Jasenovac (pronounced [jasěnoʋat͡s])[6] was a concentration and extermination camp established in the village of the same name by the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II.

In 1932, Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić proclaimed: "The knife, revolver, machine gun and time bomb; these are the idols, these are bells that will announce the dawning and the resurrection of the independent state of Croatia".

Here is how the Croatian Catholic Bishop of Mostar, Alojzije Mišić, described the mass killings of Serbs just in one small area of Herzegovina, just during the first 6 months of the war:[36] People were captured like beasts.

Of the 3,358 Danica inmates Dizdar was able to trace by name, he found that 2,862, i.e. 85%, were later killed by the Ustaše at the Jadovno and Jasenovac concentration camps, the vast majority Serbs, but also hundreds of Jews and some Croats.

[citation needed] On 10 April 1941, the Independent State of Croatia was established, supported by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, and it adopted similar racial and political doctrines.

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 Serbs inside the Independent State of Croatia (NDH).

[57] Giuseppe Masucci, secretary to the Vatican's representative in the NDH, considered Kvaternik the worst of Ustaše, noting he told him Croatian Jews committed "300,000 abortions, rapes and deflorations of young girls.

"[58] As the Ustaše terror against Serbs and others, of which Jasenovac was the apogee, ignited wider Partisan resistance, the Germans in October 1942 pressured Pavelić to remove and exile Dido Kvaternik.

Some inmates reacted with attempts at documenting the atrocities, such as survivors Ilija Ivanović, Dr Nikola Nikolić and Đuro Schwartz, all of whom tried to memorize and even write of events, dates and details.

[citation needed] In the late summer of 1942, tens of thousands of ethnic Serb villagers were deported to Jasenovac from the Kozara region in Bosnia, where NDH forces were fighting the Partisans.

[123][118][10][124][125] The construction was originally a type of wheat sheaf knife, manufactured prior to and during World War II by the German factory Gebrüder Gräfrath from Solingen-Widdert, under the trademark "Gräwiso".

The mechanical means of extermination included: Manual methods were executions that took part in utilizing sharp or blunt craftsmen tools: knives, saws, hammers, et cetera.

[151] In July 1942, Diana Budisavljević, with the help of a German officer, Albert von Kotzian, obtained written permission to take the children from the Stara Gradiška concentration camp.

One of these groups, operating in the tannery, was assisted by an Ustaša, Dr Marin Jurčev and his wife, who were later hanged for this on orders of Dinko Šakić, as was any Ustasha found guilty of consorting or collaborating with inmates were executed.

[154] Among the few surviving inmates of the camp, at least four – Miroslav Trautman, Karl Weiss, Walter Grünn and Egon Berger – all testified that the Ustashe dug up and burned corpses at Jasenovac.

On the day of the revolt the Ustaše killed the 460 remaining prisoners who chose not to escape [161] and later torched the buildings, guardhouses, torture rooms, the "Piccili Furnace", plus all the other structures in the camp.

After the war, German, NDH, Slovene and Chetnik POWs were brought to the ruined camp to extract building materials, including from the two-kilometre-long (1.2 mi), four-metre-high (13 ft) brick wall that surrounded it.

[170] Historian Tomislav Dulić disputed the previously often quoted 700,000 figure in Jasenovac, but stated that an estimated 100,000 victims still makes it one of the largest camps in Europe during World War II.

[193] A 15 November 1945 report of the National Committee of Croatia for the investigation of the crimes of the occupation forces and their collaborators, which was commissioned by the new government of Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito, indicated that between 500,000 and 600,000 people were murdered at Jasenovac.

After Bulajić retired from his post, Dragan Cvetković, a researcher from the museum, published a book on wartime losses together with a Croatian co-author, giving a figure of approximately 100,000 victims in Jasenovac.

[234][235] While high Jasenovac victim estimates became frozen, Goldstein notes that specific details – like the Jasenovac-related memoirs of Riffer, Miliša, Ciliga, Von Horstenau and Diana Budisavljević – were almost never presented.

Its central symbol is the Flower Memorial, “a sign of eternal renewal” designed by Bogdan Bogdanovic,[236] with a plaque inscribed with a verse from the antiwar poem “The Pit”, by the Croatian poet-Partisan, Ivan Goran Kovačić:[237][238]That simple happiness, the window's glint; Swallow and young; or windborne garden sweet - Where?

[241] Simo Brdar, assistant director of the Jasenovac Memorial Site, doubted that the Croatian authorities, dominated by nationalists, were committed to preserving the artifacts and documentation of the concentration camp.

The director of the Memorial Site, Nataša Jovičić, explained how the permanent museum exhibition would be changed to avoid provoking fear, and cease displaying the "technology of death" (mallets, daggers, etc.

[168] However, the new exhibition was described as "postmodernist trash" by Efraim Zuroff, and criticized for the removal of all Ustaše killing instruments from the display and a lack of explanation of the ideology that led to the crimes committed there in the name of the Croatian people.

[251] On 17 April 2011, in a commemoration ceremony, former-Croatian President Ivo Josipović warned that there were "attempts to drastically reduce or decrease the number of Jasenovac victims ... faced with the devastating truth here that certain members of the Croatian people were capable of committing the cruelest of crimes, I want to say that all of us are responsible for the things that we do."

[258] A description of one photograph read: "They killed children in the mangers, then slaughtered them with knives, axes and razors, impaled them on bayonets, burned in the Jasenovac crematorium and in cauldrons they cooked soup from them".

[264] In 2020, the official newspaper of Croatian Catholic Archdioceses, Glas Koncila, published yet another series engaging in Jasenovac- and even Holocaust-denial, with selective, blatantly distorted quotes from Jewish and other prisoners, in an attempt to yet again claim no mass extermination took place in Jasenovac.

Despite protests by Jewish, Serb and Croat antifascist organizations, the plaque and Ustaše salute were allowed to remain at Jasenovac until criticism by the US State Department special envoy on Holocaust issues,[268] forced the Croatian government to move it to a nearby town.

[270] Historians noted the film contained many lies and fabrications, including a forged newspaper headline, proclaiming corpses from the invented “postwar Jasenovac” floated more than 60 miles upriver, to Zagreb.