Goli Otok (Goli otok — Bare Island) was a Yugoslav political prison located on a small island of the same name in the Croatian part of the Adriatic Sea. It emerged during the heightened Soviet-Yugoslav confrontation in the late 1940s, which occurred after the Communist Party of Yugoslavia rejected the 1948 Cominform resolution and subsequent repressions were carried out against those Yugoslav communists who supported Stalin’s and the USSR’s policies.

In 1949, the entire island was officially turned into a highly guarded, top-secret prison and labor camp, managed by the authorities of the People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia along with the nearby island of Sveti Grgur, which housed a similar camp for female prisoners.

It opened a year after the Cominform (Communist Information Bureau, or MB), an organization dominated by the Soviet Union and at that time including all European communist and socialist states, adopted a resolution expelling the Yugoslav Communist Party (League of Communists of Yugoslavia) due to the presence of “nationalist elements.”

The split between Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin led to a deterioration of relations between Yugoslavia and the USSR until 1955. Following the split, mass arrests and imprisonments of alleged and actual Stalin supporters began rapidly in Yugoslavia. About 13,000 of these people were held in the Goli Otok camp during its existence.

Some people were sent to the camp simply because they had personal disagreements with influential Yugoslav officials or became victims of power struggles within the League of Communists for government positions. Among the prisoners of Goli Otok were individuals who were heroes of World War II or had been inmates of Nazi concentration camps during the war.

Of course, there were unyielding Stalinists who believed in Stalin and supported him in the split with Tito. However, after the breakup of Yugoslavia, historians showed little interest in the camp because “among other things, it was difficult or impossible to ethnically identify victims or perpetrators” — both belonged to all the various ethnic groups of Yugoslavia. This lack of interest was due to the fact that communists imprisoned communists.

Although the prisoners were never closely watched by a large number of guards, the camp administration ordered prisoners to physically abuse each other. This method was used in Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet GULAG. Despite the brutality of daily hard labor in extreme weather conditions and beatings by other prisoners, the camp administration also sought to ‘politically re-educate’ the inmates. They wanted to convince prisoners that Yugoslavia was not like the fascists and Nazis who opened camps for torture and ultimately killing people. They claimed — this was the official explanation — that they would re-educate the prisoners, persuading them that they were wrong. They were physically beaten until they admitted that “Tito was right.”

Many anti-communists — Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Albanian, and other nationalists — were also imprisoned on Goli Otok. Non-political prisoners were also sent to the island to serve ordinary criminal sentences, and some were sentenced to death. In total, about 16,000 political prisoners served sentences there, of whom between 400 and 600 died on the island. Other sources claim that nearly 4,000 prisoners died in the camp.

Prisoners were forced to work (in quarries, pottery, and carpentry) regardless of weather conditions: in summer, temperatures rose to 40 °C, while in winter they were exposed to the icy Bora wind and low temperatures. The prison was entirely run by prisoners, and its hierarchical system forced inmates to beat, humiliate, condemn, and avoid each other. Those who cooperated could hope to climb the hierarchy and receive better treatment.

With the normalization of relations with the USSR in 1956 and until 1980, the prison complex was officially used as a re-education camp for “enemies of communism.”

In 1980, the camp was converted into a juvenile correctional colony, which was closed the same year under international pressure. The prison ceased operations in 1988 and was permanently closed in 1989. Since then, only ruins remain. The island has since become a tourist attraction and is inhabited by shepherds.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goli_Otok

https://balkaninsight.com/2019/03/05/goli-otok-yugoslavias-barren-island-camp-for-stalinists/