Sisak children's concentration camp

45.49527777777816.365555555556Koordinaten: 45 ° 29 ' 43 " N, 16 ° 21' 56" E

The Sisak concentration camp was a concentration camp for children in Sisak, a small Croatian town, about 100 kilometers southeast of Zagreb. The main complex of this camp was located west of the freight depot of Sisak on the river bank of the Kupa, not far from the urbanized union cemetery. The camp was surrounded by a barbed wire fence so that an escape was not possible for the children.

History

Management

The concentration camp Sisak was opened on July 12, 1942, it was one of about 20 camps that were built between 1941 and 1945 in what was then the Independent State of Croatia ( NDH ) of the fascist Croatian Ustasha. Sisak formed a special and subcamp of the Jasenovac concentration camp to the next Sisak four sub-camps, as well as three smaller camps were still belong. Of the approximately 10,000 children in the camps three children died around 4000. The camp was liberated in May 1945 by Yugoslav partisans.

Determination

The aim of the detention was officially re-educate the captive children, but it served to a large extent the genocide of Jews, Gypsies and Serbs. The death rate in the camp was extremely high. Dysentery was one of the usual diseases and causes of death. Often, the children were given no food for days on end, then turn food, which they had added sodium hydroxide.

One of the greatest crimes the abduction of children from the Serbian located in Bosnia and Herzegovina Kozara region was in 1942. The children were separated from their parents and placed among other things to Sisak. Of the approximately 6690 children in the camp lost more than 1,600 lives.

Behavior of the civilian population

The lives of many children was only saved by the use of Croatian civilians who risked their own lives. Employees of the Red Cross had collaborated with Yugoslav Communists and thus can smuggle as many children as possible from the camp. The civilian population gave these children as their own.

Memorial

In memory of the suffering in the concentration camp a fountain with statues of seven children playing was built. The also mounted commemorative plaque was torn down during the fighting between Croatian and Serb forces in Croatia war and destroyed. Now was a nightclub from the previous four-story main building of the camp.