Photos: Top Left: The train car at Jasenovac that transported prisoners to the camp. Top Right: The hills and indentations which mark the Jasenovac camp; the hills represent former barracks, the indentations indicate where mass graves were found. Bottom Left: The Communist era memorial at Jasenovac.

Over 32 million Yugoslavs came to the Jasenovac exhibit over the years, and yet the tragedy of the war [in the 1990's] still happened.

A visit to Jasenovac, the main concentration camp used by the Croatian Fascists, or Ustashe, where the majority of victims was Serb, is essential in understanding the war in Bosnia. The atrocities of the Second World War were an integral part of the propaganda that was used in order to stoke nationalism and to create that precarious social reality of us vs. them. Filip and George were kind enough to give us a tour of the museum, although it is in the process of being completely renovated.

In all of Yugoslavia, there were 600,000 victims during the Second World War. Among the victims, it is estimated that 80,000 – 100,000 died in Jasenovac. Camp records were destroyed in 1942 and 1945. The breakdown is estimated as follows: 17,000 Jews; 12,000 Roma; 10,000 Croats; and 50,000 Serbs.  The Serbs came from a limited area of Slavonia and the Krajina – including what today is northern Bosnia. The Jasenovac camp peaked at 3000 prisoners. If transports were in excess of the 3000 prisoner capacity of the camp, the extra prisoners were murdered.

In the first year of the memorial (1968) there were over one million visitors. Under communism, there was an annual average of between 500,000 and 700,000.  They were primarily school children. Since the fall of communism and the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the government no longer provides transportation or funding for schools to visit Jasenovac.

The new museum has 250 glass plates suspended from the ceiling, containing the names of the victims of Jasenovac. The destruction of records has made this data difficult to reconstruct.

The first text from survivors of Jasenovac was published by an underground partisan newspaper in 1942. Additional information about the privations of the camps can be gleaned from postcards that were sent registered; they had a twenty-word limit. There is also outside testimony. In 1942 the Red Cross visited Camp III (the brick factory – main camp). For the visit, prisoners were required to wear armbands that identified them by category: red – Croats; blue – Serbs; yellow – Jews; green: Moslems. It appears that such armbands, typical in other camps, were only used for this one visit.

In the 1970’s, information was gathered about the victims of Jasenovac by sending about a questionnaire to family members. About 7000 were returned.

Today the brickworks that made up the camp no longer stands. The villagers of Jasenovac used the material from the camp at the end of the war to build homes and other structures. The bricks that were used can, according to Filip, be identified as having originated in the camp. What can be seen at the camp today are the indentations in the earth which indicate the mass graves - and the small hills which were formerly barracks. Approximately 5000 Ustashe were stationed in bunkers along the perimeter of the camp.

In the camp, Serb children were converted by the Ustashe to Catholicism and were made to wear Ustashe uniforms; they were often sent to Croat families for “reeducation." At the camp, 50% of the prisoners were Serbs.  Until the mass killings at the end of the war, the majority of them were transported to labor camps in Austria. In 1945 approximately 700 prisoners attempted to escape. Only 150 survived.

Contrary to the information received in Banja Luka, there were several trials in Zagreb at the end of the war – and they have continued up until now. In 1986 Andrija Artukovic, the former Ustashe Interior Minister was tried.  He was former Ustashe Interior minister. In 1999 Dino Sakic was found guilt of crimes against humanity.

To end our visit, we returned to Donja Gradina, the site of 120 mass graves. The memorial grounds are meticulously kept, optimistically awaiting the return of the busloads of visitors of years past.