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ABSTRACT
The Jasenovac concentration camp (1941-1945) holds a special place on the post-Yugoslav Holocaust map. The aim of the article is to analyze (1) the role of natural conditions in influencing the selection and ongoing operation of the camp; (2) how the authorities managed the post-camp landscape after the war, as well as the current presence of nature at the memorial site; and (3) how the relationship between people and nature is depicted in the Croatian writings on the Jasenovac camp. The analysis is set within the framework of the environmental history of the Porajmos.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Odak and Benčic, “Jasenovac – A Past That Does Not Pass: The Presence of Jasenovac in Croatian and Serbian Collective Memory of Conflict.”
2 The likely number of the camp’s victims is somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000, but the figure is manipulated by both the Croatians and the Serbs. Croatian nationalist historians tend to minimise the scale of the tragedy, writing about 40,000 victims, while some Serbian historiographers increase the number to 700,0000. Independent researchers point to the level of about 70,000 dead, which is nowadays believed to be the valid estimation. Quoted in: Falski and Rawski, “Jasenovac, Bleiburg, Vukovar: miejsca pamięci a dyskurs publiczny,” [Jasenovac, Bleiburg, Vukovar: Memory Sites and Public Discourse]196.
3 Domańska, Nekros. Wprowadzenie do ontologii martwego ciała [Necros: An Introduction to the Ontology of the Dead Body].
4 Janus and Budnik, “Upamiętnienia miejsc pochówku ofiar Zagłady,” [Commemorating the Burial Places of the Victims of the Holocaust] 44.
5 Domańska, “Ecological Humanities.”
6 Małczyński, Krajobrazy Zagłady. Perspektywa historii środowiskowej [Landscapes of the Holocaust. The Perspective of Environmental History].
7 The Nazis, who came to power in 1933, had already established a fertile ground for implementing measures aimed at exterminating the Romani. As early as 1905, a register containing data on individuals identified as Gypsies was created in Bavaria, and from 1926 onward, forced settlement and sanctions were imposed on non-working individuals. Although the Nuremberg Laws did not explicitly mention the Romani, subsequent regulations deprived them of most of their civil rights. Even prior to the outbreak of World War II, a racist definition and typology of the Romani had been established. With the onset of war, the repression escalated to a radical and widespread level. In 1942, Himmler issued a regulation mandating the deportation of the Romani to concentration camps. The Romani faced death in extermination camps and fell victim to mass executions wherever they were captured. We use the term ‘the fate of the Romani’ to refer to the series of repressions inflicted upon this group during World War II. In our text, we are particularly interested in the experiences of Romani prisoners in the Jasenovac Concentration Camp. See: Dębski, Talewicz-Kwiatkowska, Prześladowania i masowa zagłada Romów podczas II wojny światowej w świetle relacji i wspomnień [Persecution and Mass Extermination of the Romani During WWII in the Light of Accounts and Memoirs]; Kapralski, Naród z popiołów. Pamięć zagłady a tożsamość Romów [A Nation from the Ashes. Memory of Genocide and Roma Identity]; Korb, “Ustaša Mas Violence Against Gypsies in Croatia, 1941–1942,” 72–95.
8 The term Porajmos (Baro Porrajmos) was introduced in the 1990s by Ian Hancock, a Romani linguist and activist. The literature on the subject also employs another term, Samudaripen (mass killing), which was proposed by Romani intellectuals. In this article, we use the term Porajmos, as it is a concept that is already well-established in the scholarly discourse on the extermination of the Romani. We are, nevertheless, aware of the sexual connotations it evokes in the Romani language.
9 Giergiel and Taczyńska, “Ślady (nie)pamięci o Porajmosie. Kulturowa mapa romskiego holokaustu w Serbii i Chorwacji.” [Traces of the (non)Memory of Porajmos: The Cultural Map of the Romani Holocaust in Serbia and Croatia]; Giergiel and Taczyńska, “Porajmos in the 21st-century Croatian culture of memory: Nebojša Lujanović’s Oblak boje kože from the perspective of rescue history” [in print].
10 Excerpts from the articles are reprinted in Acković, Stradanja Roma w Jasenovcu [The Suffering of Romani in Jasenovac Camp], 13–14.
11 Małczyński, Krajobrazy Zagłady. Perspektywa historii środowiskowej, 9.
12 It is worth noting that this approach is now heavily contested. On the one hand, nature itself, through its ‘takeover’ of the forgotten remnants of the camp, has become an active campaigner for (not) remembering. On the other hand, new insights into natural, biological processes of change have clearly reoriented the way we think about nature’s relationship to the Holocaust and have shaken up traditional thinking about forms of commemoration and representation of the past. See e.g.: Katz, “Nature’s Healing Power, the Holocaust, and the Environmental Crisis, in: Judaism and Environmental Ethics: A Reader”; Katz, Anne Frank’s Tree: Nature’s Confrontation with Technology.
13 Mataušić, Jasenovac 1941.–1945. Logor smrti i radni logor [Jasenovac 1941.–1945. The Death Camp and the Labour Camp], 145.
14 Similar things occurred at the Auschwitz site just after the war. This phenomenon has been described by Małczyński, Krajobrazy Zagłady. Perspektywa historii środowiskowej, 99. In the context of the Jasenovac camp, it is worth mentioning the 2014 work by Zlatko Kopljar titled K-19. The artist bought bricks that originally came from the Jasenovac camp from an owner of a residential house and then used them to create five massive, monumental sculptures whose tops seem unfinished. This work can be seen as the artist’s attempt to reflect critically on the past, and as a reminder of what contemporary houses are made of. See: https://zlatkokopljar.com/portfolio/78/
15 ‘Šikara je uvelike bila preuzela vlast nad prostorima nekadašnjego logora, pa se polako pretvarala u neku vrstu prašume na podvodnom tlu, oko ona dva mala već pomenuta jezera,’ Bogdanović, Ukleti neimar [The Cursed Sculptor], 154, quoted in: Mataušić, Jasenovac 1941.–1945. Logor smrti i radni logor, 148. Our own translation.
16 ‘Predloženo je da se svi zatečeni ostaci zgrada koji su u međuvremenu bili obrasli u žbunje, tratinu i humus, očiste i otkopaju, te zaštite od daljnjeg propadanja,’ 149. Our own translation
17 Ibid., 151.
18 Katz Anne Frank’s Tree: Nature’s Confrontation with Technology, 76.
19 Danijel Vojak writes that deportations to Jasenovac occurred sporadically before 19 May 1941, i.e. the date which is traditionally believed to be the start of what is described as a planned and systematic deportation action. Vojak, “Stradanje Roma u Nazavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj” [The Suffering of Romani in the Independent State of Croatia], 32.
20 Lengel-Krizman, Genocid nad Romima. Jasenovac 1942 [Genocide against the Romani].
21 Quoted in: Ibid., 57.
22 The material collected by the Commission was intended to be (and was) used for legal purposes, so, by design, there was no room in the testimonies for expressions of the witnesses’ trauma. This fact is emphasised by Byford, “’Shortly afterwards, we heard the sound of the gas van’: Survivor Testimony and the Writing of History in Socialist Yugoslavia,” quoted in: Vervat, “Sećanje na Holokaust u jugoslovenskoj i postjugoslovenskoj književnosti: transnacjonalne domenzije traumatskih sećanja na Balkanu” [Holocaust Memory in Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Literature.Transnational Domains of Traumatic Memory in the Balkan].
23 The special importance of the crimes against the Romani in the work of the State Commission is highlighted by Pisari, Stradanje Roma u Srbiji za vreme holokausta [The Suffering of Romani during the Holocaust], 122. Acković sees it differently and writes about the ‘institutional silence’ on Porajmos in a similar context. In his opinion, this is indirectly evidenced by the fact that the State Commission for the Investigation of the Crimes of the Occupiers and their Accomplices does not mention the Romani as a separate category of victims of the camps and prisons created on the NDH territory in its final report. Acković, Ašunen Romalen. Slušajte ljudi [Ašunen Romalen. Listen, the people], 35.
24 Małczyńki, Krajobrazy Zagłady, 97.
25 Lengel-Krizman, Genocid nad Romima. Jasenovac 1942., 47; Vojak, “Komemoracija romskih žrtava Drugog svjetskog rata u Republici Hrvatskoj” [Commemoration of Romani Victims of WWII in the Republic of Croatia], 341.
26 Lengel-Krizman, Genocid nad Romima. Jasenovac 1942, 48. Our own translation.
27 In this article, we refer only to the accounts concerning the fate of Romani prisoners in the camp, but this does not mean that the motif of unfavourable hydrological conditions is not present in the memories of internees who do not comment on the Romani’s presence in Jasenovac. For example, writing about the prisoners’ return to the barracks, Čedomir Huber emphasises the pervasive dampness of the place: ‘One can imagine how much fresh air there was in the barracks when the prisoners, tired and drenched, returned for the night, and the sweat and dampness evaporated from their sweaty clothes and from their wet socks, or rather the rags that replaced them.’/‘Možete zamisliti koliko je svježega zraka bilo u tim barakama kad su se zatočenici, umorni i pokisli, vraćali na spavanje, i kad se tu isparavalo i znoj i vlaga iz znojem natopljene odjeće i iz mokrih čarapa, odnosno krpa koje su ih zamjenjivale’. Huber, Bio sam zatočenik logora Jasenovac [I was a Prisoner in the Jasenovac Camp], 21, quoted in: Mataušić, Jasenovac 1941.–1945. Logor smrti i radni logor, 140. Our own translation.
28 Acković, Stradanja Roma u Jasenovcu, 21.
29 Water motifs recur repeatedly in Ljuba Jandrić’s book, which is a relatively early literary description of the camp (published in 1980). In the first-person narrative, the book’s protagonist, Jakov, who is first the construction manager of the complex and later its administrator, emphasises the wetness of the terrain. It is negatively valorised and identified with swamps and marshes teeming with vipers. The wetlands themselves, on the other hand, emit unhealthy vapours. Jandrić, Jasenovac, 24, 34. The area on which the camp is built is described in the book in accordance with traditional beliefs, in which marshes are seen as unclean and unfriendly places inhabited by demons. Wetlands brought disease and death.
30 Lengel-Krizman, Genocid nad Romima. Jasenovac 1942., 48–9.
31 The same is true in Poland, see: Morawiec, Literatura polska wobec ludobójstwa [Literature and Genocide], 297. It is worth mentioning that there is a Croatian novel, Nebojša Lujanović’s Skin-coloured Cloud (Oblak boje kože), published in 2015, that deals with similar issues and is entirely focused on the history of the Roma (including during World War II). This novel presents nature as a causal factor in the context of the extermination of the Roma. Maintaining its sovereignty, nature seems to play the role of an unwitting ally. The novel also includes a mention of a significant river (Soła) – one of the tributaries of the Vistula, located some ten kilometres from Auschwitz, where the ashes from the bodies burnt in the crematoria were thrown into the water. It is interesting to note how the initially silent, passive river, which functioned even as a helper of the Nazis, over the course of the book is transformed into a causal agent. Lujanović’s writing blurs the line between the human and the non-human. When the main character escapes and falls into the water, the Vistula intercepts his inert and injured body and carries it into one of its calm branches, away from the eyes of his pursuers. Thanks to this help, the protagonist not only survives, but also saves the documents confirming the crimes committed in the camp.
32 The editor of the book, Acković, indicates that the Roma in the camp were mentioned in many of Nikolic’s books, but does not specify the exact source of the reproduced quotations. Acković, Stradanja Roma u Jasenovcu, 27.
33 ‘Toga popodneva, što ono se kaže “munja grom igrala”; jugovina je duvala, crni oblaci gomilali se na nebu, treskali su gromovi, sijevale munje, urnebesni pljusak srušio se s neba, a iza nekoliko minuta granulo sunce i prelamalo se u milijunima kapljica, lokava, u jezeru i Savi, duga se svakog časa pojavljivala i iščezavala. Ptice su cvrkutale. […] Pred večer se nebo prilično razvedrilo […] Žabe su kreketale, preletio je zrakom po koji golub nekim posebnim zviždukom krila. […] Osim kreketanja žaba ništa se drugo nije čulo. Atmosfera kao u nekoj močvari: sve pišti od vode, od gliba, od šaša. […] Lijeva je polovica Save bila jarko osvijetljena ružičastim crvenilom, dok je desna polovica pomračila sivoljubičastom sjenom. Na polovici Save bila je postavljena čudna granica svijetla i tame, ravnice i provalije, života i smrti. Zapljuskivanje vode i njeno odbijanje o drvene grede skele izazivalo je osjećaj, kao da će iz dubine izroniti svakog časa neka grdna neman, pretpotopna zmijurina, aždaja. Skela se polako pomicala preko kroz „svijetlu zonu”’. Acković, Stradanja Roma u Jasenovcu, 32–3. Our own translation. In Jandrić’s work, the marshes surrounding Jasenovac are presented as a home of wild birds, see: Jandrić, Jasenovac, 122. The motif of people disturbing their peace and quiet, combined with the text’s repeated emphasis on the inaccessibility of the terrain, makes the natural environment of the Bosnian-Croatian borderland seem foreign, presenting it as something that humans try to treat ruthlessly and adapt to their own purposes.
34 The location of the camp was an additional safeguard against any escape attempts. The only paved road leading from the camp to the village was well-guarded; on the other sides, the camp was surrounded by water or moorland. This is mentioned in the testimony of a former prisoner of the camp, Vojislav M. Crnjatović. See: Јевтић, Великомученички Јасеновац. Усташка творница смрти. Документи и сведочења [The Bestial Jasenovac. Ustaša Factory of Death. Documents and Testimonies], 46.
35 Acković, Stradanja Roma u Jasenovcu, 71.
36 Jakovljević’s testimony, like many other memoirs written by prisoners of the Ustaše camps, was only published after the break-up of Yugoslavia. In this case, it was the first publication of this book in general, while some other titles were re-released or published for the first time in Croatia. The Naklada Pavičić publishing house, which publishes the series In the Camp (U logoru) and the Jesenski i Turk publishing house (the Stone Flower Library series [Kameni cvet]) focus on reintroducing the memories which used to be marginalised in the Yogoslavian era into the Croatian literature. To read more on this issue, see: Szperlik, Chorwacka (nie)pamięć o Jugosławii. Przemilczenia, pominięcia i odpamiętanie w prozie chorwackiej po roku 1991 [Croatian (Un)memory of Yugoslavia. Omissions, Silences and Recoletions in Croatian Prose after 1991], 157–97.
37 Jakovljević, Konclogor na Savi [Concentration Camp on Sava River], 54 i 116.
38 Vojak, “ Stradanje Roma u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj,” 43. Nataša Mataušić specifies that their duties also included undressing the victims, sorting their clothes, and carrying them to the warehouse. Mataušić, Jasenovac 1941.–1954. Logor smrti i radni logor, 69.
39 ‘Ciganima se određuje najteži posao. Oni grade nasip na Savi, i svakodnevno ostavlja nekoliko njih svoje kosti na nasipu.’ Riffer, Grad mrtvih. Jasenovac 1943. [City of the Dead. Jasenovac in 1943.], 25.
40 Ibid., 68–9.
41 Ibid., 46.
42 Acković specifies that they were murdered in early 1945. Acković, Stradanja Roma u Jasenovcu, 23.
43 [ … ] ubiješ li Ciganina, učinio si korisno djelo, kao da prignječio noktom stjenicu […]. Riffer, Grad mrtvih: Jasenovac 1943., 155. Our own translation.
44 ‘Cigani su bili smješteni u “ciganskom logoru”, appendiksu, slijepom crijevu logora III C, koje valja što prije odstraniti, da bi se na smrt bolesnom organizmu, kakav je bio logor III C, bar na malo produžio život’. Ibid., 155. Our own translation.
45 The largest number of the Muslims (german “Muselmann”) were from the “gypsy camp.” These prisoners, severely weakened by starvation, had lost their will to live and became increasingly apathetic towards external stimuli. Mataušić, Jasenovac 1941.–1945. Logor smrti i radni logor, 68; Jambrešić Kirin, “Tko svjedoči umjesto svjedoka?” [Who Testifies Instead of the Witness?] 39.
46 N. Lengel-Krizman, Genocid nad Romima. Jasenovac 1942, 34.
47 This term was used by Morawiec in reference to Arnold Mostowicz’s depiction of the gypsy camp in the Łódź Ghetto. Morawiec, Literatura polska wobec ludobójstwa. Rekonesans, 284.
48 ‘Prostor su ogradili žicom i postavili jake straže, te ga prozvali “logorom III-C”, jer su tu u prvo vrijeme boravili samo Cigani, koji su ovdje razapeli svoje šatore, ili su ležali pod vedrim nebom, goli, gladni i bosi, po suncu i kiši. Hrana im je bila još gora od hrane ostalih zatočenika, a ustaše su ih s naročitim užitkom tukli i bičevali te silili, da se međusobno mlate i ubijaju.’ Acković quoted excerpts from a report prepared by the State Commission for the Investigation of the Crimes of the Occupiers and their Accomplices. Acković, Stradanja Roma u Jasenovcu, p. 71. Our own translation.
49 ‘Logor 3 C! Šta je to? To je dio poljane ograđen žicom. To je jedno odjeljenje logora, najgore njegovo odjeljenje. Okolo je žica, gore nebo, dolje zemlja! Ni tavana, ni patosa, ni zida. Po živim i mrtvima tu padaju snijeg i kiša – noćima, danima, nedjeljama. To je bio najstrašniji logor.’ Ibid., 73. Our own translation.
50 Agamben, Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life.
51 Małczyński, Krajobrazy Zagłady. Perspektywa historii środowiskowej, 9.
52 Ubertowska, Holokaust. Auto(tanato)grafie [Holocaust. Auto(thanato)graphies], 91.
53 Jarzyna, Post-koiné. Studia o nieantropocentrycznych językach (poetyckich) [Post-koiné. Studies in Non-antropocentric (Poetic) Languages], 259–60.
54 See: Katz, Anne Frank’s Tree: Nature’s Confrontation with Technology, 78, 105.
55 In this context, see: Baer, Spectral Evidence: The Photography of Trauma.
56 Pollack, “Zielone archiwum pamięci” [The Green Archive of Memory], 9; also see: Kłos, “Zielona macewa” [The Green Matzevah].