Post by warrior1972 on Jan 15, 2014 8:37:55 GMT -8
Damn.
Damn, damn, damn.
Jasenovac concentration camp (Serbo-Croatian: 'Logor Jasenovac' and 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. The camp was established by the governing Ustaše regime and not operated by Nazi Germany,[3] and was among the largest camps in Europe.[4]
Located from August 1941 in marshland at the confluence of the Sava and Una rivers near the village of Jasenovac, it was dismantled in April 1945. It was "notorious for its barbaric practices and the large number of victims".[5] In Jasenovac, the majority of victims were ethnic Serbs, whom the Ustaše wanted to remove from the NDH, along with the Jews, anti-fascist Croatians and Romani people.
Jasenovac was a complex of five subcamps[6] 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.[1]
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.[7] 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.[7] The authorities of the Socialist Federal Republic of 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,[7] but his research has since been considered trustworthy by authorities on World War II Yugoslav history such as Jozo Tomasevich.[7][8]
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.[2] The Jasenovac Memorial Site quotes a similar figure of between 80,000 and 100,000 victims.[1]
Mass murder and cruelty[edit]
According to Jaša Almuli, the former president of the Serbian Jewish community, Jasenovac was a much more terrifying concentration camp, in terms of cruelty, compared with, for example, Auschwitz. In the late summer of 1942, tens of thousands of Serbian villagers were deported to Jasenovac from the Kozara region in Bosnia, where NDH forces were fighting against the Yugoslav Partisans.[67] Most of the men were executed in Jasenovac and women were sent to forced labor camps in Germany. Children were taken from their mothers and either killed or dispersed to Catholic orphanages.[68]
On the night of 29 August 1942, the prison guards made bets among themselves as to who could slaughter the largest number of inmates. One of the guards, Petar Brzica, boasted[69] that he had cut the throats of about 1,360 new arrivals.[70] Other participants who confessed to participating in the bet included Ante Zrinušić, who killed some 600 inmates, and Mile Friganović, who gave a detailed and consistent report of the incident.[71][dead link] Friganović admitted to having killed some 1,100 inmates. He specifically recounted his torture of an old man named Vukasin; he attempted to compel the man to bless Ante Pavelić, which the old man refused to do, even after Friganović had cut off his ears, nose and tongue after each refusal. Ultimately, he cut out the old man's eyes, tore out his heart, and slashed his throat. This incident was witnessed by Dr. Nikola Nikolić.[72]
Srbosjek[edit]
An agricultural knife nicknamed "Srbosjek" or "Serbcutter", strapped to the hand. It was used by the Ustaše militia for the speedy killing of inmates at Jasenovac
Brzica and others used a knife that became known as the Srbosjek, meaning "Serb-cutter".[73][74][page needed][75][76][page needed][77][dead link]
This knife was originally a type of agricultural knife manufactured for wheat sheaf cutting.[78][79][80]
The upper part of the knife was made of leather, as a sort of a glove, designed to be worn with the thumb going through the hole, so that only the blade protruded from the hand. It was a curved, 12 cm long knife with the edge on its concave side. The knife was fastened to a bowed oval copper plate, while the plate was fastened to a thick leather bangle.[81] Its agricultural purpose was to make it easier for the field workers to cut wheat sheaves open before threshing them. The knife was fixed on the glove plate in order to prevent injuries and to prevent taking care of a separate knife in order to improve the work speed.[79]
Such a type of wheat sheaf knife was manufactured prior to and during World War II by German factory Gebrüder Gräfrath from Solingen-Widdert under the trademark "Gräwiso".[82][83] Gebrüder Gräfrath was taken over in 1961 by Hubertus, Solingen.[84]
Systematic extermination of prisoners[edit]
Besides sporadic killings and deaths due to the poor living conditions, many inmates arriving at Jasenovac were scheduled for systematic extermination. An important criterion for selection was the duration of a prisoner's anticipated detention. Strong men capable of labor and sentenced to less than three years of incarceration were allowed to live. All inmates with indeterminate sentences or sentences of three years or more were immediately scheduled for execution, regardless of their fitness.[85]
Systematic extermination varied both as to place and form. Some of the executions were mechanical, following Nazi methodology, while others were manual. The mechanical means of extermination included:
Cremation: The Ustaše cremated living inmates, who were sometimes drugged and sometimes fully awake, as well as corpses. The first cremations took place in the brick factory ovens in January, 1942. Engineer Hinko Dominik Picilli perfected this method by converting seven of the kiln's furnace chambers into more sophisticated crematories.[86][87] Crematories were also placed in Gradina, across the Sava River. According to the State Commission, however, "there is no information that it ever went into operation."[88] Later testimony, however, say the Gradina crematory had become operational.[89] Some bodies were buried rather than cremated, as shown by exhumation of bodies late in the war.
Gassing and poisoning: The Ustaše, in following the Nazi example, as set in Auschwitz and Sajmište, tried to employ poisonous gas to kill inmates that arrived in Stara-Gradiška. They first tried to gas the women and children that arrived from camp Djakovo with gas vans that Simo Klaić called "green Thomas".[90] The method was later replaced with stationary gas-chambers with Zyklon B and sulfur dioxide.[91][92][93][94]
Manual methods were executions that took part in utilizing sharp or blunt craftsmen tools: knives, saws, hammers, et cetera. These executions took place in various locations:
Granik: Granik was a ramp used to unload goods of Sava boats. In winter 1943-44, season agriculture laborers became unemployed, while large transports of new internees arrived and the need for liquidation, in light of the expected Axis defeat, were large. Therefore, "Maks" Luburić devised a plan to utilize the crane as a gallows on which slaughter would be committed, so that the bodies could be dumped into the stream of the flowing river. In the autumn, the Ustaše NCO's came in every night for some 20 days, with lists of names of people who were incarcerated in the warehouse, stripped, chained, beaten and then taken to the "Granik", where weights were tied to the wire that was bent on their arms, and their intestines and neck were slashed, and they were thrown into the river with a blow of a blunt tool in the head. The method was later enhanced, so that inmates were tied in pairs, back to back, their bellies were cut before they were tossed into the river alive.[95]
Gradina: The Ustaše utilized empty areas in the vicinity of the villages Donja Gradina and Ustice, where they encircled an area marked for slaughter and mass graves in wire. The Ustaše slew victims with knives or smashed their skulls with mallets. When Roma arrived in the camp, they did not undergo selection, but were rather concentrated under the open skies at a section of camp known as "III-C". From there the Roma were taken to liquidation in Gradina, working on the dike (men) or in the corn fields in Ustice (women) in between liquidations. Thus Gradina and Ustica became Roma mass grave sites. Furthermore, small groups of Roma were utilized as gravediggers that actually participated in the slaughter at Gradina. Thus the extermination at the site grew until it became the main killing-ground in Jasenovac. Grave sites were also located in Ustica and in Draksenic.[96]
Mlaka and Jablanac: Two sites used as collection and labor camps for the women and children in camps III and V, but also as places where many of these women and children, as well as other groups, were executed at the Sava bank in between the two locations.
Velika Kustarica: According to the state-commission, as far as 50,000 people were killed here in the winter amid 1941 and 1942.[97] There is more evidence suggesting that killings took place there at that time and afterwards.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasenovac_concentration_camp
DAMN.
Damn, damn, damn.
Jasenovac concentration camp (Serbo-Croatian: 'Logor Jasenovac' and 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. The camp was established by the governing Ustaše regime and not operated by Nazi Germany,[3] and was among the largest camps in Europe.[4]
Located from August 1941 in marshland at the confluence of the Sava and Una rivers near the village of Jasenovac, it was dismantled in April 1945. It was "notorious for its barbaric practices and the large number of victims".[5] In Jasenovac, the majority of victims were ethnic Serbs, whom the Ustaše wanted to remove from the NDH, along with the Jews, anti-fascist Croatians and Romani people.
Jasenovac was a complex of five subcamps[6] 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.[1]
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.[7] 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.[7] The authorities of the Socialist Federal Republic of 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,[7] but his research has since been considered trustworthy by authorities on World War II Yugoslav history such as Jozo Tomasevich.[7][8]
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.[2] The Jasenovac Memorial Site quotes a similar figure of between 80,000 and 100,000 victims.[1]
Mass murder and cruelty[edit]
According to Jaša Almuli, the former president of the Serbian Jewish community, Jasenovac was a much more terrifying concentration camp, in terms of cruelty, compared with, for example, Auschwitz. In the late summer of 1942, tens of thousands of Serbian villagers were deported to Jasenovac from the Kozara region in Bosnia, where NDH forces were fighting against the Yugoslav Partisans.[67] Most of the men were executed in Jasenovac and women were sent to forced labor camps in Germany. Children were taken from their mothers and either killed or dispersed to Catholic orphanages.[68]
On the night of 29 August 1942, the prison guards made bets among themselves as to who could slaughter the largest number of inmates. One of the guards, Petar Brzica, boasted[69] that he had cut the throats of about 1,360 new arrivals.[70] Other participants who confessed to participating in the bet included Ante Zrinušić, who killed some 600 inmates, and Mile Friganović, who gave a detailed and consistent report of the incident.[71][dead link] Friganović admitted to having killed some 1,100 inmates. He specifically recounted his torture of an old man named Vukasin; he attempted to compel the man to bless Ante Pavelić, which the old man refused to do, even after Friganović had cut off his ears, nose and tongue after each refusal. Ultimately, he cut out the old man's eyes, tore out his heart, and slashed his throat. This incident was witnessed by Dr. Nikola Nikolić.[72]
Srbosjek[edit]
An agricultural knife nicknamed "Srbosjek" or "Serbcutter", strapped to the hand. It was used by the Ustaše militia for the speedy killing of inmates at Jasenovac
Brzica and others used a knife that became known as the Srbosjek, meaning "Serb-cutter".[73][74][page needed][75][76][page needed][77][dead link]
This knife was originally a type of agricultural knife manufactured for wheat sheaf cutting.[78][79][80]
The upper part of the knife was made of leather, as a sort of a glove, designed to be worn with the thumb going through the hole, so that only the blade protruded from the hand. It was a curved, 12 cm long knife with the edge on its concave side. The knife was fastened to a bowed oval copper plate, while the plate was fastened to a thick leather bangle.[81] Its agricultural purpose was to make it easier for the field workers to cut wheat sheaves open before threshing them. The knife was fixed on the glove plate in order to prevent injuries and to prevent taking care of a separate knife in order to improve the work speed.[79]
Such a type of wheat sheaf knife was manufactured prior to and during World War II by German factory Gebrüder Gräfrath from Solingen-Widdert under the trademark "Gräwiso".[82][83] Gebrüder Gräfrath was taken over in 1961 by Hubertus, Solingen.[84]
Systematic extermination of prisoners[edit]
Besides sporadic killings and deaths due to the poor living conditions, many inmates arriving at Jasenovac were scheduled for systematic extermination. An important criterion for selection was the duration of a prisoner's anticipated detention. Strong men capable of labor and sentenced to less than three years of incarceration were allowed to live. All inmates with indeterminate sentences or sentences of three years or more were immediately scheduled for execution, regardless of their fitness.[85]
Systematic extermination varied both as to place and form. Some of the executions were mechanical, following Nazi methodology, while others were manual. The mechanical means of extermination included:
Cremation: The Ustaše cremated living inmates, who were sometimes drugged and sometimes fully awake, as well as corpses. The first cremations took place in the brick factory ovens in January, 1942. Engineer Hinko Dominik Picilli perfected this method by converting seven of the kiln's furnace chambers into more sophisticated crematories.[86][87] Crematories were also placed in Gradina, across the Sava River. According to the State Commission, however, "there is no information that it ever went into operation."[88] Later testimony, however, say the Gradina crematory had become operational.[89] Some bodies were buried rather than cremated, as shown by exhumation of bodies late in the war.
Gassing and poisoning: The Ustaše, in following the Nazi example, as set in Auschwitz and Sajmište, tried to employ poisonous gas to kill inmates that arrived in Stara-Gradiška. They first tried to gas the women and children that arrived from camp Djakovo with gas vans that Simo Klaić called "green Thomas".[90] The method was later replaced with stationary gas-chambers with Zyklon B and sulfur dioxide.[91][92][93][94]
Manual methods were executions that took part in utilizing sharp or blunt craftsmen tools: knives, saws, hammers, et cetera. These executions took place in various locations:
Granik: Granik was a ramp used to unload goods of Sava boats. In winter 1943-44, season agriculture laborers became unemployed, while large transports of new internees arrived and the need for liquidation, in light of the expected Axis defeat, were large. Therefore, "Maks" Luburić devised a plan to utilize the crane as a gallows on which slaughter would be committed, so that the bodies could be dumped into the stream of the flowing river. In the autumn, the Ustaše NCO's came in every night for some 20 days, with lists of names of people who were incarcerated in the warehouse, stripped, chained, beaten and then taken to the "Granik", where weights were tied to the wire that was bent on their arms, and their intestines and neck were slashed, and they were thrown into the river with a blow of a blunt tool in the head. The method was later enhanced, so that inmates were tied in pairs, back to back, their bellies were cut before they were tossed into the river alive.[95]
Gradina: The Ustaše utilized empty areas in the vicinity of the villages Donja Gradina and Ustice, where they encircled an area marked for slaughter and mass graves in wire. The Ustaše slew victims with knives or smashed their skulls with mallets. When Roma arrived in the camp, they did not undergo selection, but were rather concentrated under the open skies at a section of camp known as "III-C". From there the Roma were taken to liquidation in Gradina, working on the dike (men) or in the corn fields in Ustice (women) in between liquidations. Thus Gradina and Ustica became Roma mass grave sites. Furthermore, small groups of Roma were utilized as gravediggers that actually participated in the slaughter at Gradina. Thus the extermination at the site grew until it became the main killing-ground in Jasenovac. Grave sites were also located in Ustica and in Draksenic.[96]
Mlaka and Jablanac: Two sites used as collection and labor camps for the women and children in camps III and V, but also as places where many of these women and children, as well as other groups, were executed at the Sava bank in between the two locations.
Velika Kustarica: According to the state-commission, as far as 50,000 people were killed here in the winter amid 1941 and 1942.[97] There is more evidence suggesting that killings took place there at that time and afterwards.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasenovac_concentration_camp
DAMN.
