VIDAKOVIĆ: ABOUT 680 SERB CHILDREN DIED IN THE DOBOJ CAMP IN APRIL 1916 ALONE

DOBOJ, DECEMBER 27 /SRNA/ – The Doboj detention camp established by Austro-Hungary was the first concentration camp in modern Europe, in which more than 680 children died during April 1916 alone, said today Nebojša Vidaković, Assistant Minister for Veterans- Invalid Protection of Republika Srpska.

Vidaković noted that inmates most often died from exhaustion due to inhumane conditions in former stables where sick horses of the Austro-Hungarian army had previously been treated.

“That people suffered innocently is also evidenced by the fact that they were canonized as holy martyrs of the Zvornik–Tuzla Diocese,” Vidaković said, who on behalf of the Republika Srpska institutions, laid a wreath at the memorial “Doboj Camp 1915–1917,” located at the site of the former camp near today’s railway station.

In a statement to journalists, he emphasized that the Republika Srpska Government will continue to mark this important date and said that a people who do not forget their suffering have the right to a future and perspective.

Speaker of the Doboj City Assembly Zoran Blagojević said that around 46,000 Serbs from areas bordering Serbia and Montenegro experienced the horrors of the notorious Doboj camp, 12,000 of whom did not survive.

“The camp was opened on this day 110 years ago,” Blagojević said, adding that people were interned there whose only ‘guilt’ was being Serbs and of the Orthodox faith.

Earlier, wreaths were laid at the Ossuary Memorial to the fallen Serbs in Doboj, and in the Memorial Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul wheat was consecrated in honour of the Holy Martyrs of Doboj, marking 110 years since the internment of Serbs in the Doboj camp - the first of its kind in civilized Europe organised by Austro-Hungary - where 12,000 people were killed between 1915 and 1917.

The victims of the Doboj camp were proclaimed new martyrs of the Zvornik–Tuzla Diocese by the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

The Doboj camp, formed by Austro-Hungary during World War I, was the first organised mass site of suffering in the history of civilized Europe.

The first documented information about the Doboj camp was presented only in the publication “Memorial Dedicated to the Martyrs and Victims of the Doboj Internment from the World War of 1915/16,” prepared at the time of the consecration of the monument, the ossuary containing the remains of the victims, and the Memorial Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in 1938.

The camp was established on December 27, 1915, and operated until July 5, 1917. A total of 45,791 Serbs were interned there: 16,673 men; 16,996 women and children from BiH, including 12,122 Serb soldiers, along with a number of elderly people, women, and children from Serbia and Montenegro, of whom about 12,000 perished.

The Republika Srpska Government’s Committee preserving traditions of liberation wars has included the internment of Serbs in the Doboj camp in the calendar of significant events.