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.
The camp was housed in an old penitentiary attached to the Gospić courthouse. The penitentiary of the court house was a large two-floor building 130x130 meters. In April 1941, the Italian Army used to the northern wing for incarcerate captured Yugoslav soldiers. After the Italian military left on May 20 as a consequence of the signing of the Roma Treaty between the Italy and the Independent State of Croatia, the local Ustaša administration took over the entire building, using a smaller section as a prison for political prisoners and the larger part as a concentration camp. The camp was surrounded by a high wall with barbed wire on the top, and the main entrance faced the street leading to the courthouse. The camp had several barracks, a kitchen, a washroom, and latrines. The prisoners were housed in overcrowded conditions, with little ventilation and inadequate sanitation facilities.
By far the majority of the prisoners in the Gospić camp were Jews and Serbs. Initially, most were deportees who had previously been incarcerated in the Danica camp near Koprivnica in Northwestern Croatia. Following an order from the Directorate for Public Order and Security on July 8, calling for the deportations of Jews and Serbs to the camp whenever “the interest of public security demands the removal of undesirables,” the number of inmates surged. Trains rolled in from across the Independent State of Croatia, from Ludbreg in the north to Mostar in the south; from Lika in the west to Bijeljina in the east. The influx intensified. Later the Directorate for Public Order and Security issued instructions to the local administrations across the Independent State of Croatia to arrest all known or suspected Serb and Jewish communists and deport them to Gospić. With cells overflowing, inmates crammed into the courtyard and hallways, the Gospić camp evolved into a site of extreme squalor and misery, where Jews and Serbs languished before being brought to one of the many compounds in the archipelago of barbed-wire and watchtowers of the wider camp complex.
The Gospić camp operated under the Directorate of the Grand Parish Police District of Gospić, led by Stjepan Rubinić, who had previously served as a Ustaša commissioner in Kostajnica. The compound itself was under the commander of Milan Staraček, an Ustaša of Czech background. The guard force was comprised of elements of the Ustaša Police Battalion in Gospić, also known as the Lika Battalion.
The Gospić transit camp came to a sudden end on August 23, 1941. The reason was the Italian military’s reoccupation of Zone II. Under the Rome Treaty between fascist Italy and the Independent State of Croatia, Zone II, which included the town of Gospić, fell under Ustaša administration, but Italy retained the right to assert authority when its strategic interests were at stake. As the Ustašas’ mass killings of Serbs engendered an avalanching insurgency which the regime struggled to contain, the Italian government took action and reoccupied Zone II, prompting the swift withdrawal of Ustaša units and the rapid closure of the Gospić camp, along with the deportation of surviving prisoners eastward.
Steeped in ideological fervor, some radical Ustaša and police officers interpreted such directives as a greenlight for largescale deportations.
- Cvetković, Dragan. “Stradanje stanovništva NDH u logorima – numeričko određenje.” In Logori, zatvori i prisilni rad u Hrvatskoj/Jugoslaviji 1941–1945, 1945–1951: zbornik radova, edited by Martina Grahek Ravančić, Vladimir Geiger, and Marica Karakaš Obradov, 41–56. Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2010.
- Dulić, Tomislav. Utopias of Nation: Local Mass Killing in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1941-42. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2005.
- Goldstein, Ivo, and Slavko Goldstein. The Holocaust in Croatia. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016.
- Peršen, Mirko. Ustaški logori. Zagreb: Globus, 1990.
- Vulesica, Marija. “Kroatien.” In Der Ort des Terrors: Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager Band 9., edited by Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel, 313–36. München: C.H. Beck, 2009.
- Zatezalo, Đuro. Jadovno: Kompleks ustaških logora 1941. knjiga I. Belgrade: Muzej žrtava genocida, 2007.
