Do you know anyone who was imprisoned on Goli Otok, and what's going on there?
Posted by Ausspanner@reddit | AskBalkans | View on Reddit | 8 comments
Aka. Titos Hawaii
HighlanderAlien@reddit
My granduncle (not from slovenia) . From what i know, informbiro came, uncle didnt want to join or show support or somethin because he was nationalist, he was taken to goli otok.
JustinaBieber23@reddit
A friend's dad and my great uncle was supposed to go but went to Lepoglava instead. Both got drunk and said something they shouldn't have.
I don't think anything will happen since it was so notorious. It's more Gulag than Alcatraz.
Ok_Tie_7564@reddit
Goli Otok (Barren Island), located in Croatia, was a political prison and labor camp operating from 1949 to 1988. Primarily used by Tito's Yugoslav regime for Stalinists and other political dissidents, it was popularly known as “Tito’s Gulag” or “Croatia’s Alcatraz”. Prisoners were subjected to forced labor and ideological re-education.
Janosh_Poha@reddit
I think i read once that, after Yugoslavia reestablished relations with the Soviets, the prison was handed over to the SR Croatia and a Republic prison and not a federal one
Ok_Tie_7564@reddit
That is true. It became a normal prison after 1956.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goli_Otok
sorakaisthegoat@reddit
My grandfather and 2 of his brothers. I don't remember what happened but they took the eldest away than my grandfather and another brother got drunk and started singing some songs they shouldn't have sang. Took them away too. Then they came for the 4th brother, but my great grandma came outside of the house with a gun, sat on a chair and told them "go ahead, take him". They didn't. As for the island, I don't know much other than it was horrible and my grandfather was bedridden for a large period of his life after. He died when I was very young so I didn't get to hear much. He also wouldn't talk to female family members about it and those are the only ones alive now so I can't find out more.
No-Championship-4632@reddit
All those were built to make people disappear. At least in the first years here it was not meant to rehabilitate people, it was meant to make them disappear. People were fed to pigs in Belene here and it was the same all over the communist Balkans. A few people might have survived there at the time and they are likely dead by now already. Not sure about Goli Otok, our equivalent to it was closed in the 50s then briefly opened with the Hungarian revolution and Prague spring, then again it functioned as a normal prison. Those places were modeled after Siberian gulags and they all functioned like that for some time all around the communist Balkans and that includes Yugoslavia.
Our "Goli Otok" ("Belene" but it's actually on an island on Danube river, not the Belene town itself) is still a prison nowadays and I happen to know a guy who served his prison sentence there. He said it was not that bad, definitely not a hardcore communist labor camp. He wasn't a hardcore recidivist or something like that, it was a minor drugs offence. He said it was boring as fuck but nothing brutal, mostly scammers, small-scale drugs dealers and petty thieves imprisoned there. They had relatively good conditions and they were watching TV most of the time. The hardcore criminals here are not imprisoned in the ex-commie labor camp.
-Against-All-Gods-@reddit
No. But dad told me his neighbour was imprisoned there. He never left his apartment and had a panic attack when dad once got up earlier and him on the balcony.