Đakovo internment camp
Internment camp run by the Ustaše in Croatia during World War II / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Đakovo was an internment camp for Jewish, and to a lesser extent Serb, women and children in the town of Đakovo in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) that was operational between December 1941 and July 1942, during World War II.
Đakovo | |
---|---|
Internment camp | |
Location of Đakovo in the Independent State of Croatia | |
Location | Đakovo, Independent State of Croatia (modern-day Croatia) |
Operated by | Camp detainees (1941–1942), Ustaše (1942) |
Original use | Flour mill |
Operational | 2 December 1941 – 7 July 1942 |
Inmates | Jewish and Serb women and children |
Number of inmates | ~3,800 |
Killed | 569–800 |
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. It received its first arrivals on 2 December 1941. 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 mid-May, the NDH's Ministry of Health ordered that the camp be shut down. Between 15 June and 7 July 1942, 2,400–3,200 detainees were transported to the Jasenovac concentration camp, where they perished. As many as 3,800 women and children were interned at the camp over the course of its existence, and at least 569 women and children died, although this figure may have been as high as 800.
In 1945, Yugoslavia's new communist authorities undertook exhumations on the Đakovo camp's former grounds. In September 1952, the Union of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia unveiled a monument to the victims of the camp. Following Croatia's independence from Yugoslavia, the former campsite was turned into a gas station. A commemorative ceremony is held every year at the site, as well as at a nearby cemetery where the bodies of detainees were buried. The cemetery is unique in that it is the only burial site in Europe where victims of the Holocaust were interred under their first and last names and not merely their inmate numbers. 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.