It lies gray and barren at dawn. A rock against which the dark waves crash in the Kvarner Bay: the naked, the bare island. Or in the language of the country that was once part of Yugoslavia and is now called Croatia: Goli otok.
In the summer, the sun burned everything there, says Rajko Grlić. And in winter everything froze. He was never an inmate himself. But his mother. The 76-year-old talks about her in his apartment in Zagreb.
The Croatian writer Eva Grlić was imprisoned in Goli Otok and on a neighboring island for three years. To reassure her relatives that she was still alive, a fellow inmate smuggled a tiny booklet from the island back to her family. It was the size of a matchbox and Rajko Grlić kept it carefully. The only picture in it shows, in close scribbles, a ship gliding freely through the blue water.
It is the story of his late mother that she painted and wrote down here. Grlić talks about her because she was mostly silent even after her imprisonment. He wants their suffering not to be forgotten.
Italian journalist Federica Tourn and photographer Federico Tisa visited Grlić in Zagreb. As part of a book project, they are researching the history of islands in the Mediterranean - as places of exile and captivity.
Goli otok was the perfect place for the communist regime to make unpleasant and suspicious people disappear. On the land side there is only rugged rock. Washed by strong currents all year round. A godforsaken, beautiful spot between the island of Rab and the Dalmatian coast.
Those who were imprisoned here from 1949 onwards were not strangers to the Yugoslav communists, but often their peers: officers, former partisans, students, journalists, professors. Former comrades-in-arms of Josip Broz Tito, who were accused of pro-Soviet activities and support of Stalinism - a serious crime, because Tito and the Russian ruler had fallen out after the Second World War. They now wanted to distance themselves from the Soviet Union. Anyone who didn't do this was considered a traitor.
More than 10,000 political prisoners are said to have been brought to the island by the UDBA secret police between 1949 and 1956, a total of probably 18,000. Hundreds are said to have lost their lives here. The victims' families cite even higher figures, and there are no documents that could really provide clarification.
Tens of thousands were imprisoned here and at least hundreds died
Goli otok was a place of sheer misery for the prisoners. They were beaten, starved and tortured. The children of those imprisoned still wonder to this day what happened back then. And why no one cares anymore today.
Every time the ship brought new inmates, a ritual began that many victims would only tremble to tell their children about decades later: As soon as the ship docked, the beatings began - not from just anyone, but from the other inmates. Anyone who wanted to leave the island had to prove that they had improved. Anyone who wanted to prove their improvement had to fight.
Nobody made it the first 20 meters to land without collapsing, says Darko Bavoljak. He is the chairman of a victims' association and the author of a documentary film. His father-in-law also served a sentence here for years. Bavoljak says: »Together with the merciless weather, the perverse methods turned the island into a factory of terror. A person’s dignity had no value here.”
Violence was literally the gateway to the island – and the way out of the island.
In between, the inmates built buildings, pounded stones, and made terrazzo. But many projects made no sense at all, says Bavoljak. For a while, the inmates had to knock stones out of a cave and bring them outside. When they were finished, the order came to drag the stones back. "There was no goal - except to break the prisoners."
Some visit the torture prison in bikinis
Anyone who comes to Goli otok by ship today doesn't notice much of this. A yellow and red tourist train waits at the pier in the summer months. The “Suveniri” shop is now located in one of the ruins. Some visitors, says Bavoljak, also come by in bikinis.
Anything that could be ripped out with two hands or a crowbar was stolen from most buildings. On the neighboring island of Sveti Grgur, where women were imprisoned, four stone letters are still a megalomaniacal reminder of the unquestionable ruler of Yugoslavia: TITO. They can still be seen in satellite images from space to this day.
The worst place on the island was the so-called special prison, better known to the inmates as "Petrova rupa", Petar's Hole. It was named after Petar Komnenić, the first inmate. He was also once a supporter of Tito. Shortly after he was released, he died in 1957 as a result of his imprisonment. At that time, the island was already converted into a supposedly normal prison, which remained in operation until 1988.
One of the conditions of release was that inmates were not allowed to talk about their imprisonment. Many people did it anyway, at least within the family circle. But the children of many of the victims say that they still cannot fully understand their parents' suffering.
Survivors demand recognition, today's Croatia has other concerns
Rajko Grlić says today that he grew up as an outcast, an enemy of the regime. After the wars of the 1990s, he decided to leave everything behind and emigrated to the USA. "I wanted a life that wasn't dictated by the narrowness of nationalism."
He is now back in Croatia. Unlike the members of the victims' organization, he is not actively seeking publicity. He still hopes that his mother's suffering will be more recognized. He looks at the little book she made. Goli otok shaped his life without ever being imprisoned there.
The surviving relatives of many of the inmates from back then are loudly demanding that the island be converted from a tourist destination into a kind of museum, and that a historical reappraisal should take place instead of horror sightseeing.
You turned to parliament back in 2004, asking it to provide places like Goli otok with greater protection. Not much has happened since then; post-Yugoslav Croatia would rather look forward after the wars. And so the visibility of the past horrors disappears on the island.
The relatives have little left except a few rusty souvenirs. They ask: How can we shape a just future if we so suppress the injustices of the past? From their point of view, Goli otok is also a warning.
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