Guards at the Jasenovac Camp Complex

Violence, Morality, and Interaction

Abstract

This article focuses on the guard personnel stationed at the Jasenovac camp complex. Breaking with stereotypes of the guards as being driven by fanatical Catholicism or pathological sadism, it argues that the guards’ brutality derived from a moral transformation, from moral universalism to particularism. Spurred by ideologised officers, guards gradually began to believe in the righteousness of the mass killings. But although the camp leadership sanctioned and encouraged violence against prisoners, violent acts at external labour sites and inside compounds were usually not entirely arbitrary but derived from patterns of interactions, in which prisoners’ identities were often central. Gender norms could likewise shape violence and mistreatment, which often aimed to emasculate male prisoners or strip women of femininity. The article also zeroes in on the guards’ interactions with their families and local civilians, who were often not mere bystanders but complicit to different degrees.