{"id":45736,"date":"2025-12-24T01:05:55","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T00:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/was-there-a-shelter-or-a-camp-for-children-from-kozara-in-sisak"},"modified":"2025-12-24T01:05:55","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T00:05:55","slug":"was-there-a-shelter-or-a-camp-for-children-from-kozara-in-sisak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/en\/was-there-a-shelter-or-a-camp-for-children-from-kozara-in-sisak","title":{"rendered":"Was there a shelter or a camp for children from Kozara in Sisak?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the article \u201cSNV Continues to Push the Story of the \u2018Usta\u0161a Children\u2019s Camp\u2019 in Sisak: Here Is the Truth,\u201d published on 7 October 2025 on the portal Narod.hr (available here<\/a>, archived here<\/a>), the claim is made that in 1942 there was no children\u2019s camp in Sisak, but exclusively a humanitarian \u201cchildren\u2019s shelter.\u201d <\/p>\n

On the occasion of a commemoration organized by the Serb National Council (SNV) in the Diana Budisavljevi\u0107 Park in Sisak, the article reports parts of a speech by the SNV president Boris Milo\u0161evi\u0107<\/strong> with pronounced detachment: \u201cThe SNV president Boris Milo\u0161evi\u0107 put forward the thesis that in Sisak in 1942 there existed a children\u2019s camp, formally called the \u2018Shelter for Refugee Children.\u2019 During the summer, he stated, more than 2,000 children were housed there, mostly from Kozara and from the camps Mlaka, Jablanac, and Ko\u0161utarica. Milo\u0161evi\u0107 said that the children were transported in freight wagons for cattle and that the Usta\u0161a forcibly separated them from parents who had been killed or sent to forced labor. He also stated that in August 1942, 515 children died in the camp, and that a total of 1,152 allegedly perished during its operation. He spoke as well of alleged visits by Usta\u0161a commanders such as Maks Luburi\u0107<\/strong> and Ljubo Milo\u0161<\/strong>, claiming that during these visits children were violently separated from their mothers. In his speech, Milo\u0161evi\u0107 asserted that there was no care for the children in the camp, that they lay on dirty straw, hungry and neglected, despite the alleged presence of food in storage facilities. It was particularly emphasized that the children were saved thanks to the action of Diana Budisavljevi\u0107, with the help of teacher Ante Dumbovi\u0107<\/strong> and the local population, who allegedly took them in.\u201d <\/p>\n

Following this, the article advances the controversial thesis that \u201cthere is no scientific evidence whatsoever that a children\u2019s camp existed in Sisak.\u201d According to the portal, during 1942 and 1943 a Children\u2019s Shelter operated in Sisak, \u201cestablished in response to extremely difficult wartime and social circumstances, especially after the large wave of refugees from the Kozara area.\u201d<\/p>\n

In support of this claim, the article refers to historian Vlatka Vukeli\u0107<\/strong>, who states that during the Second World War there was no children\u2019s camp in Sisak, but rather a children\u2019s shelter under the jurisdiction of the then Ministry of Social Affairs of the NDH, \u201cwhich in today\u2019s terms would correspond to a ministry of social welfare.\u201d Vukeli\u0107 emphasizes that a real camp would have had to be under military or police administration, like Jasenovac, and that for Sisak there are allegedly no data indicating such a form of control. <\/p>\n

However, relevant scholarly and historiographical literature presents a different picture.<\/p>\n

Although official NDH documents used the designation \u201cShelter for Refugee Children,\u201d scholarly analysis of the institution\u2019s operation shows that its administrative name cannot be taken as evidence of its true nature, especially in the context of the repressive system of the NDH. Historian Nata\u0161a Matau\u0161i\u0107<\/strong> explicitly rejects such an interpretation in her scholarly work The operation of the Shelter for Refugees Children in Sisak and the Activities of Teacher Ante Dumbovi\u0107<\/a>. In the same study, Matau\u0161i\u0107 documents that on 3 August 1942 the NDH Ministry of Social Affairs established the so-called shelter, and that during August 2,272 children were sent to Sisak, brought from Usta\u0161a collection camps in Mlaka, Jablanac, and Ko\u0161utarica. The children were accommodated at several locations in the city, without freedom of movement, and the institution functioned in direct connection with the broader NDH camp system. At the same time, the \u201cshelter\u201d also housed children from the Sisak Collection Camp whose parents were sent to forced labor in countries of the Third Reich. Due to the lack of adequate care, 1,152 children died there within a very short period of time, Matau\u0161i\u0107 states. \u201cBased on original archival material from the Croatian State Archives in Zagreb and the Museum of Genocide Victims in Belgrade, as well as available professional and scholarly literature, the operation of this shelter has been reconstructed, which \u2013 without quotation marks \u2013 can be called a children\u2019s camp,\u201d Nata\u0161a Matau\u0161i\u0107 writes. <\/p>\n

The historical framework within which the Sisak \u201cShelter for Refugee Children\u201d should be examined is elaborated in detail by historian Narcisa Lengel-Krizman<\/strong> in her study Collection Camps and Children\u00b4s Holding Facilities in Northwestern Croatia 1941.-1942.<\/a> The author analyzes the system of separating children after large military operations and shows that special facilities were established for children from Kozara and other areas, which in documents were often recorded as \u201cchildren\u2019s homes\u201d or \u201cshelters.\u201d Lengel-Krizman warns that such administrative labels did not reflect the actual function of these institutions, but served to conceal their role within the repressive system of the NDH. According to her analysis, these children\u2019s holding facilities were directly linked to the prior imprisonment of parents in camps and to the forced separation of children, which constitutes a key circumstance for understanding their status and the conditions in which the children were held. <\/p>\n

A similar conclusion emerges from the work of historian Zdravko Dizdar<\/strong>, Camps in Northwest Croatia during the Second World War 1941.-1945<\/a>. He provides a detailed description of the Sisak Children\u2019s Camp, established on 3 August 1942 with the arrival of the first transport of children from the Mlaka camp. Dizdar notes that transports of children from Stara Gradi\u0161ka, Prijedor, and Jasenovac soon followed, and that during August and September 1942 approximately 2,000 children were housed in the children\u2019s camp, while by the end of September their number reached approximately 4,722. Dizdar explicitly states that the name Shelter for Refugee Children \u201cwas merely camouflage for the public.\u201d He describes in detail the extremely harsh housing, hygienic, nutritional, and health conditions, epidemics of typhus, scarlet fever, and dysentery, and notes that the camp was enclosed by high barbed wire and guarded by Usta\u0161a guards. Because of the scale of suffering, Dizdar characterizes the Sisak children\u2019s camp as \u201cthe most horrific of all Sisak camps and one of the most horrific Usta\u0161a camps during the war.\u201d <\/p>\n

It is also important to emphasize the broader interpretative framework offered by historian Ivo Goldstein<\/strong>. In his books The Holocaust in Zagreb (2001) and Jasenovac and Bleiburg Are Not the Same (2011), Goldstein warns that a camp is not defined exclusively by planned executions or formal military-police administration. The key criteria are the function of confinement, forced accommodation, restriction of freedom, and the consequences such conditions have for the detainees. Mass death due to hunger, disease, lack of hygiene, and exhaustion, Goldstein argues, represents a form of victimization for which responsibility lies with the regime that established and maintained such conditions, even when there was no explicit order for liquidation. <\/p>\n

The claim that \u201cthere is no scientific evidence whatsoever\u201d of the existence of a children\u2019s camp in Sisak is therefore incorrect. On the contrary, numerous authors in Croatian and regional historiography explicitly identify Sisak as part of the NDH camp system. <\/p>\n

In conclusion, although the term \u201cShelter for Refugee Children\u201d is historically accurate as an administrative designation of the NDH, relevant historiography demonstrates that this institution, by its characteristics, function, and consequences, was a children\u2019s camp within the NDH camp system. Claims that deny the existence of a children\u2019s camp in Sisak or portray it as political manipulation do not arise from historiographical consensus, but from selective use of sources and the neglect of key scholarly works. <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Funded by the European Union \u2013 NextGenerationEU.<\/em><\/p>\n

Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission, nor the positions of the Agency for Electronic Media. Neither the European Union nor the European Commission, nor the Agency for Electronic Media can be held responsible for them. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The portal Narod.hr, citing a statement by historian Vlatka Vukeli\u0107, claims that there was no children\u2019s camp in Sisak in 1942 but rather a \u201chumanitarian shelter\u201d; however, relevant historiographical works and archival sources describe this site as part of the NDH camp system and classify it as a children\u2019s camp. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45737,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[392],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fact-check-en","infinite-scroll-item","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Sisak.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Sisak.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Olivera Radovi\u0107","author_link":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/en\/author\/olja"},"rbea_author_info":{"display_name":"Olivera Radovi\u0107","author_link":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/en\/author\/olja"},"rbea_excerpt_info":"The portal Narod.hr, citing a statement by historian Vlatka Vukeli\u0107, claims that there was no children\u2019s camp in Sisak in 1942 but rather a \u201chumanitarian shelter\u201d; however, relevant historiographical works and archival sources describe this site as part of the NDH camp system and classify it as a children\u2019s camp. ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}