Jasenovac is a place of the most horrific suffering of the Orthodox Christian Serbs in their overall history. The Ustashas, whose troops consisted of Croats and Herzegovina Muslims, established a camp where they brutally murdered Serbs, using weapons, axes and maces. In order to save ammunition, they took many prisoners to a brick making site nearby and threw them into burning furnaces. They formed lines of people tied up one after another so that the first to go would pull down all the others. Other were slaughtered at the Sava river banks and threw into the water.
In torturing Serbs, The Ustashas expressed such violent savagery that even their Nazi allies were shocked.
GEOGRAPHY
Jasenovac is on the Sava river, on the border of present Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, some 100 km to the south-east from Zagreb. The larger part of the camp was on the Croatian side, while a place, Donja Gradina, a place of torture and suffering, was on the other side of the border. The camp consisted of five parts and several killing sites, covering the area of 200 km2.
HISTORY
The Jasenovac camp was opened in August 1941. In April 1945 the remaining prisoners were killed and the camp destroyed by the Ustashas in order to cover up all traces of their crime. However, there is an extensive documentation about the atrocities committed in Jasenovac.
Up to the present day, the final number of victims has not been established. Estimates go from 700,000 to 1,200,000 victims. Apart from the Serbs, also Jews and Gypsies (the Roma) were killed in Jasenovac.