Stara Gradiška concentration camp

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Stara Gradiška was the fifth subcamp of the Jasenovac concentration camp, established in 1941 to the east of the main camp near the village of Stara Gradiška. The camp was specially constructed for women and children of Jews, Gypsies, Serbs, and anti-fascist Croats.

Eventually more than 50,000 men, women and children were incarcerated and then massacred by the Ustaše in the medium camp and guarded by Germans and a few female Croatian Ustasha troops. All of the women guards were sisters or wives of the male guards and they were known throughout the camp for their cruelty. Nada Tanić Luburić, sister of the first commandant of Jasenovac Maks Luburić, and wife of the second was personally pointed out as one of the diabolical female Ustaše guards in Stara Gradiška.

[edit] The systematic destruction of inmates

The inmates of Stara Gradiska were liquidated by the Ustase in many ways: Firearms, mallets, knives etc.

The most notorious ways of liquidation in camp,however, were those which were devised at the "K" unit or "Kula", where Jewish and Orthodox women, with weak or little children, were either starved and tortured at the "Gagro Hotel", a cellar which Ustase Nickola Gagro used as a place of torture. Other inmates in the Kula were poisoned in a gas-chamber:

The initial gas experiments were conducted at the veterinary stables near the so-called Economy, where horses and then humans were poisoned via sulphur dioxide and later with Zyklon B, which was also tested on children in the yard, where the commandant Vrban, who was in charge of the gassing, viewed its effect. the gassing maily took place in the Attics of "the infamous tower". Vrban stated in his trail:

"Q. And what did you do with the children

A. The weaker ones we poisoned

Q. How?

A. We led them into a yard... and into it we threw gas

Q. What gas?

A. Zyklon."

A witness confirms from her angle:

"During my captivity at camp, especially from May to the end of 1942, the Ustase brought large shipments of Serb women and children (from Kozara). They instantly split the children from their mothers,and sent the women to labor in Germany.If some women were not able to work, they were murdered,as well as did their children. The children were in the ages of two months to 10-12 years. Nutrition and care for the children were horrible.Newborn infants were not allowed to receive any food and died of starvation, other caught dysentary from the spoiled food... the children slept on the floor,half-naked. 30-40 children would die each day. In July,the Ustase picked 2000 of the children...concentrated them in one of the rooms and strangeled them with poison gas...once the children were dead they tossed the bodies in the yard, in a pile... in many other cases, the bodies remained in the yard for several days"

(Qtd. "Zlocini Okupatora Nijhovih Pomagaca Harvatskoj Protiv Jevrija". Pages 144-145)

Witness Cijordana Friedlender testified:

"At that time fresh women and children came daily to the Camp at Stara Gradiska. About fourteen days later, Vrban [Commandant of the Camp] ordered all children to be separated from their mothers and put in one room. Ten of us were told to carry them there in blankets. The children crawled about the room, and one child put an arm and leg through the doorway, so that the door could not be closed. Vrban shouted: 'Push it!' When I did not do that, he banged the door and crushed the child's leg. Then he took the child by its whole-leg, and banged it on the wall till it was dead. After that we continued carrying the children in. When the room was full, Vrban brought poison gas and killed them all"

(Qtd. Shorthand notes of the Ljubo Milos case, p. 292-293)

Additionaly, gas-vans were constructed for the need of liquidating Jewish women and children which came to Stara Gradiska from camp Djakovo, witness Simo Klaic recalled it in the Dinko Sakic trail as "green Thomas", a police-van whose exhaust was linked to its trunk.

Witness Dr. Dragutin Skgratic confirmed:

"He (commandant Dinko Sakic) directed his guards to pack women and children into the vans, fitted a rubber hose from the exhaust to the interior and drove around and around the camp until the passengers were dead, 'They killed at least half the group like this as soon as they arrived"

(Qtd. statement to the press during the Dinko Sakic case, new-york times, May 2nd, 1998: "War crimes horrors revive as Croat faces a possible trial", by Chris Hedges)

[edit] Cruelty

Stara Gradiska was the most notorious camp in the Jasenovac complex besides the main camp (Ciglana), this was mainly due to the crimes which were committed against women and children, during which several criminals stood out: Antun Vrban, Nada Luburic, Maja Buzdon, Jozo Stojcic and especially, commandant and former-friar Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic, which was extremlly notorious for his time in Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska, killing scores of inmates with his bare hands, women and children included.

The cruellty was increased,however, during torture that took place in cellar 3, the Gagro Hotel, where starved inmates were tortured and then stangeled to death by a wire.

In the Dinko Sakic trail, witness Ivo Senjanovic recalled how people were locked there without food or water: "The people were graduatlly dying. It was horrible to hear them cry for help"

[edit] The clearing of camp

In early april 1945, the partisans were fighting nearby Stara Gradiska, and thus the Ustase began clearing the camp, killig some of the inmates and transporting others to Lepoglava and from there to Jasenovac, where they were to be killed, several survivors, alike Simo Klaic, who stressed in Sakic's trail that Lepoglava "was evil, as if all evil from Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska concentrated there", fled out of the train cart in which he was to be transported towards Jasenovac, he later learned, as he testified in the court, that the other two carts in the transport were torched in Jasenovac. The camp was liberated in April 1945 by the Red Army.

It is not to be confused with the prison in Stara Gradiška that existed after 1945.sr:Логор Стара Градишка sv:Stara Gradiška