Already in the last days of April 1941, the Croatian Ustasi regime organized the first extermination camp for Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. Just a few days before, on April 10, the head of the regime, Ante Pavelic, had announced the establishment of an independent Croatian state with the support of Hitler and Mussolini.
On April 19, he arrived in Danica the first train with 300 prisoners. By mid-May the number of prisoners had increased tenfold. By June they had reached 9,000 and for every 14 people the Croats provided half a kilo of poorly made bread as their only food.
The said camp was closed and many prisoners were murdered. The rest were sent to the Yadovo camp which was nothing more than a barbed-wired area without even tents for the prisoners. There were only two wooden stalls outside the enclosure, one for the commander and one for the guard.
There the immediate extermination of the prisoners began. The prisoners were taken to a ravine 5 km from the camp where they were either slaughtered like lambs or their skulls were smashed with iron rods. The corpses were thrown into the ravine.
By the end of July over 10,000 Serbs, Jews and other "racial" enemies had been massacred. At the end of August it was decided to dismantle the camp. The last prisoners were murdered. It is estimated that at least 35,000 people were murdered there. Other sources put the number as high as 75,000.
A third camp operated temporarily on the Dalmatian island Pago . At least 10,000 people were murdered there. When in August the island was given to the Italians, based on the Mussolini-Pavelic agreement, even they were shocked by what they saw.
"Tied hands, feet, heads... First they dug the graves and the prisoners tied two or three together were shot or stabbed. Many were thrown into the graves alive. There were 5-6 layers of corpses... A young woman had both breasts cut off... In other graves we found only corpses of women and children," said an Italian military doctor.
Another camp, that of Loborgrad , also worked for a while. 1,600 women and children were imprisoned there. As many as survived were sent to Auschwitz and exterminated. Another camp that operated for a few months was that of Dialovo where women and children gathered again, mainly Jews, but also a few Serbs. The survivors were taken to the hell of Jasenovac.
In the camp at Stara Grandiska also mostly women and children were kept. It is worth noting that the Ustasi murderers were helped as prison guards by Roman Catholic nuns. The camp operated until 1945, during which time at least 75,000 people were exterminated there. But all this was just nuggets in front of everything that happened in the "Auschwitz of the Balkans", Jasenovac...