Stara Gradiška concentration camp

Stara Gradiška
View of the Stara Gradiška concentration camp at the site of the Stara Gradiška prison.
Location	Stara Gradiška, Independent State of Croatia
Established	1941

Stara Gradiška was one of the most notorious concentration and extermination camps in Croatia during World War II, mainly due to the crimes committed there against women and children. The camp was specially constructed for women and children of Serb, Jew, and Romani ethnicity. It was established by the Ustaše (Ustasha) regime of the Independent State of Croatia ("NDH") in 1941 at the Stara Gradiška prison near the village of Stara Gradiška. as the fifth subcamp of the Jasenovac concentration camp

According to the list of victims by name of KCL Jasenovac, the Jasenovac memorial site, which includes research as of 2007^[update], the names and data for 12,790 victims of the camp have been established.

The camp was guarded by the Croatian Ustaše, including some female troops. Inmates were killed using different means, including firearms, mallets and knives. At the "K" or "Kula" unit, Serbian and Jewish women, with weak or little children, were starved and/or tortured at the "Gagro Hotel", a cellar which Ustaša Nikola Gagro used as a place of torture. Other inmates in the Kula unit were poisoned with gas.

Gas experiments were conducted initially at veterinary stables near the "Economy" unit, where horses and then humans were poisoned using sulphur dioxide and later Zyklon B. Gassing was also tested on children in the yard, where the camp commandant, Ustaša sergeant Ante Vrban, viewed its effects. Most gassing deaths occurred in the attics of "the infamous tower", where several thousand children from the Kozara region were killed in May, and 2000 more in June 1942. Subsequently, smaller groups of 400-600 children, and a few men and women, were gassed. At this trial, Vrban stated: