Camps in Yugoslavia

Scope and content

The collection contains primarily:

List of those interned in Camp Gradiske, in Camp Jasenovac; Lists of deceased in Camp Susac and in Camp Djakovo; death lists and prisoners lists from concentration camps in Yugoslavia; name registers of Jews in CC Jasenovac who were murdered or saved, name registers of Jewish victims of CC Banjica/Belgrade 1941-1944, name registers of Jews who were shot in the Zasavica village near Schabac in October 1941, registry of Yugoslavian prisoner of war officers

History of the camps in Yugoslavia 1941-1945:

In April 1941 Yugoslavia was conquered by German troops and their Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian allies and then broken up and divided into annexed, occupied, and pseudo-sovereign areas. The German Reich was given the northern area of Slovenia, while the south of Slovenia and a part of Dalmatia fell to Italy. Under Italy’s protection, Montenegro should rise up again as a nation, while Kosovo and West Macedonia obtained the Italian “Greater Albania”. Hungary was given the Backa und Baranja areas as well as the Mur region in the outermost north-western Yugoslavia. Croatia-Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina formed the “Independent State of Croatia”, which actually was a state independent from the German Reich under the terror regime of the Croatian Ustascha with its “Poglavnik” (leader) Pavelic, whose policies of persecution and extermination were directed at the considerable Serbian minority, against Jews, Roma as well as religious and idealogical opponents of the system. From the summer of 1941 those in power built approx. 20 concentration camps in Banjica, Belgrade, Molat, Rab, Šabac and Topovske Supe, among others. Later these camps were combined into the Jasenovac camp complex. With an expanse totalling 240 km² it became the largest concentration camp in the Balkans. Some 100,000 people died a violent death there, among them 45,000 to 52,000 Serbians, approx. 32,000 Jews, 8,000 to 15.000 Roma and 5,000 to 12,000 Croatians. The armed conflict of the communist partisans under the leadership of Marschall Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) also began in the summer of 1941; by 1942/43 Titos troops had gained control of a large part of Croatia, and in 1944/45 they occupied all of Yugoslavia. Pavelic fled, Tito became head of state and ordered the persecution and murder of tens of thousands of former opponents and civilians – among them many from Croatia.

Source: Sundhaussen, Holm: Jugoslawien, In: Lexikon des Holocaust, ed. by Wolfgang Benz, München 2002, p. 112-113 and http://www.memorialmuseums.org/laender/detail/12/Kroatien [Latest access 2012-08-03].