The Concentration Camp That Scared Even The Nazis: Jasenovac Concentration Camp

It’s impossible to imagine, but take a second and think about this: during WWII, there was a camp in the former Yugoslavia that a Holocaust survivor and historian called “worse than even Auschwitz” in terms of brutality, and about which the Nazis pushed for the camp leadership to be changed due to its very public and savage daily routine. It might surprise you, but the Germans did not run this extermination camp, and it was the third-largest concentration camp in Europe during the war in terms of area. After World War 1, a new country was created from many of the territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the country of Serbia. This was Yugoslavia, “the land of the South Slavs.” Included within the new nation were Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins, North Macedonians, Albanians, and Bosnian Muslims. There were also smaller numbers of other ethnic groups living within Yugoslavia, including Jewish and Roma people. At various times throughout the centuries, the different ethnic groups of the r