DOBOJ CAMP PART OF GENOCIDE AGAINST SERBS IN WWI

BELGRADE, DECEMBER 15 /SRNA/ - The Austro-Hungarian concentration camp for Serbs in the First World War in Doboj was part of genocide against the Serbian people, for which the great Western powers decided even before the Berlin Congress in 1878 that they should be prevented from territorially uniting in the Balkans, it was said today at a public lesson on that topic, organized in the Sixth Belgrade Gymnasium.

Colonel Miloje Pršić said that from its establishment on December 27, 1915, until its closure on June 5, 1917, when the remaining detainees were transferred to other camps, 45,791 adults were detained in the Doboj camp, as well as many children whose number is not known because the Austro-Hungarians did not record children under the age of seven. Pršić, who is also a historian and taught at the Military Academy in Belgrade, said that there were 16,673 men and 16,996 women from BiH, that is, 33,669 people, but also that 9,172 men and 2,950 women were brought from Serbia and Montenegro. According to him, in the beginning, 10 to 20 people died in the camp daily, and in April 1916, 615 people were killed in one day, while children died mainly from hunger and disease, and at least 12,000 people were killed in total. "One single sentence says everything about the condition in the camp. When a doctor tried the food for camp inmates, he said that he wouldn't even allow his boots to be washed with that swill and asked the camp administrator: `Is it possible that we treat people like this?' He answered him: `Some nations are disappearing from the political scene, and that is the Serbian nation, which is disappearing,'" said Pršić. He pointed out that the camp in Doboj was not the only camp for Serbs in the First World War and that almost every larger town had a place where hostages were imprisoned and executions were carried out, which Austro-Hungarian soldiers could do without trial. The director of the Doboj Library, Lidija Žarić, said that the Doboj camp was the first concentration camp in Europe in the 20th century, and was formed on December 27, 2015, after the Austro-Hungarian defeats at Cer and Kolubara. People were brought to the camp from all over BiH, mostly from Herzegovina, from the Sarajevo-Romania plateau, and Podrinje, because the Austro-Hungarians had the ambition to clear the left bank of the Drina of Serbs, erasing traces of whole families. "The first contingent arrived on December 27, 2015, and until 1917, Serbs were brought in indiscriminately and without guilt. It was genocide," Žarić said.