Jasenovac concentration camp was the largest death camp and concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia (ISC) during World War II. The camp was created by the Ustaše regime in August 1941 and destroyed in April 1945. Most of the people killed at Jasenovac were ethnic Serbs, who the ISC saw as their main ethnic enemy. The camp also held Jews, Roma, and a number of Croat and Bosniak Yugoslav Partisans and anti-Fascist civilians.
Jasenovac was a complex of five sub-camps covering over on both banks of the Sava River. The largest camp was at Jasenovac, about southeast of Zagreb. The complex included large grounds at Donja Gradina directly across the Sava River; a children's death camp in Sisak; and a Stara Gradiška concentration camp.
The camp's history website says, "We cannot be sure of the exact number of victims of the Ustasha camp in Jasenovac. According to research completed so far, the number can be estimated at between 80,000 and 100,000".
Background
The Independent State of Croatia (ISC) made three orders in 1941: The "Legal order for the defense of the people and the state" (dated April 17, 1941) ordered the death penalty for "infringement of the honour and vital interests of the Croatian people and the survival of the Independent State of Croatia." (This meant that anyone who was against the government of the ISC, or the things the ISC did, could be killed.) "Legal order of races" and the "Legal order of the protection of Aryan blood and the honour of the Croatian people" (dated April 30, 1941) "Order of the creation and definition of the racial-political committee" (dated June 4, 1941) These orders were enforced through the regular court system, and through new special courts and mobile courts-martial with special powers. By July 1941, there were too many new prisoners to fit in the jails that existed. The Ustaše government began building the Jasenovac concentration camp.
The Independent State of Croatia was created and supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Because of this, the ISC took on their ideas about race and politics. Jasenovac had a role in the Nazis' "Final Solution." However, the ISC also used the camp for the ethnic cleansing of Romani and Serbian people in Croatia.
The Nazi organizations that directed the Ustaše's death camps were: The Office of Foreign Affairs, represented in Croatia by Siegfried Kasche. The Schutzstaffel (SS), represented by a Gestapo official whose identity is not known, but whom Jewish witnesses knew as "Miller" The Reichfuhrung and the Wehrmacht
The Nazis encouraged the Ustaše's anti-Jewish and anti-Roma actions and showed support for the anti-Serb policy. Soon, it became clear that the Nazis wanted to commit genocide. In a meeting on July 21, 1941, Hitler said to the Croatian military commander, Slavko Kvaternik: The Jews are the bane of the human kind. If the Jews will be allowed to do as they will, like they are permitted in their Soviet heaven, than they will fulfill their most insane plans. And thus Russia became the center to 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 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."
Creation of the camp
The Jasenovac complex was built between August 1941 and February 1942. The first two camps, Krapje and Bročica, were closed in November 1941.
The three newer camps continued to function until the end of the war: Ciglana (Jasenovac III) Kozara (Jasenovac IV) Stara Gradiška (Jasenovac V)
The camp was built, managed and supervised by Department III of the Ustaška Narodna Služba or UNS (lit. "Ustaše People's Service"), a special police force of the ISC. Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić was head of the UNS. At different times, Miroslav Majstorović and Dinko Šakić managed the camp.