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The Jastrebarsko concentration camp
The Jastrebarsko concentration camp was a concentration camp near Jastrebarsko, which was run by the Ustasha in 1942 during the NDH in the Second World War. It was a camp for children, mainly from Kozara and other parts of the NDH.
In the middle of July 1942, the first transports of children from the camp in Stara Gradiška arrived in the abandoned barracks of the Italian army, in the castle of Counts Erdödy and the Franciscan monastery near Jastrebarski, and then children from the camp farms in Jablanco and Mlaka were brought. About 2,000 children were brought to the village of Reka, three kilometers from Jastrebarski. There were 3,336 children in both camps. The children were stuffed into wagons and transported to those locations where they had their hair cut and had to wear Ustasha uniforms. They slept in barracks and on straw, and some nuns were also involved in the management system of the camp.
1,018 children died in the camp, mostly from disease. On August 26, 1942, the partisans freed approximately 700 children from that location, closing the camp
During World War II in Yugoslavia, when the village of Gornja Rijeka, Croatia was part of the Independent State of Croatia, it was the site of a concentration camp. A number of women, some of them with children, were interned there between November 1941 and the spring of 1942; the camp's population was estimated as between 200 and 400 at any given time. in March a group of 147 Serbian women and children were moved from Gornja Rijeka to Loborgrad concentration camp and then on to Zagreb and Zemun, and in turn to camps in Germany and Serbia.
The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II-era puppet state of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. It was established in parts of occupied Yugoslavia on 10 April 1941, after the invasion by the Axis powers. Its territory consisted of most of modern-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as some parts of modern-day Serbia and Slovenia.
During its entire existence, the NDH was governed as a one-party state by the fascist Ustaša organization. The regime targeted Serbs, Jews and Roma as part of a large-scale campaign of genocide.
In the territory controlled by the Independent State of Croatia, between 1941 and 1945, there existed 22 concentration camps. The largest camp was Jasenovac. Two camps, Jastrebarsko and Sisak, held only children.