The camp was established on the site of an abandoned flour mill that was once used by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Đakovo-Osijek and was initially run autonomously by the Jewish community.

In early 1942, the camp experienced an outbreak of typhoid fever which was exacerbated by the arrival of Jewish deportees from Slovenia.

The NDH's ruling Ustaše movement subsequently assumed direct control of the camp and many detainees were consequently subjected to torture, rape and degradation.

In 2013, a sculpture titled Peace in Heaven, by Croatian-born Israeli sculptor Dina Merhav, was unveiled in Đakovo to commemorate those who were interned at the camp.

The Ustaše were outlawed in Yugoslavia, but received covert assistance from Benito Mussolini's Italy, which had territorial pretensions in Istria and Dalmatia.

The Ustaše carried out a number of actions aimed at undermining Yugoslavia, most notably the Velebit uprising in 1932 and the assassination of King Alexander in Marseilles in 1934.

Following Alexander's assassination, the Ustaše movement's senior-most leaders, including Pavelić, were tried in absentia in both France and Yugoslavia and sentenced to death, but were granted protection by Mussolini and thus evaded capture.

[4] Between September and November 1940, Hungary and Romania joined the Tripartite Pact, aligning themselves with the Axis, and Italy invaded Greece.

[5] Intending to secure his southern flank for the impending attack on the Soviet Union, German dictator Adolf Hitler began placing heavy pressure on Yugoslavia to join the Axis.

Two days later, a group of pro-Western, Serbian nationalist Royal Yugoslav Air Force officers deposed the country's regent, Prince Paul, in a bloodless coup d'état.

They placed his teenage nephew Peter on the throne and brought to power a "government of national unity" led by the head of the Royal Yugoslav Air Force, General Dušan Simović.

[13] The establishment of the NDH had been announced over the radio by Slavko Kvaternik, a former Austro-Hungarian Army officer who had been in contact with Croatian nationalists abroad, on 10 April.

[17] On 17 April, the Ustaše instituted the Legal Provision for the Defence of the People and State, a law legitimizing the establishment of concentration camps and the mass shooting of hostages in the NDH.

[18] Đakovo, located about 197 kilometres (122 mi) southeast of Zagreb, is notable as the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Đakovo-Osijek, and prior to and during World War II, was the home to one of Croatia's largest concentrations of ethnic Germans.

[19] In November 1941, two senior local Jewish community leaders, Dragutin Rosenberg and Aleksandar Klein, persuaded the head of the Jewish Bureau of the Ustaše Surveillance Service (Croatian: Ustaška nadzorna služba; UNS), Vilko Kühnel, to authorize the establishment of a refugee camp in Đakovo.

Local Jewish youths quickly converted a 40-metre (130 ft)-long, three-storey abandoned flour mill that had once been used by the archdiocese into a refugee camp to house the women and children.

[19] The policemen allowed detainees to leave the camp to purchase necessary goods in the town, to visit the hospital in Osijek and to call relatives and friends.

Prominent locals, most notably the Archbishop of Đakovo, Anton Akšamović, feared that the outbreak could spread outside the camp.

In mid-April 1942, the Ustaše assumed direct control of the camp with a detachment from Jasenovac led by Jozo Matijević.

[32] On 18 May 1942, the Ministry of Health asked the Directorate for Public Order and Security (Croatian: Ravnateljstvo za javni red i sigurnost; RAVSIGUR) to dissolve the camp within one month.

[19] This message was personally relayed to RAVSIGUR by the Minister of Health, Ivo Petrić, who proposed the "relocation" or "closing down" of the camp together with the provision of "improved and increased food for the prisoners".

[34] For days, they were left in locked railway carriages on the train tracks outside the camp, and many consequently died of heat, thirst and hunger.

[21] In August 1942, around 1,200 Jews were deported from Osijek, leaving all but 40 to 50 of the Jewish foster children that had been taken from the Đakovo camp left in the town.

[19] In September 1952, the Union of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia unveiled five monuments to the victims of the Holocaust in Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Novi Sad and Đakovo.

[26] On this basis, the historians Jens Hoppe and Alexander Korb have concluded that the camp's mortality rate amounted to nearly 19 percent.

[19] In June 2013, a sculpture titled Peace in Heaven, by Croatian-born Israeli sculptor Dina Merhav, was unveiled in Đakovo to commemorate those who were interned at the camp.