The Jasenovac concentration camp was an extermination camp established in Slavonia by the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia(NDH) during World War II. The camp was established and operated solely by the governing Ustaše regime rather than by Nazi Germany as in the rest of occupied Europe. It was one of the largest concentration camps in Europe and it has been referred to as “the Auschwitz of the Balkans” and “the Yugoslav Auschwitz”.
It was established in August 1941 in marshland at the confluence of the Sava and Una rivers near the village of Jasenovac, and was dismantled in April 1945. It was “notorious for its barbaric practices and the large number of victims”.
In Jasenovac the majority of victims were ethnic Serbs; others were Jews, Roma, and some political dissidents. Jasenovac was a complex of five sub camps 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.
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 during its more than three-and-a-half years of operation. After the war, a figure of 700,000 reflected the “conventional wisdom”, although estimates have gone as high as 1.4 million. The authorities of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia conducted a population survey in 1964 that resulted in a list of 59,188 victims of Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška, the findings were not published until 1989. Croatian academic Vladimir Žerjavić published books in 1989 and 1992 in which he “meticulously analysed the available data” and concluded that some 83,000 people had been killed at Jasenovac. His findings were criticized by the director of the Museum of Victims of Genocide in Belgrade, Milan Bulajić, who defended his figure of 1.1 million, although his rebuttal was later dismissed as having “no scholarly value”. Since Bulajić’s retirement from his post in 2002, the Museum has no longer defended the figure of 700,000 to 1 million victims of the camp. In 2005, Dragan Cvetković, a researcher from the Museum, and a Croatian co-author published a book on wartime losses in the NDH which gave a figure of approximately 100,000 victims of Jasenovac.
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, comprising; “between 45,000 and 52,000 Serbs; between 12,000 and 20,000 Jews; between 15,000 and 20,000 Roma (Gypsies); and between 5,000 and 12,000 ethnic Croats and Muslims, political and religious opponents of the regime.” The Jasenovac Memorial Site quotes a similar figure of between 80,000 and 100,000 victims.
BACKGROUND
The Independent State of Croatia (NDH) was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. The NDH consisted of the present-day Republic of Croatia and much of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, together with some parts of modern-day Serbia. It was essentially an Italo–German quasi-protectorate, as it owed its existence to the Axis powers, who maintained occupation forces within the puppet state throughout its existence. However, its day-to-day administration was comprised almost exclusively of Croatians, including monks and nuns.
NDH legislation. Some of the first decrees issued by the leader of the NDH Ante Pavelić reflected the Ustaše adoption of the racist ideology of Nazi Germany. The regime rapidly issued a decree restricting the activities of Jews and seizing their property. These laws were followed by a decree for “the Protection of the Nation and the State” of 17 April 1941, which mandated the death penalty for the offence of high treason if a person did or had done “harm to the honour and vital interests of the Croatian nation or endangered the existence of the Independent State of Croatia”. This was a retroactive law, and arrests and trials started immediately. It was soon followed by a decree prohibiting the use of the Cyrillic alphabet, which was an integral part of the rites of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Another decree concerning nationality determined that only citizens of Aryan origin could be nationals of the NDH, and only nationals of the NDH were under the protection of the NDH. These decrees were enforced not only through the regular court system, but also through new special courts and mobile courts-martial with extended jurisdiction. In July 1941, when existing jails could no longer contain the growing number of new inmates, the Ustaše government began clearing ground for what would become the Jasenovac concentration camp.
The influence of Nazi Germany. On 10 April 1941, the Independent State of Croatia was established, supported by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, and it adopted similar racial and political doctrines. Jasenovac contributed to the Nazi “final solution” to the “Jewish problem”, the killing of Roma people and the elimination of political opponents, but its most significant purpose for the Ustaše was as a means to achieve the destruction of Serbs inside the Independent State of Croatia (NDH).
Jasenovac was located in the German occupation zone of the Independent State of Croatia. The Nazis encouraged Ustaše anti-Jewish and anti-Roma actions and showed support for the intended extermination of the Serb people. Soon, the Nazis began to make clear their genocidal goals, as in the speech Hitler gave to Slavko Kvaternik at a meeting on 21 July 1941:
The Jews are the bane of mankind. If the Jews will be allowed to do as they will, like they are permitted in their Soviet heaven, then 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.
At the Wannsee Conference, Germany offered the Croatian government transportation of its Jews southward, but questioned the importance of the offer as “the enactment of the final solution of the Jewish question is not crucial, since the key aspects of this problem were already solved by radical actions these governments took.”
In addition to specifying the means of extermination, the Nazis often arranged the imprisonment or transfer of inmates to Jasenovac. Kasche’s emissary, Major Knehe, visited the camp on 6 February 1942. Kasche thereafter reported to his superiors:
Capitan Luburic, the commander-in-action of the camp, explained the construction plans of the camp. It turns out that he made these plans while in exile. These plans he modified after visiting concentration-camps installments in Germany.
Kasche wrote the following: The Poglavnik asks General Bader to realize that the Jasenovac camp cannot receive the refugees from Kozara. I agreed since the camp is also required to solve the problem in deporting the Jews to the east. Minister Turina can deport the Jews to Jasenovac.
Stara-Gradiška was the primary site from which Jews were transported to Auschwitz, but Kashe’s letter refers specifically to the subcamp Ciglana in this regard. In all documentation, the term “Jasenovac” relates to either the complex at large or, when referring to a specific camp, to camp nr. III, which was the main camp since November 1941. The extermination of Serbs at Jasenovac was precipitated by General Paul Bader, who ordered that refugees be taken to Jasenovac. Although Jasenovac was expanded, officials were told that “Jasenovac concentration and labor camp cannot hold an infinite number of prisoners”. Soon thereafter, German suspicions were renewed that the Ustaše were more concerned with the extermination of Serbs than Jews, and that Italian and Catholic pressure was dissuading the Ustaše from killing Jews.
The Nazis revisited the possibility of transporting Jews to Auschwitz, not only because extermination was easier there, but also because the profits produced from the victims could be kept in German hands, rather than being left for the Croats or Italians. Instead Jasenovac remained a place where Jews who could not be deported would be interned and killed: In this way, while Jews were deported from Tenje, two deportations were also made to Jasenovac.
It is also illustrated by the report sent by Hans Helm to Adolf Eichmann, in which it is stated that the Jews will first be collected in Stara-Gradiška, and that “Jews would be employed in ‘forced labor’ in Ustaše camps”, mentioning only Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška, “will not be deported”. The Nazis found interest in the Jews that remained inside the camp, even in June 1944, after the visit of a Red Cross delegation. Kasche wrote: “Schmidllin showed a special interest in the Jews. … Luburic told me that Schmidllin told him that the Jews must be treated in the finest manner, and that they must survive, no matter what happens. … Luburic suspected Schmidllin is an English agent and therefore prevented all contact between him and the Jews”.
Hans Helm was in charge of deporting Jews to concentration camps. He was tried in Belgrade in December 1946, along with other SS and Gestapo officials, and was sentenced to death by hanging, along with August Meyszner, Wilhelm Fuchs, Josef Hahn, Ludwig Teichmann, Josef Eckert, Ernst Weimann, Richard Kaserer and Friedrich Polte
OPERATION
Jadovno concentration camp was the first camp used for extermination by the Ustaše. Jadovno was operational from May 1941 but was closed in August of the same year, coinciding with the formation of the camp at Jasenovac in the same month. The Jasenovac complex was built between August 1941 and February 1942. The first two camps, Krapje and Bročice, were closed in November 1941.
Three newer camps continued to function until the end of the war: Ciglana (Jasenovac III), Kožara (Jasenovac IV), Stara Gradiška (Jasenovac V).
The camp was constructed, managed and supervised by Department III of the “Ustaše Supervisory Service” (Ustaška nadzorna služba, UNS), a special police force of the NDH. Vjekoslav “Maks” Luburić was head of the UNS. Individuals managing the camp at different times included Miroslav Filipović-Majstorović and Dinko Šakić. The camp administration in times used other Ustaše battalions, police units, Domobrani units, auxiliary units made up of Bosnian Muslims, as well as Germans and Hungarians. The Ustaše interned, tortured and executed men, women and children in Jasenovac. The largest number of victims were Serbs, but victims also included Jews, Roma (or “gypsies”), as well as some dissident Croats and Bosnian Muslims (i.e. Partisans or their sympathizers, all categorized by the Ustaše as “Communists”).
Upon arrival at the camp, the prisoners were marked with colors, similar to the use of Nazi concentration camp badges: blue for Serbs, and red for communists (non-Serbian resistance members), while Roma had no marks. This practice was later abandoned.[36] Most victims were killed at execution sites near the 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.
Inmate population
Serbs constituted the majority of inmates in Jasenovac. Serbs were generally brought to Jasenovac concentration camp after refusing to convert to Catholicism. In many municipalities around the NDH, warning posters declared that any Serb who did not convert to Catholicism would be deported to a concentration camp.
The Jasenovac Memorial Area list of victims is more than 56% Serbs, 45,923 out of 80,914, see victim lists. In some cases, inmates were immediately killed upon acknowledging Serbian ethnicity, and most considered it to be the sole reason for their imprisonment. The Serbs were predominantly brought from the Kozara region, where the Ustaše captured areas that were held by Partisan guerrillas.
These were brought to the camp without sentence, almost destined for immediate execution, accelerated via the use of machine-guns. The exact number of Serbian casualties in Jasenovac is uncertain, but the lowest common estimates range around 60,000 people, and is one of the most significant parts of overall Serbian casualties of World War II.
Jews, the primary target of Nazi genocide, were the second-largest category of victims of Jasenovac. The number of Jewish casualties is uncertain, but ranges from about 8,000 to almost two thirds of the Croatian Jewish population of 37,000 (meaning around 25,000).
Most of the executions of Jews at Jasenovac occurred prior to August 1942. Thereafter, the NDH deported them to Auschwitz. In general, Jews were initially sent to Jasenovac from all parts of Croatia after being gathered in Zagreb, and from Bosnia and Herzegovina after being gathered in Sarajevo. Some, however, were transported directly to Jasenovac from other cities and smaller towns.
Roma in Jasenovac consisted of both Roma and Sinti, who were captured in various areas in Bosnia, especially in the Kozara region. They were brought to Jasenovac and taken to area III-C, where nutrition, hydration, shelter and sanitary conditions were all below the rest of the camp’s own abysmally low standards. The figures of murdered Roma are estimated between 20,000 and 50,000.
Anti-fascists consisted of various sorts of political and ideological opponents or antagonists of the Ustaše regime. In general, their treatment was similar to other inmates, although known communists were executed right away, and convicted Ustaše or law-enforcement officials, or others close to the Ustaše in opinion, such as Croatian peasants, were held on beneficial terms and granted amnesty after serving a duration of time. The leader of the banned Croatian Peasant Party, Vladko Maček was held in Jasenovac from October 1941 to March 1942, after which he was kept under strict house arrest. Unique among the fascist states during World War II, Jasenovac contained a camp specifically for children in Sisak. Around 20,000 Serb, Jewish and Roma children perished at Jasenovac.
Living conditions. The living conditions in the camp evidenced the severity typical of Nazi death camps: a meager diet, deplorable accommodation, and the cruel treatment by the Ustaše guards. As in many camps, conditions would be improved temporarily during visits by delegations – such as the press delegation that visited in February 1942 and a Red Cross delegation in June 1944 – and reverted after the delegation left.
Food: Again, typical of death camps, the diet of inmates at Jasenovac was insufficient to sustain life: The sorts of food they consumed changed during the camp’s existence. In camp Bročice, inmates were given a “soup” made of hot water with starch for breakfast, and beans for lunch and dinner (served at 6:00, 12:00 and 21:00). The food in Camp No. III was initially better, consisting of potatoes instead of beans; however, in January the diet was changed to a single daily serving of thin “turnip soup,” often hot water with two or three cabbage leaves thrown into the pot. By the end of the year, the diet had been changed again, this time to three daily portions of thin gruel made of water and starch. Food changed repeatedly thereafter.
Water: Jasenovac was even more severe than most death camps in one respect: a general lack of potable water. Prisoners were forced to drink water from the Sava river.
Accommodation: In the first camps, Bročice and Krapje, inmates slept in standard concentration-camp barracks, with three tiers of bunks. In the winter, these “barracks” freely admitted rain and snow through their roofs and gaps in their walls. Prisoners would have to wade through ankle deep water inside the cabin. Inmates who died were often left inside the “barracks” for several days before they were removed. In Camp No. III, which housed some 3,000 people, inmates initially slept in the attics of the workshops, in an open depot designated as a railway “tunnel”, or simply in the open. A short time later, eight barracks were erected. Inmates slept in six of these barracks, while the other two were used as a “clinic” and a “hospital”, where ill inmates were sent to die or be executed.
Forced labor: As in all concentration camps, Jasenovac inmates were forced daily to perform some 11 hours of hard labor, under the eye of their Ustaše captors, who would execute any inmate for the most trivial reasons. The labor section was overseen by Ustaša’s Dominik “Hinko” Piccili (or Pičili) and Tihomir Kordić. Piccili (or Pičili) would personally lash inmates to force them to work harder.
He divided the “Jasenovac labor force” into 16 groups, including groups of construction, brickworks, metal-works, agriculture, etc. The inmates would perish from the hard work. Work in the brickworks was hard. Blacksmith work was also done, as the inmates forged knives and other weapons for the Ustaše. Dike construction work was the most feared.
Sanitation: Inside the camp, squalor and lack of sanitation reigned: clutter, blood, vomit and decomposing bodies filled the barracks, which were also full of pests and of the foul stench of the often overflowing latrine bucket. Due to exposure to the elements, inmates suffered from impaired health leading to epidemics of typhus, typhoid, malaria, pleuritis, influenza, dysentery and diphtheria. During pauses in labor (5:00–6:00; 12:00–13:00, 17:00–20:00). inmates had to relieve themselves at open latrines, which consisted of big pits dug in open fields, covered in planks. Inmates would tend to fall inside, and often died. The Ustaše encouraged this by either having internees separate the planks, or by physically drowning inmates inside. The pit would overflow during floods and rains, and was also deliberately drained into the lake, from which inmate drinking water was taken. The inmate’s rags and blankets were too thin to prevent exposure to frost, as was the shelter of the barracks.[65] Clothes and blankets were rarely and poorly cleansed, as inmates were only allowed to wash them briefly in the lake’s waters once a month save during winter time, when the lake froze. Then, a sanitation device was erected in a warehouse, where a few clothes were insufficiently boiled.
Lack of personal possessions: Inmates were stripped of their belongings and personal attire. As inmates, only ragged prison-issue clothing was given to them. In winter, inmates were given thin “rain-coats” and they were allowed to make light sandals. Inmates were given a personal food bowl, designed to contain 0.4 liters (0.088 imp gal; 0.11 U.S. gal) of “soup” they were fed with. Inmates whose bowl was missing (e.g.: stolen by another inmate to defecate in) would receive no food. During delegation visits, inmates were given bowls twice as large with spoons. At such times, inmates were given colored tags.
Anxiety: The fear of death, and the paradox of a situation in which the living dwell next to the dead, had great impact on the internees. Basically, an inmate’s life in a concentration camp can be viewed in the optimal way when looking at it in three stages: arrival to camp, living inside it, and the release. The first stage consisted of the shock caused by the hardships in transit to camp. The Ustaše would fuel this shock by murdering a number of inmates upon arrival and by temporarily housing new-arrivals in warehouses, attics, in the train tunnel and outdoors.
After the inmates grew familiar with the life in camp, they would enter the second and most critical phase: living through the anguish of death, and the sorrow, hardships and abuse. The peril of death was most prominent in “public performances for public punishment” or selections, when inmates would be lined in groups and individuals would be randomly pointed out to receive punishment of death before the rest. The Ustaše would intensify this by prolonging the process, patrolling about and asking questions, gazing at inmates, choosing them and then refrain and point out another. As inmates, people could react to the Ustaše crimes in an active or passive manner. The activists would form resistance movements and groups, steal food, plot escapes and revolts, contacts with the outside world.
Passive inmates would react by attempting to survive, to get through the day unharmed. This is not “going in line to slaughter”, but rather another approach to survival, which deprived the Ustaše of the possibility of completely dehumanizing the inmates. All inmates suffered psychological trauma to some extent: obsessive thoughts of food, paranoia, delusions, day-dreams, lack of self-control. Some inmates reacted with attempts at documenting the atrocities, such as survivors Ilija Ivanović, Dr Nikola Nikolić and Đuro Schwartz, all of whom tried to memorize and even write of events, dates and details. Such deeds were perilous, since writing was punishable by death and tracking dates was extremely difficult.
Mass murder and cruelty
According to Jaša Almuli, the former president of the Serbian Jewish community, Jasenovac was a much more terrifying concentration camp in terms of brutality than many of its German counterparts, even Auschwitz. In the late summer of 1942, tens of thousands of ethnic Serb villagers were deported to Jasenovac from the Kozara region in Bosnia, where NDH forces were fighting the Partisans. Most of the men were murdered in Jasenovac, and the women were sent to forced labor camps in Germany. Children were either murdered or dispersed to Catholic orphanages.
On the night of 29 August 1942, prison guards made bets among themselves as to who could slaughter the largest number of inmates. One of the guards, Petar Brzica, boasted that he had cut the throats of about 1,360 new arrivals.
Other participants who confessed to participating in the bet included Ante Zrinušić-Sipka, who killed some 600 inmates, and Mile Friganović, who gave a detailed and consistent report of the incident. Friganović admitted to having killed some 1,100 inmates. He specifically recounted his torture of an old man named Vukasin Mandrapa; he attempted to compel the man to bless Ante Pavelić, which the old man refused to do, even after Friganović had cut off both his ears and nose 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 Nikolić.
The Ustaše slaughtered inmates with a knife that became known as the “Srbosjek” (“Serb-cutter”).
The construction was originally a type of wheat sheaf knife, manufactured prior to and during World War II by the German factory Gebrüder Gräfrath from Solingen-Widdert, under the trademark “Gräwiso”. 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-centimetre-long (4.7 in) 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.[89] Its agricultural purpose was to enable field workers to cut wheat sheaves open before threshing them. The knife was fixed on the glove plate to prevent injuries and to increase work speed.
Systematic extermination of prisoners. 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 physical fitness.
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. Croatian engineer Dominik “Hinko” Piccili (or Pičili) perfected this method by converting seven of the kiln’s furnace chambers into more sophisticated crematories. Crematoria 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.” Later testimony, however, say the Gradina crematory had become operational. Some bodies were buried rather than cremated, as shown by exhumation of bodies late in the war.
Gassing and poisoning: The Ustaše tried to employ poisonous gas to kill inmates arriving in Stara Gradiška. They first tried to gas the women and children who arrived from Djakovo with gas vans that Simo Klaić called “green Thomas”.[95] The method was later replaced with stationary gas-chambers with Zyklon B and sulfur dioxide.
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. Vjekoslav “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.
Gradina: The Ustaše utilized empty areas in the vicinity of the villages of 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.
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. There is evidence suggesting that killings took place there at that time and afterwards.
The Ustaše carried out extensive means of torture and methods of killing against detainees which included but not limited to: inserting hot nails under finger nails, mutilating parts of the body including plucking out eyeballs, tightening chains around ones head until the skull fractured and the eyes popped and also, placing salt in open wounds. Women faced untold horrors including rape, cutting off ones breasts and also, cutting out wombs from pregnant women. Many of these mutilated and murdered bodies were disposed of into the adjacent river. The Ustaše took pride in the crimes they committed and even wore necklaces of human eyes and tongues that were cut out from their Serb victims.
Inmate help
In July 1942, Diana Budisavljević, with the help of a German officer, Albert von Kotzian, obtained written permission to take the children from the Stara Gradiška concentration camp. With the help of the Ministry of Social Affairs, including Kamilo Bresler, she was able to relocate child inmates from the camp to Zagreb, and other places.
The Red Cross has been accused of insufficiently aiding the persecuted people of Nazi Europe. The local representative, Julius Schmidllin, was contacted by the Jewish community, which sought financial aid. The organisation helped to release Jews from camps, and even debated with the Croatian government in relation to visiting the Jasenovac camp. The wish was eventually granted in July 1944. The camp was prepared for the arrival of the delegation, so nothing incriminating was found. Inmate resistance groups were aided by contacts among the Ustaše. One of these groups, operating in the tannery, was assisted by an Ustaše, Dr Marin Jurcev (and his wife), who were later hanged for this on orders of Dinko Šakić, as was any Ustasha found guilty of consorting or collaborating with inmates were executed.
