The biggest concentration camp was Jasenovac in Croatia.

Moreover, in Yugoslavia there existed the Jasenovac concentration camp ( August 1941 – April 1945 ), which was the only central extermination camp outside of Poland, and the only one not operated by Nazis, but by the fascist Ustaše forces of the Independent State of Croatia, the majority of whose victims were Orthodox Christian Serbs, Roma, and Jews.

Jasenovac concentration camp ( Croatian, Serbian: ; ; ;, sometimes spelled " Yasenovatz ") was an extermination camp established in the Independent State of Croatia ( NDH ) during World War II.

The camp was established by the governing Ustaše regime 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.

The largest camp was the ' Brickworks ' camp at Jasenovac, about southeast of Zagreb.

The authorities of SFR Yugoslavia conducted a population survey in 1964 that showed a far lower figure, but kept it a secret ; when Vladimir Žerjavić published such lower figures in the 1980s, he was criticized by Antun Miletić among others, but his research has since been considered trustworthy by authorities on World War II Yugoslav history such as Jozo Tomasevich. 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.

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 the Serbian population of the NDH.

Jasenovac was located in the German occupation zone of the Independent State of Croatia.

It is unclear whether Jasenovac was to be used primarily as a death camp in its own right, like Sajmište, or more as a collection depot from which Jews would be transported to Auschwitz.

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 ".

The Jasenovac complex was built between August 1941 and February 1942.

The Jasenovac Memorial Museum was temporarily abandoned during the Yugoslav Wars when it was taken over by the rebel Republic of Serb Krajina.

Israeli President Moshe Katsav visited Jasenovac in 2003, and was the first Israeli head of state to officially visit the country.

During World War II, Sisak was the site of the Sisak Children's Concentration Camp which was part of the large Jasenovac cluster.

Through the direct intervention of Vjekoslav " Maks " Luburić, who then headed Section III of the ISC internal security service ( Ustaška Narodna Služba ), which was responsible for administering the puppet state's system of prison camps, Filipović was quickly released and posted to the Jasenovac complex of labour and death camps where he was at first an inmate with benefited status, who aided the Ustase, and later appointed Ustase, commanding a small transit camp nigh Jasenovac, in early 1942, He reportedly killed an inmate there for hiding a loaf of bread.

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 in its more than 3½ years of operation.

In all documentation, the term " Jasenovac " relates to either the complex at large or, when referring to a specific camp, to camp nr.

In one of the first published memoirs about life and death in the Jasenovac complex, a Croatian medical doctor and academic, Dr. Nikola Nikolić, who had been imprisoned in Camp III, described his first meeting with Filipović: “ His voice had an almost feminine quality which was at odds with his physical stature and coarse face .” Nikolić recalled standing in the second row of a group of prisoners who had been lined up to watch as another group of prisoners were herded in front of Filipović.

During World War II, the former Austro-Hungarian fortress was used by the Ustaša regime as the Stara Gradiška concentration camp, a part of the Jasenovac complex, the largest extermination camp in occupied Yugoslavia.

Ustaše militia executing people over a mass grave near Jasenovac concentration camp

The Socialist Republic of Croatia adopted a new law on the Jasenovac Memorial Area in 1990, shortly before the first democratic elections in the country.

Israeli President Shimon Peres visited Jasenovac on 25 July 2010 dubbing it a " demonstration of sheer sadism ".

Filipović went on to describe his tenure in command of Stara Gradiška, a prison camp primarily for women which was designated Camp V within the Jasenovac system:

However, Yad Vashem Center seems to contradict itself as, in a separate entry on the Ustasha movement in general, cites " more than 500, 000 Serbs killed " in the entire NDH, including Jasenovac and all other camps and massacres.

With regard to the Serbs, Žerjavić's calculation ended with a total of 197, 000 Serbian civilian victims on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia: 50, 000 in the Jasenovac concentration camp, 25, 000 died of typhoid, 45, 000 killed by the Germans, 15, 000 killed by Italians, 34, 000 civilians killed in battles between Ustaše, Chetniks and Partisans, 28, 000 killed in prisons, pits and other camps, etc.

In December 2006, a controversy arose when a video was published showing Mesić during a speech in Australia in the early 1990s, where he said that the Croats " won a victory on April 10th " ( when the fascist aligned Independent State of Croatia was formed ) " as well as in 1945 " ( when the communist anti-fascists prevailed and the Socialist Republic of Croatia was formed ), as well as that Croatia needed to apologize to no one for the Jasenovac concentration camp ( i. e. the WWII Holocaust against Serbs and Jews ).

Had the Ustaše done nothing other than blowing up our martyr church in Jasenovac as they did several days ago, it would be reason enough to declare war on them, both as a nation and as a state.

The very Jasenovac camp is a stain on the honor of the ISC.

Having been tracked down by the Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff, the District Attorney in Zagreb brought charges against Šakić on April 20, 1998 for war crimes during World War II when he was the chief of the Jasenovac concentration camp.

* Dinko is featured on the Military Channel's show " Nazi Collaborators ", episode " Beast of the Balkans " The show specifically claims that around 300, 000 people died at Jasenovac.

Others, like the United States Holocaust Museum and, most importantly, the Jasenovac memorial museum in Croatia, have accepted both scientists ' estimates as realistic.

During WWII the Ustasha Jasenovac concentration camp was established just across the river Sava from Bosanska Krajina, and many of the region's inhabitants ( mainly Serbs, Gypsies and Jews but also some communist Bosnians and Croats ) were killed there.

It spills into the Sava River near small town of Jasenovac.

* 1945 – World War II: Prisoners at the Jasenovac concentration camp revolt.

* Jews held at Jasenovac concentration camp, near Stara Gradiška, were liberated as a result of his intervention.

Estimates of civilian Serbs killed under the Ustaša regime exceed 500, 000 ( including an estimated 300, 000 in the Jasenovac concentration camp alone.

Ustaše guard in a mass grave at Jasenovac concentration camp.

In Jasenovac, the majority of victims were ethnic Serbs, whom the Ustaše wanted to remove from the NDH, along with the Jews and Roma peoples.

The Jasenovac Memorial Site quotes a similar figure of between 80, 000 and 100, 000 victims.

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.

In addition to specifying the means of extermination, the Nazis often arranged the imprisonment or transfer of inmates to Jasenovac.

It thus appears that the Nazis inspected Jasenovac, possibly due to doubts they had about the Ustaše devotion to the extermination of the Jews.

Kasche wrote the following: " The Poglavnik asks General Bader to realize that the Jasenovac camp cannot receive the refugees from Kozara.