SISAK CAMP

After the Kozara offensive, an assembly camp was founded in Sisak in August 1942, for the elderly, women and children, officially named the “Refugee Transit Camp”. It included an orphanage for child refugees, or, in other words, a children’s camp.

In the camp buildings in the Glassworks, Distillery, Reis Salt Works and the convent of the Sisterhood of St. Vinko, children were housed separately from their prisoner mothers, along with children separated from their mothers in Mlaka, Jablanac, Stara Gradiška and Jasenovac.

They were left without food or clothing, exposed to unhygienic conditions and diseases, and died in great numbers.

It is estimated that between five and seven thousand children passed through this camp before it was closed on 8 January 1943. According to the camp mortuary records, 1,152 children died, while another source mentions that 1,631 children died in Sisak camp.

The citizens of Sisak and the surrounding areas tried to help by taking the youngest and sickest children out of the camp.