Lepoglava concentration camp

In July and August 1943, Yugoslav Partisan units requested approval from the Croatian Partisan headquarters to attack Jasenovac extermination camp and release its inmates.[8] The headquarters refused the requests[9] but proposed attacking Lepoglava instead.[10] This proposition was accepted.[11]

The Partisan forces captured Lepoglava on 14 July 1943, intentionally on Bastille Day.[12] They first attacked the camp with artillery and then charged it with infantry.[13] On the day it was captured, the commandant of the camp was Mirko Cvitkovac.[14] About 15% of its inmates were Communists who subsequently joined the Partisans.[15]

This was the Partisans' most important action in northwestern Croatia.[16]

After the Partisans took over the camp, Croatian forces recaptured it and put it under the control of Bureau 3 of the Ustaše Surveillance Service. Ljubo Miloš was made commandant[17] at the beginning of 1944.[18]

In 1945, Ustaše decided to close the camp and move its inmates to Jasenovac because they considered Lepoglava insecure.[19] Some 1,300 inmates were transported to Jasenovac,[20] where all of them were killed, except for around 50 who managed to escape during the transport.[21] On 30 April 1945, Ustaše killed about 80 inmates who remained in the camp, as well as 961 young people, mostly students at a nearby facility that is now known as Memorial Cemetery (Croatian: Spomen groblje).[22]