was an extermination camp established in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World War II. It was the only extermination camp that was not operated by the Germans, and was among the largest camps in Europe. The camp was established by the governing Ustaše regime 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". In Jasenovac, the majority of victims were ethnic Serbs, whom the Ustaše wanted to remove from the NDH, along with the Jews and Roma peoples.
Jasenovac was a complex of five subcamps spread over 210 km2 (81 sq mi) on both banks of the Sava and Una rivers. The largest camp 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 Donja Gradina, five work farms, and the Uštica Roma camp.
During and since World War II, there has been much debate and controversy regarding the number of victims killed at the Jasenovac concentration camp complex in its more than 3½ years of operation. Gradually, in the 15 years after the war ended, a figure of 700,000 began to reflect conventional wisdom, although estimates ranged between 350,000 and 800,000. The authorities of SFR Yugoslavia conducted a population survey in 1964 that showed a far lower figure, but kept it a secret; when Vladimir Žerjavić published such lower figures in the 1980s, he was criticized by Antun Miletić among others, but his research has since been considered trustworthy by authorities on World War II Yugoslav history such as Jozo Tomasevich. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C. presently estimates that the Ustaša regime murdered between 77,000 and 99,000 people in Jasenovac between 1941 and 1945. The Jasenovac Memorial Site quotes a similar figure of between 80,000 and 100,000 victims.
The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. The NDH consisted of most of modern day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, together with some parts of modern-day Serbia. It 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.
Read more about Jasenovac Concentration Camp: Creation and Operation, End of The Camp, Victim Numbers, Camp Officials and Their Fate, List of Notable Prisoners, Later Events
Famous quotes containing the words concentration camp and/or camp:
“If you complain of people being shot down in the streets, of the absence of communication or social responsibility, of the rise of everyday violence which people have become accustomed to, and the dehumanization of feelings, then the ultimate development on an organized social level is the concentration camp.... The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“Some of the taverns on this road, which were particularly dirty, were plainly in a transition state from the camp to the house.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)