Encyclopedia of the Holocaust
Vol. 2, page 739
entry: "Jasenovac"

Jasenovac, the largest concentration and extermination camp in Croatia. Jasenovac was in fact a complex of several subcamps, in close proximity to each other, on bank of the Sava River, about 63 miles (100km) south of Zagreb. The women's camp of Stara Gradiska, which was farther away, also belonged to the complex.

Jasenovac was established in August 1941 and was dismantled only in April 1945. The creation of the camp and its management and supervision were entrusted to Department II of the Croatian Security Police (Ustaska Narodna Sluzba, UNS), headed by Vjekoslav (Maks) Luburic, who was personally responsible for everything that happened there. Scores of Ustase (Croatian fascists) served in the camp. The cruelest was former priest Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic, who killed scores of prisoners with his own hands.

Some six hundred thousand people were murdered at Jasenovac, mostly Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and opponents of the ustasa regime. The number of Jewish victims was between twenty and twenty-five thousand, most of whom were murdered there up to August 1942, when deportation of the Croatian Jews to Auschwitz for extermination began. Jews were sent to Jasenovac from all parts of Croatia - from Zagreb, from Sarajevo, and from other cities and smaller towns. On their arrival most were killed at execution sites near t he camp: Granik, Gradina, and other places. Those kept alive were mostly skilled at needed professions and trades (doctors, pharmacists, electricians, shoemakers, goldsmiths, and so on) and were employed in services and workshops at Jasenovac. The living conditions in the camp were extremely severe: a meager diet, deplorable accommodations, a particularly cruel regime, and unbelievably cruel behavior by the Ustase guards. The conditions improved only for short periods - during visits by delegations, such as the press delegation that visited in February 1942 and Red Cross delegation in June 1944.

The acts of murder and of the cruelty in the camp reached their peak in the late summer of 1942, when tens of thousands of Serbian villagers were deported to Jasenovac from the area of the fighting against the partisans in the Kozara Mountains. Most of the men were killed in Jasenovac. The women were sent for forced labor in Germany, and the children were taken from their mothers, some were murdered and others were dispersed in orphanages throughout the country.

In April 1945 the partisan army approached the camp. In an attempt to erase traces of the atrocities, the Ustashe blew up all the installations and killed most of the inmates. An escape attempt by the prisoners failed, and only a few survived.