About two kilometres from the camp, in the village of Jasenovac itself, in the spring of 1942 the Ustashas organised the Tannery work detail, or the Tannery Camp, as the villagers called it, in which inmates worked on the production of leather.
The buildings of the pre-war tanners’ guild were used, and accommodation for the Ustasha staff and prisoners was found in two private houses within the barbed wire fence. Thus the house of the Šrumpf family, who numbered five, ended up right next to the camp. Their older son was conscripted into the Ustashas in Slavonska Požega. He contracted tuberculosis, returned to Jasenovac and died at home in 1942.
The family tended a field in Budžak, where they grew pumpkins and maize, right next to which columns of prisoners would pass. Ten year-old Mijo was told by his parents to throw produce at the prisoners. When the Ustashas reacted, his father explained that it was just a childish prank.
Jelena Šrumpf baked maize bread every day and would leave it at a certain time in the garden by the prison fence.
She was helped by her neighbours, Dragić Ljubica-Ljuba Melihova, Dragić Jelena-Draga and Dragić Katarina-Kata Živoderova. The Ustashas discovered what they were doing when Draga passed a newspaper to an inmate and all three were taken away to Jasenovac Camp on 8 April 1944, where they were killed.
Jelena and Vinko continued to help the prisoners until 4 May 1944, when they were taken away to the Ustasha prison and never seen again.
Their son was taken care of by his grandmother, Ana. After the war, one of the survivors of the Tannery prisoner breakout, Egon Berger, visited them, and told them how much it had meant to the prisoners that Jelena had left bread by the fence for them every day.