Doboj (BA)
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Doboj (Cyrillic: Добој) is a city and municipality in the northern region of the Republika Srpska entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the river Bosna. It is one of the oldest cities in the country and the most important urban center in northern Republika Srpska.During World War I, Doboj was the site of the largest Austro-Hungarian concentration camp. In total, 45,791 persons. Some 12,000 people have died in this camp, largely due to malnutrition and poor sanitary conditions.
By February 1916, the authorities began redirecting the prisoners to other camps. The Serbs from Bosnia were mostly sent to Győr.
Most of the interned from Bosnia were whole families from the border regions of eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is said that 5,000 families alone were uprooted from the Sarajevo district in eastern Bosnia along the border with the Kingdoms of Serbia & Montenegro.
The Nobel Prize-laureate Ivo Andrić was also an inmate of the camp.
From 1929 to 1941, Doboj was part of the Vrbas Banovina of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
During World War II, Doboj was an important site for the partisan resistance movement. From their initial uprising in August 1941 up until the end of the war, the Ozren partisan squad carried out numerous diversions against the occupation forces, among the first successful operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The city was an important stronghold for permanently stationed Ustasha and Domobran garrisons with smaller German units serving as liaison and in defense of important roads and railroads. Waffen SS "Handschar" division was partly mobilized from the local population and participated in battles around Doboj in the summer and the fall of 1944. During this time, the Ustaša fascist regime, a puppet state of Nazi Germany, purged many pro-Partizan civilians, including Bosniaks, Serbs, Jews and Roma to concentration and labor camps. Croat resistance members and political opponents were also sent to concentration camps and condemned to death. According to public records 291 civilians from Doboj, of various ethnic backgrounds, perished in the Jasenovac concentration camp. In 2010, the remains of 23 people killed by Yugoslav Partisans were found in two pits near the Doboj settlement of Majevac. The non-governmental organization which discovered the remains alleges that nearby pits contain the remains of hundreds more also killed by the Partisans.
The town was liberated on 17 April 1945. Doboj was strategically important during the Bosnian War. In May 1992, the control of Doboj by laid with Serbian forces. The Serb Democratic Party took over the governing of the city. What followed was a mass disarming and subsequently mass arrests of all non-Serb civilians (namely Bosniaks and Croats). Many instances of war crimes and ethnic cleansing were committed by Serb forces.
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