After the construction of the wall in the summer of 1942 the watchtowers were destroyed.

Bunker and Watchtower, picture taken in Summer 1942.

At the beginning, Conentracion camp Jasenovac was fenced with several rows of barbed wire. In 1942, the prisoners themselves built a wall of the height of 3-5 metres on three of its sides, with the Sava River being a natural barrier on the fourth side.

The tunnel of horrors - part of the Brickyard building. First detainees of the Brickyard camp spent winter nights there, until the huts for their accommodation were built.

Dr Mile Boskovic in front of the camp hospital, photo taken 1944. Only two months after the photograph was taken, Mila Boskovic was killed in the camp.

Upon their arrival in Jasenovac, prisoners would most frequently first be beaten up and tortured in the village itself, in the Bačić family house that served as a Ustasha HQ. After being received at the camp, they would be met by beaters. Such reception would frequently lead to cruel murders. Reception at the camp was also followed by stealing. Money, jewellery, better shoes and clothes would be taken away from people. Possession of any valuable item was very dangerous.

Prisoners worked to excavate earth for brick manufacture and manufactured bricks and tiles.

The Electric Power Station supplied the concentration camp and Jasenovac with electric power. Power was produced from timber provided and transported to the camp by prisoners from the forest group. Prisoners from this work group would often be killed during work or after its completion. Most of them would not return from any outside work for the guards would kill them during their return to the camp. In the background you can see the building of a building group and carpentry.

One of the places were liquidations took place was the platform above the Sava River. River ships and barges would be loaded and unloaded there at the dock equipped with a hoist. At the end of 1944 and beginning of 1945, this platform, named Granik, served as a place for killing for Ustashas. Ustashas would strip a victim naked at night and tie his hands behind his back. In most of the cases they would tie the victim to a heavy object at Granik and hit him in the head with a hard object or cut his throat. The victim would fall straight into the Sava River.

The scaffold port in Jasenovac and view of the largest Jasenovac execution site, Donja Gradina.

The work on „bajer“, a place where earth was excavated for bricks, was very hard because they worked throughout the day in water and in the mud. During the flood, bajer would be filled with water and become a lake (this like was connected to the Sava River by an underground channel). Prisoners called it the Spooky Lake because many liquidated prisoners were thrown in it.

Detainees make wicker baskets. In the background, one can see the barracks that housed the detainees.

Pero Vukic’s house

×

Pero Vukic’s house, with 5-6 plum trees in his garden, was located next to the detention camp. Ustashas surrounded the house with barbed wired, guarded it, and used it as a place for torture. In this terrible yard, the detainees often saw groups of young children and women, petrified with fear and waiting for impending death. The owner of the house had been taken with his wife and three children to Zemun where his wife and children were killed. He was later transported "by train of terror" to Jasenovac and transferred to Gradina where he was killed.

The "Poplar of Horror”

×

The "Poplar of Horror" is located in the village of Donja Gradina, at the confluence of the Una to the Sava River. This is where the execution site of the Jasenovac concentration camp begins, and it stretches all the way down the Sava River. Before the beginning of 1942 when the village was turned into a killing site, a Serbian Orthodox population lived there. Therefore, the above mentioned poplar tree got the role of a scaffold. Ustashas nailed huge iron spikes into the tree so that the executioner and his victim could more easily climb the tree. The victims were often lifted up the tree by pulleys. They hung people in a way that they would stay alive as long as possible to suffer even more. From this tree, horrible screams and sighs were heard, so the inmates and the Ustashas called it the "Poplar of Sighs".”

In January 1942, the area of the village of Donja Gradina was merged to the Concentration camp. This village, located across from Camp III - Brickyard, on the right bank of the Sava River, became the largest place of execution in Jasenovac.”