Dinko Sakic's Portfolio
From the Press
Srpska Mreza

The region around the Jasenovac memorial, including the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska WW II Concentration Camps, kept many written historic material about the camps about the actual events that took place at the time. However, in 1991 after the occupation of Jasenovac by the Serbs, the museum materials were taken away, first to Bosanska Dubica and then to Banja Luka, where all traces of the material has been lost. According to unofficial information, a part of those materials were displayed at an exhibit on genocide in France in 1992, which was organisation by the Vojvodina Museum of National Revolution.

"We have been left without anything, even without the edition of the memorial complex," stated the long-time curator of the memorial region, Jelena Smreka. She said, "Luckily, some documents remained on microfilm, which will soon be reconstructed, and some materials exist in the Split Museum and the Split History Archive. We will, in time, bring back at least a part of the documents from that period. Of course, we hope that the request sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their mediation will be fruitful and that Yugoslavia will return what belongs to the memorial region," stated the curator.

"In the last few days I have found and separated all the material available on Dinko Sakic," stresses Jelena Smreka. According to the available information, Sakic became supervisor of the General Department of the Jasenovac Camp in February of 1942. He was transferred to Stara Gradiska in March of that same year as the assistant to the commander of the camp, led by Mile Oreskovic. Two years later he became the commander of the camp.

Mile Oreskovic was rarely in the camp, hence Sakic was in charge, Jelena Smreka told us. During that time there were not only political prisoners in the camp, as it was when it opened in April, 1941, rather there were prisoners of various nationalities. The number increased after the 1943 offensive at Kozara. The camp also served for finding labourers. There were economies in the camp where the captives worked. There were also executions carried out both inside and outside the camp, where the victims were either burned or buried.

The first case in which Sakic is mentioned as a killer was when a communist party organisation was discovered in the camp. The old communists who were in the camp since its establishment organised their people and had followers at all important places where food was brought into the camp. Mile Boskovic was their leader. After the organisation was discovered, a court-marshal was established, with Sakic as a member. Sakic sentenced all the party members to death by hanging. Mile Boskovic requested he be shot instead of hung and according to witnesses, Sakic himself pulled the trigger.

As the direct executioner, Sakic is mentioned in connection to the events which had occurred on Easter in 1944, when he commanded a performance of prisoners, after which he separated members of the construction and music groups. Out of one hundred prisoners, Sakic - according to eyewitness accounts - separated 20 and killed two of them because they moved. The rest of them were killed that same day on the shores of the Sava River.

He participated in the murders of 64 female prisoners from Split and is responsible for the fumigation of children, Jelena Smreka told us. We had a difficult time locating witnesses who wished to talk about that period, we had a difficult time. We did manage to find a few women, but they refused to talk about the camps.