Goli Otok: Discover Croatia's Abandoned Island Prison

Wonder which is one of the spookiest islands in Europe? That is Goli Otok, an infamous abandoned island prison in Croatia. The name "Goli Otok" literally means "naked island" or "barren island"-- and it really does live up to its name, given its eerily lack of vegetation, which stands out against the turquoise-sapphire Adriatic Sea. 
 
This uninhabited island used to be home to the only operating gulag in Europe-- a top-secret high-security political prison for communists, running between 1949 and 1989 and has an area of 4.5 square km. It is located off the coast of "Primorje-Gorski Kotar County", near the island of Rab.  The only route one can take to reach Goli is by catching two ferries: one from Stinica, and another from Rab island. In the latter, one can book an organised excursion- where one can take advantage of a tour guide who can recount the devastating chronicle of this prison island while exploring its ruins. The tour lasts 2 hours, with a cost of 110 kunas per person. Also, the excursion includes a train ride which cruises you throughout Goli Otok.
 
 
Goli Otok was originally used as a prison by the Austro-Hungarian authorities during World War I to incarcerateRussian prisoners of war. After World War II, Yugoslavia (Croatia today) turned the island of Goli into a forced labour camp prison for political dissidents from the Josip Broz Tito regime (known as Tito). Tito was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary who had broken relations with Stalin and would incarcerate those he thought were members of the URSS, those who sympathised with Stalin or were overall against Tito's regime. 
 
It is believed that during Tito's era, around 16000 political prisoners (alleged Stalinist and other criminals who needed to serve out their sentences) were sent to Goli Otok, of which 400- 600 died due to beatings and starvation-- although some sources claim that the number of deaths was almost 4000.  

It was an inmate-run prison served through a hierarchical system,  in which beatings, shunnings and forced labour were part of their daily routine. Most of them had to face this hard labour with no regard to weather conditions, such as quarrying rocks at 40ºC in the summer. Ultimately, these prisoners were sent here to be "re-educated" through a terrible punitive system.  The prison didn't earn the nickname "Living Hell" among its inmates for nothing.
 
The island was finally evacuated in 1988 and has remained abandoned ever since.  Today, the complex is decrepitly left to ruin, with roofless and windowless buildings chipping away, birds nested, spiderwebs, weathered posters, and broken panes. The island was never inhabited other than its prisoners-- whereas now, the only occupants one can see is the occasional grazing sheep. The prison system was composed of a hospital, various cement, wood and ceramic factories, numerous cells, and one "re-education" school. 
 
One detail worth paying attention to is the weathered remnants of the political propaganda posters spread across the building walls.
 
There's an eery silence that invades the whole island-- a quiet stillness ever to be imagined-- only disturbed by the crashing of distant waves, and whispering winds. 
 
As opposed to the Nazi camps, Goli Otok was never intended to become an extermination camp. Fortunately, the vast majority of its prisoners survived, and many of them endeavoured to write memoirs about their experiences Goli Otok, which were published following Tito's death. The chronicle of this communist concentration camp became increasingly popular in the 80s and 90s as the Iron Curtain and Yugoslavia collapsed.
 
Josip Zoretic, one of the survivors, lived to tell his story in his bestselling book: "Hell in the Adriatic".
 
 
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