Independent State of Croatia: Abyss

Second part of a documentary film on the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). After shutting down the camp complex Jadovno in August 1941, heads of the Independent State of Croatia devised a concept of the largest camp in the Balkans. On the site of a nature park Lonjsko polje in Slavonia, they established Jasenovac, the largest extermination camp in the region. Unlike the Nazi camps, Jasenovac was a place where inmates were in direct contact with their executioners, which is why it is still remembered for the killing methods employed by the executioners. “It was really hell on Earth. The methods of killing were so cruel that you cannot even describe it with your own words”, says Gideon Greif of the Shem Olam Faith & the Holocaust Institute in Israel, while the most famous Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff claims that there is a good reason why Jasenovac was titled “The Balkan Auschwitz”. RTS team visited the memorial sites of Jasenovac in Croatia and Donja Gradina in Bosnia and Herzegovina,