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Goli otok (literal translation: "barren island", Italian: Isola Calva) is an island off the northern Adriatic coast, located between Rab's northeastern shore and the mainland, in what is today Republic of Croatia's Primorje-Gorski Kotar county. The island is barren and uninhabited. Its northern shore is almost completely bare, while the southern one has small amounts of vegetation as well as a number of coves. Humans first took notice of the island during modern times. Throughout World War I, Austria-Hungary sent Russian prisoners of war from Eastern Front to Goli Otok. In 1949, the entire island was officially made into a high-security top secret prison and labor camp run by the authorities of Socialist Yugoslavia. Until 1956, all throughout the Informbiro period, it was used to incarcerate political prisoners. They included known Stalinists, but also other Communist Party members or even regular citizens accused of exhibiting any sort of sympathy or leanings towards the Soviet Union.
The prison inmates were forced to do heavy labor in a stone quarry, regardless of the weather conditions: in the summer it was 35-40 °C, while in the winter they were subjected to chilling bora wind. Inmates were also regularly beaten and humiliated. After Tito's regime normalized its relations with the Soviets, Goli Otok prison was passed down into provincial jurisdiction of the Socialist Republic of Croatia (as opposed to the Yugoslav federal authorities). The prison was shut down in 1988, and completely abandoned in 1989. Since then it has been left to ruin. Today it is frequented by the occasional tourist on the boat trip and populated by sheep-herders from Rab.
Goli Otok in media
The first book, published in 1984 in the USA, describing the horrors in the prison, was Goli Otok-The Island of Death, written by the Macedonian poet Venko Markovski. Ligio Zanini (1927-1993), a poet born in Rovinj, wrote Martin Muma (1990), an autobiographical book about his imprisonment on the island. Other significant literary reference to Goli Otok include Night till Morning, by the Slovenian writer Branko Hofman.
External links
- www.goli-otok.com
- Comparative criminology | Europe - Yugoslavia
- Goli Otok - Hell in the Adriatic is the true story of Josip Zoretic's tragic experience and survival as a political prisoner of the former Yugoslavia's most notorious prison, Goli Otok, and the circumstances that led to his imprisonment.[1]
- Goli today - photoalbum [2]
