Mapping the Holocaust in
Croatia

Prisoners in the Jasenovac Camp Complex endured perpetual starvation. The meager sustenance led to illnesses, contributing to high death rates. In this except from a report to the Serbian Commissariat for Refugees, Vojislav Prnjatović, a Serb prisoner, provided a detailed account of the severe food scarcity in Jasenovac III. He was released from the camp and deported to Serbia in the spring of 1942.

The possibilities for prisoners in the Jasenovac camp complex to contact friends and families outside the camp were very limited. The only option sanctioned by the camp administration was through small letter cards. In Jasenovac, prisoners were first issued such cards in April 1942. However, this “privilege,” as the camp administration dubbed it, was occasionally withdrawn as a collective punishment after escape attempts. At the same time, the letter cards were censured by the camp administration. For this reason, their content does not describe true conditions in the camp complex. In most letter cards, prisoners asked relatives or friends to send food, reflecting the chronic malnutrition in the camp complex.

This letter card was written in 1944 by the prisoner Ilija Ivanović, who was sixteen years old at the time. Its brevity is explained by the fact that the letter cards were not allowed to exceed twenty words. In the letter, Ivanović wrote, “Dear mother. I am healthy. I wrote, but I did not get a reply. Send me a packet if you can. Greetings to you all, Ilija.”

In the hope of ensuring the release of family members or friends incarcerated in the Jasenovac camp complex, many people wrote letters to the police authorities in the Independent of State Croatia. Since the Ustaša regime primarily targeted Jewish men in the initial phase of the Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia, letters from 1941 were for the most part written by Jewish women. In such letters, the writers would often stress the innocence and patriotism of the person in question. Unfortunately, these efforts rarely had any results. In this letter, Marjana Štern from the town of Daruvar pleaded for the release of her husband Hugo Štern, who was incarcerated in the Jasenovac camp complex.