16. The Shelter for Children Refugees in Sisak
The Nazi-aligned government of Croatia established the Shelter for Children Refugees in Sisak, Croatia, in 1942. Eventually, the camp held over 6,600 children between the ages of 3 and 16. Most of the housing provided was in disused stables with little improvements appropriate to human habitation. Officially there was a school, which saw little use for anything to do with education. Sisak was run by a doctor of medicine, Antun Najzer, who operated a small infirmary and did take the steps of isolating those children with infectious diseases from the others, but the death toll on both was terrible. Most of the children sent to Sisak were of adults sent to other labor camps.
The International Red Cross was aware of Sisak and attempted to intervene on the behalf of the children, who were not prisoners of the German SS. They were imprisoned by the Croatian Ustase, who agreed with the Nazi belief that Slavs, Jews, Roma, and many others were subhuman. Though the SS gassed children in the extermination camps, the Ustase did not, though it did nothing to prevent them from starvation or dying from disease. Nazjer also found children useful for his medical experiments to the point that he became known as the Croat Mengele and was executed for war crimes after their extent became known in 1946.