Stara Gradiška concentration camp

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The Stara Gradiška concentration camp in northern Croatia.

The Stara Gradiška concentration camp ( Serbo-Croatian Logor Stara Gradiška / Логор Стара Градишка) was a concentration and extermination camp for women and children in the municipality of Stara Gradiška in the Independent State of Croatia , a vassal state of the fascist Axis powers .

The concentration camp was the fifth satellite camp of the Jasenovac concentration camp and was operated by the Ustaša in the Stara Gradiška prison between 1941 and April 1945 . It was the most notorious subcamp, mainly because of the crimes committed there against women and children. The prisoners were mainly Serbians , Jews and Romnias and their children, but also mostly Bosnian Muslims interned as members of the opposition and opponents of the regime . The Jasenovac concentration camp memorial in Croatia puts the death toll at 12,790. The partisans liberated the Stara Gradiška concentration camp on April 23, 1945.

history

Vjekoslav Luburić (behind) with an SS-Sturmbannführer in the Stara Gradiška concentration camp (June 1942).
Women and children held captive in the tower of the concentration camp.

The Stara Gradiška concentration camp was used in 1941 as the fifth satellite camp of the Jasenovac concentration camp on the area of ​​a prison and was constructed as a concentration camp from 1942 onwards and was located near the town of Stara Gradiška, about 40 kilometers from Jasenovac . Ustaša General Vjekoslav Luburić , the commander of all camps in fascist Croatia, was in charge . He had previously visited the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , where he studied the structure of the camp and its options for liquidating the internees , and then tried to transfer this model to Jasenovac. The Stara Gradiška concentration camp was also notorious for the fact that female Ustaša members also took part in the killing . The best known among them were the guards Maja Buždon and above all Nada Šakić , half-sister of Vjekoslav Luburić and the wife of Dinko Šakić , who in turn ran the extermination camp in Jasenovac. In 1942, at the age of 16, she began to terrorize female prisoners. Inmates were murdered in a variety of ways, including firearms, blows, and stab wounds. Many women were starved to death or tortured to death.

Prisoners of the camp.

A gas chamber was also set up in the camp, which was used for gas experiments on children. The killing with gases was carried out by the camp commandant and war criminal Ante Vrban , and their effects on the children were examined. According to two witnesses, several hundred victims were gassed during the three-month experiments with sulfur dioxide and Zyklon B. Presumably, the camp administration experimented with killing by gas, but did not use it systematically. Vrban had admitted to having killed 63 children himself. The experiments were finally stopped because of the inadequate gas chamber, especially since the technology turned out to be unnecessary, since most of the victims were killed by hunger, epidemics, beatings, etc.

On October 22, 1942, Miroslav Filipović took over the management of Stara Gradiška. In January 1942 he joined the Ustaša as a Roman Catholic priest and became its military chaplain. Due to his involvement in the Banja Luka massacre of up to 2,300 Serbs, including women and children, he was expelled from the Franciscan Order on April 28, 1942 . Luburić appointed him in June 1942 as the commandant of the Jasenovac concentration camp, where he stayed until October 1942 and finally took over Stara Gradiška. In both camps - according to his own statements and those of survivors - he had murdered men, women and children in the most sadistic and brutal manner with the help of hammers, knives or firearms.

The death toll, mainly children up to 10 years of age - mostly Serbs and Jews - is given by the Croatian memorial KCL Jasenovac as 12,790. Several thousand children from the Kozara region were murdered in May 1941 alone , and another 2000 in June 1942. The camp was liberated on April 23, 1945 by partisans.

Trivia

The Ustaša song Jasenovac i Gradiška Stara , which is interpreted as a positive reference to the murders in the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška concentration camps, was sung at concerts by the controversial Croatian nationalist rock band Thompson . During a concert in the Maksimir Stadium in 2007, uniforms and symbols of the Ustaša were worn and the Hitler salute was shown.

Web links

Commons : Stara Gradiška concentration camp  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror  : history of the National Socialist concentration camps . tape 9 : Labor education camps, ghettos, youth protection camps, police detention camps, special camps, gypsy camps, forced labor camps. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-57238-8 , pp. 327 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Holocaust Education, Archive Research Team: The Jasenovac Extermination Camp - "Terror in Croatia".
  3. ^ George H. Hodos: The East-Central European Region - An Historical Outline - Anti-Semitism and Holocaust - Slovenia and Croatia. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999, ISBN 0-275-95497-8 , pp. 93 and 94.
  4. ^ Muslims in Jasenovac concentration camp . Spomen područja - Jasenovac - Memorial Site (Source: Official website of the Croatian Jasenovac Memorial Site). Retrieved January 23, 2014.
  5. ↑ Jelka Smreka: Stara Gradiska - Ustaški koncentracijski Logor . Spomen područja - Jasenovac - Memorial Site (Source: Official website of the Croatian Jasenovac Memorial Site). Archived from the original on July 17, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved October 30, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / public.mzos.hr
  6. ↑ a b Serbia allegedly hunts dead ex-concentration camp guard. In: The world . July 15, 2011.
  7. ↑ B92 : Serbia issues warrant for "deceased WW2 Ustasha".
  8. ^ Antun Miletić: Koncentracioni logor Jasenovac 1941-1945. Narodna knjiga, Beograd 1986, pp. 766, 921.
  9. ↑ a b c d Michele Frucht Levy: "The Last Bullet for the Last Serb" - The Ustasa Genocide against Serbs 1941-1945. In: David M. Crowe (Ed.): Crimes of State Past and Present. Routledge, 2011, ISBN 978-0-415-57788-5 , p. 71.
  10. ↑ a b Zlodela Ante Vrbana! - Commander logora priznao da je ciklonom otrovao 63 dece. Kako su uklanjani tragovi pre dolaska međunarodne komisije. In: Večernje novosti .
  11. ^ Marija Vulesica: Croatia. In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel: The Place of Terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 9: Labor education camps, ghettos, youth protection camps, police detention camps, special camps, gypsy camps, forced labor camps. CH Beck, Munich 2009, p. 328.
  12. ↑ Jure Krišto: Katolička crkva i Nezavisna Država Hrvatska 1941-1945 . 1998. p. 223.
  13. ↑ Vladimir Dedijer: Jasenovac - The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican . Ahriman, 1988, p. 166 .
  14. ↑ Jure Krišto: Katolička crkva i Nezavisna Država Hrvatska 1941-1945 . 1998, p. 223 .
  15. ↑ Lazar Lukajić: fratri i Ustaše Kolju . Belgrade 2005. List of murdered Serbs on pages 341 to 402
  16. ↑ Vladimir Dedijer : Jasenovac - the Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican . Ahriman, 1988. p. 166
  17. ^ Sabrina P. Ramet: The three Yugoslavias: state-building and legitimation, 1918-2005 . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2006. Page 122 ff.
  18. ^ A b Zeev Milo: In the satellite state of Croatia: an odyssey of survival 1941-1945 . Hartung-Gorre, Konstanz 2002. Page 71
  19. ↑ Ladislaus Hory, Martin Broszat: The Croatian Ustascha State, 1941–1945 . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1964, p. 173 .
  20. ↑ Zdenko Levental: zlocini fašističkih okupatora i njihovih pomagača protiv Jevreja u Jugoslaviji. Savez jevrejskih opština Jugoslavije, Beograd 1952, pp. 144–145.
  21. ↑ Mirko Persen: Ustaski Logori. P. 105.
  22. ↑ Secanja jevreja na logor Jasenovac. Pp. 40-41, 58, 76, 151.
  23. ↑ Efraim Zuroff: Ustasa rock n 'roll . In: The Jerusalem Post. June 25, 2007.
  24. ^ Nazis Rock on in Croatia. The Center for Peace in the Balkans, June 23, 2007.
  25. ^ Foundation EVZ (ed.): Right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (PDF) ( Memento from July 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  26. ^ Simon Wiesenthal Center : Thompson Concert.

Coordinates: 45 ° 8 ′ 54.2 ″  N , 17 ° 14 ′ 24.1 ″  E