User:Joekrie/Jastrebarsko concentration camp

The Jastrebarsko concentration camp (Serbo-Croatian pronunciation: [ˈjâstrebɐrskɔ]) was a concentration camp primarily for Serbian and Jewish children located in the city of Jastrebarsko, Yugoslavia (now Jastrebarsko, Croatia) run by the fascist Ustaša political party during World War II. The Jastrebarsko camp was a satellite camp for the larger Jasenovac concentration camp, holding children of prisoners held at Jasenovac. Many atrocities were committed at the camp, including the mass murder of children found to present no labor skills useful to the Ustaša.

Location

Jastrebarsko, Yugoslavia — present day Jastrebarsko, Croatia — served as the location of the Jastrebarsko concentration camp during World War II. Its name comes from the Croatian word for hawk or falcon, and is a remnant of an ancient Roman settlement. During World War II, Yugoslavia encompassed present day Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Jastrebarsko was located northern central area of the country, with surrounding cities to north, east, south, and west of Samobor,Klinča Sela,Karlovac County, and Krašić. The geographic setup of Jastrebarsko includes two main landscapes including a river valley and rolling plains, and is considered a metropolitan area today.

Political background

After Germany and the Axis invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, Slavko Kvaternik – a leader of the Croatian nationalist movement – proclaimed the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska). Ante Pavelić, a member of the Ustaša political party, took control of the newly established Nazi puppet state.

The new government encouraged nationalist and totalitarian ideas; a program released in June 1941 explained that “In the Ustaša state, created by the poglavnik [leader] and his Ustašas, people must think like Ustašas, speak like Ustašas, and – most important of all – act like Ustašas.” The Ustaša sought to cleanse the Croatian language of “Serbisms,” words the Ustaša perceived to be Serbian impurities, and reintroduced traditional Croatian vocabulary and symbols. Strongly influenced by the Third Reich, the Ustaša promoted an independent Croatia with “living space” for the Croats, equivalent to the Nazi idea of Lebensraum. They also adopted similar racial policies, arresting and murdering Jews and Serbs on a massive scale.

On June 22, 1941, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia launched an attack to overthrow the Ustaša and to expel Germany and Italy from Croatia, starting the Yugoslav People’s Liberation War. The two major groups fighting the Ustaša and the Axis were the communists, who called themselves the Partisans and were led by Josip Broz Tito. Although the Partisans eventually sought to establish a communist government, they were independent of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; Tito explained, “We study and take as an example the Soviet system, but we are developing socialism in our country in somewhat different forms.”

While the Chetniks and Partisans initially collaborated, they soon began fighting each other for control of Yugoslavia, starting a civil war. One dispute between the groups was that the Chetniks only supported fighting the Ustaša, while the Partisans fought both the Ustaša and the occupying Axis forces. Ethnic disputes and differing political philosophies exasperated the rift between the groups.

Conditions and prisoners

The camp primarily held Serbian and Jewish children, although it was also a temporary holding station for adults. The first prisoners were children who arrived from the Stara Gradiska concentration camp in the makeshift barracks of the house of Count Erdődy. The camp was then enlarged later by transports of children from the collection camps of Jablanac and Mlaka in July 1942. Its purpose, with support from the Nazi party, was to eliminate undesirable persons from Kozara and Croatia, specifically Serbs, but also Jews and communists

Similar to the Nazi camps of Auschwitz and Sobibor, Jastrebarsko was a death camp, rather than a work camp, where prisoners were taken for the sole intention of being killed. Because the majority of prisoners held at Jastrebarsko were unskilled children, they weren’t considered to be of any use to the Nazi soldiers, and therefore their lives were invaluable. After the end of World War II, an enormous attempt was made to have Jastrebarsko appear to the public as being a labor camp and not a death camp by destroying a lot of the evidence that was left behind at the camp.

Children were commonly separated from their parents before being taken to Jastrebarsko, and many would never see them again. At the concentration camp, children lived under terrible overall conditions. Meal rations were barely enough to keep the prisoners alive, and the food was nothing more than bread or soup and something to drink. Many prisoners ate any nearby grass or roots in order to survive; dying of starvation and other illnesses from the deplorable conditions was very common. All of the prisoners slept in tightly packed barracks with no form of protection from the cold nights during the harsh winters. Children were beaten, tortured, and threatened by Ustaša guards at the camp on a daily basis. Conditions only improved at the camp during brief visits from organizations such as the Red Cross.

At its largest the camp held over 2,200 inmates, and is known to have killed over 1300 persons. It was run by the Ustaša leaders Stjepan Rubinić, Dragutin Pudić Paraliza and Janko Mihailović.

Liberation

The camp was liberated on August 26, 1942 by the Yugoslav Partisans, a communist led resistance to the Axis powers. After the Partisans took control of the camp, 700 children were freed. Between Jastrebarsko and a neighboring camp, 1,637 children were taken in by private citizens in Zagreb, Jastrebarsko, and neighboring towns.

Legacy

Because historical ethnic tensions in Eastern Europe, many accounts of Holocaust prisoners are filled with inaccuracies or have been misinterpreted to negatively portray prisoners of other nationalities. Additionally, evidence has been destroyed or lost, often with ethnic motives. In the Ukraine, for example, Jewish accounts of war and the Holocaust have been censored or burned by nationalist regimes.

Franjo Tudjman, president of the modern country of Croatia from May 30, 1990 to December 10, 1999, wrote a book called Bespua povijesne zbiljnosti (translated as The Wasteland of Historical Facts or The Horrors of War) in 1989 in a nationalist attempt to convince people who sought refuge in North America to return to Croatia. Tudjman presented accounts claiming many of the atrocities in Croatian concentration camps such as Jastrebarsko and Jasenovac were a result of Jewish-dominated administrations run by prisoners:

Because [the Jews] arrived before the Serbs [they] "managed to grab all the important positions in the prisoners' administration," and because of their privileges, they "always and cunningly intrigue against the Serbs. ... Since the Ustaša place more trust in the Jews ... the Serbs besides suffering at the hands of the Ustaša also suffer at the hands of the Jews": "A Jew remains a Jew, also in Jasenovac camp. In the camp they have kept their habits with the difference that they are now more visible. Selfishness, shrewdness, disloyalty, stubbornness, deception, and secrecy are their main characteristics." Prnjatovi's opinion appears exaggerated, we could say antisemitic, but other victims say the same thing. Some of the Jewish camp officials [sic] were armed and took part in the killings. More important, the "selection" ... for liquidation was in their hands, and they also partially took part in carrying it out.

A Jewish prisoner, however, explained that only a few Jews were among the privileged prisoners:

Those degenerates enjoyed great trust among the Ustaša. Instead of ameliorating our situation, since they too were prisoners called "free prisoners," they made the situation even worse and thought up various punishments. ... They took everything they could from the kitchen from that measly meal we received and organized better and more varied food for themselves. During the searches, they found the few gold coins that a prisoner would sew in somewhere. ... The other prisoners disliked us Jews a lot because of those degenerates and bandits in gloves. However, because of their greed they, too, ended up [killed] in Jasenovac in July 1942. ... It was only too bad that the Ustaša punished them, because we had already decided that if we survived we would kill them with our bare hands.

Tomislav Dulić – a historian from Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden – argues that some witnesses Tudjman utilized referred to a small number of privileged Jewish prisoners generally as “the Jews.” Tudjman used such general statements about the Jewish prisoners without commenting on inconsistencies and inaccuracies, Dulić argues.

There is much controversy over the true number of deaths in Croatian concentration camps, specifically relating to the number of Jewish deaths. In addition to improperly presenting witness statements, Tudjman has been accused of understating the number of Jewish deaths in the camps

Credits

Joe Kriefall

• Legacy
• Political background
• Final editing and compiling

Dave Ramlet

• Location
• Group organizer and coordinator
• Outline
• Final editing and compiling

Liz Campbell

• Conditions and prisoners
• Set up presentation
• Found information for introduction

Mike Damioli

• Liberation
• Parts of conditions and prisoners
• Parts of political background
• Found information for introduction

Note: Following each reference in the bracketed name of the group member who found and used that source