The Ustashas took the first prisoners to work the fields in Mlaka, a village some 12 km downstream from Jasenovac, in the summer of 1941, and in 1942 they organised a camp farm there, where female prisoners and a few male prisoners were put to work on seasonal, agricultural tasks.
When the work was completed, they were killed in the meadows and woods around the village, and their bodies were thrown down several village wells.
Up to now, five mass graves have been confirmed in Mlaka, of which two have been marked. The re-ordered mass graves are located in Mali Čanak and Strmac and concrete paths now lead to them.
In April 1942 the Ustashas deported the Mlaka villagers to the camps in Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška, from where the men were deported via Sajmište camp in Zemun to forced labour in the Third Reich, while the women and children were mostly sent to be the work force on country farms in Slavonia.
To date, it has been confirmed that 742 persons from Mlaka died in Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška.
The surviving villagers of Mlaka erected two monuments in the village centre in 1967 to the victims of the Fascist terror and the fallen soldiers of the People’s Liberation Movement. The author of both monuments is Petar Vovk.