Other activities
Those not working in our workshops or on our farms are also kept busy. There is always plenty to do in an Institution of our kind. Laying and maintaining paths, cleaning the building, sewers, water pipes (the old plumbing was destroyed), cutting wicker for the basket-weaving workshop, rennovating the building, providing wood for heating, transporting and unloading food and other necessities as well as performing minorjobs whcre needed. We work because work gives men dignity."
According to this description in the prison newspaper, it can be seen that almost all crafts of that time were represented by the various workshops and the prisoners were forced to work very hard there. Due to this large number of workshops, it can be estimated that in the post-war years, three to four thousand political prisoners worked in the Prison. Since the prisoners were often sent to other prisons and at the same time new prisoners arrived, it is impossible to establish their numbers accurately. The majority of the surviving prisoners agree on the assessment of the number of prisoners.
The work and conditions in prison were much worse than those euphemistically described by a prison employee in the "Prosvjetnik". A certain number of prisoners died during their term as a result of hard conditions and torture. According to statements of prisoners given much later it can be seen that the bodies of prisoners who had died or been killed were usually buried, or thrown in a pit, outside the village, in forests or floated off down the River Sava. The surviving prisoners have partially prevented their sufferings from falling into oblivion by their statements. Although memories fade with the years and are an unsure and narrow path to throw light on that period, they are still a significant source of information for all those interested in studying events in the newly established state of Yugoslavia during the first years after the war.
Much more time and greater effort are needed to completely reconstruct life in this prison, because there are estimates that from its foundation in 1925 up to 1992 there were several thousand political prisoners along with regular criminals inside the walls of Stara Gradiška.
By publishing the statements of four priests who served terms in Stara Gradiška, light is thrown on just one piece of the dark mosaic of crimes committed against political prisoners by the former repressive legal system.
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