A significant number of Croats died in the Ustasha camps. Most of them died as prisoners in the Jasenovac death camps, particularly Camp III (Brickworks) in Jasenovac and in Stara Gradiška Camp. Among the first inmates of Jasenovac were Croatian Communists and Anti-Fascists, discovered in prisons by the Ustashas after taking control.
The prisoners who were brought to Camp III (Brickworks) were mostly assigned to work details with the rest of the inmates.
Two groups of prisoners were killed by starvation and dehydration in solitary cells – death cells, in the spring and summer of 1942 in Stara Gradiška Camp, which was originally planned as an Ustasha camp for the rehabilitation of Croatian political prisoners.
Groups of Croatian women were also sent to the camp, firstly to the Tower, but were later separated, with the Muslim women, from the other Jewish and Serbian female prisoners, after the establishment of the so-called Croatian Women’s Camp in the spring of 1942.
A considerable number of imprisoned Croats were intellectuals.
Some of the prisoners were: Vladko Maček, President of the Croatian Peasant Party; the writers Mihovil Pavlek Miškina, Ilija Jakovljević and Grgur Karlovčan; university professors Antun Barac, Mirko Deančević, Ivo Ivančević, Marko Kostrenčić, Grga Novak, Fran Tućan, the Director of the Zagreb Opera House, Krešimir Baranović, the Director of the University Library in Zagreb, Josip Badalić, and many others (lawyers, judges, politicians, etc.).
The Communist and Anti-Fascist inmates formed a special group of prisoners, who were active in organising illegal camp political parties and economic units. They shared the same fate as the rest of the prisoners.