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During the war, Stara Gradiška was used as an assembly camp established by the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia. It is extremely difficult to determine the number of prisoners who went through this prison in that period as well as in all the other periods of its activity. When the war was over, along with the camp in Jasenovac, Stara Gradiška was designated as a concentration camp where a larae number of Croatian state opponents were imprisoned. In reference literature, the figure of as many as 90,000 victims is mentioned although exhaustive research has not been carried out. The post-war research of the crimes, that evidently took place inside this prison, was affected by the strong ideological motives of the ruling Communist party authorities. The research was affected by political objectives - to create the myth of the genocidal tendencies of the Croatian people. The scientifiic and chronological component of this part of history of Stara Gradiška was almost completely neglected and the circumstances under which the innocent victims lost their lives were misused for political purposes. The number of the victims was determined by political methods and these assessments were not preceded by any of the usual field research nor were statistical demographic assessments taken into account. Whenever an objective historian made an attempt to carry out objective research into the crimes committed during the Second World War, he risked losing his professional career and inciting new political trials. Historical truth relating to the number of victims is still to be determined, but the written documentation we have at our disposal proves that at that time in Stara Gradiška a large number of innocent victims of the war died in exceptionally hard conditions having been found guilty under the unacceptable law of "racial purity". Apart from political and war opponents, a very large number of civilians died in Stara Gradiška although they did not take any part in the war.
The documentation that makes part of the historical collection of the National Museum in Stara Gradiška confirms that there was considerable manipulation of the data on the part of high-ranking communist officials during their investigation of the victims of the Second World War. As documents that could have been compromising were burnt by members of the Communist Party soon after the first democratic elections in 1990, reconstruction of these events has become highly complex. In spite of all inaccuracies in interpretations of certain events, caused by subjective perception, this research must be clarified in order to determine historical truth.
Communist functionaries in Nova Gradiška and Zagreb showed interest in this topic at the beginning of 1984. An informal work group was established and their meetings were held in the building of the Municipal Committee of the Croatian Communist Party in Nova Gradiška. Apart from researching minor events such as a fight between young Franciscans and teenage Communists from Stara Gradiška High School, they carried out serious research into war crimes committed during the Second World War. The meetings of this work group were attended by a representative of the National Museum of Nova Gradiška until the time when he was excluded. His role in this work group was mostly to keep the minutes of the meetings and to collect and systematise interesting material from the archives and historical institutions of Croatia. Soon after the first meeting, the documentation, gathered throuah field work in 1947 by the Committee for War Crimes of what was known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, was stored in the Museum. These lists were fairly accurate and they gave personal data on each of two thousand civilian victims in the area of Nova Gradiška, Okučani and Stara Gradiška. Among other things, strange circumstances were noticed under which two girls of Croatian nationality were killed in Gornji Bogićevci in 1946. This case was recorded only one year after the killings and it was noted by a member of the commission that the victims had been raped before being killed. The report said that the executors were not known but that they belonged to "an unknown Chetnik group".
At the following meeting, on the initiative of the representative of the National Museum, this case was reported and it was suggested that these victims should be added to the list of the victims of the Second World War in the area of Nova Gradiška, Okučani and Stara Gradiška. It should be noted that, due to these suggestions, the representative of the Museum was excluded from this work group trying to collect relevant historical material and the document on the victims, stored in the Museum, was destroyed, probably by a collaborator of the Municipal Committee of the Croatian branch of the Yugoslav Communist Party in Nova Gradiška.
Cases like this demonstrate the fear that research into war crimes committed in the Stara Gradiška and Nova Gradiška area were carried out under pressure from the authorities of that time. All available methods were used to prevent the publication of information that could disrupt the established political framework concerning victims of war.
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