In the Independent State of Croatia, there was a welter of different camps running the gamut from short-lived temporary transit camp to concentration camps and death facilities. The Ustaša regime's decidedly proactive involvement in the implementation of the Holocaust can be among other be evidenced from the fact that they were the only German-allied regime that operated their own death camps independent of the Nazi regime.
The Gospić camp started operating on June 18, 1941. The camp functioned as a transit hub and administrative center of a broader camp complex that enveloped multiple compounds in the Lika region and on Pag island. The guard force detained Serb and Jewish prisoners in the penitentiary before escorting them to Slana, Metajna, Jadovno, or another camp within this complex.
Operating from late June to August 1941, the Jadovno camp served as the terminus for thousands of Jewish and Serb men. It was the primary killing site within the broader Gospić camp complex and one of the most atrocious camps in the Independent State of Croatia. Perched deep inside the remote Velebit mountain range, the camp lay amid a network of ravines and sinkholes.
The Jasenovac camp complex can be called a hybrid camp facility in the sense that it functioned both as a site of forced labor, as a transit camp, and as a mass-killing center. It included multiple camps, external labor facilities and killing sites. The main camp, Jasenovac, III was located just west of the town of Jasenovac.
Metajna was exclusively a camp for Serb and Jewish women and their children, in existence from late June to mid-August 1941. Together with Slana, it formed one of the two concentration camps on Pag, functioning as a component of the larger Gospić-Jadovno-Pag camp system. It stands out as one of the first sites in which Jewish women and children were systematically murdered.
Slana was a key camp within the larger Gospić-Jadovno-Pag camp complex in existence from late June to mid-August 1941. Although primarily a camp for male prisoners, from early August 1941, the Ustaša regime also incarcerated a considerable number of women from the Metajna camp at Slana. Located on the rocky eastern coast of Pag island, the surroundings were unforgiving.
