Researching the Goli Otok Camp

Abstract

The existence of Goli Otok was a taboo topic in socialist Yugoslavia, a subject forbidden to speak of, but after the death of Josip Broz Tito many writers began to debate this topic in the heated atmosphere of the 1980s. After the bloody breakup of the country, there was not much further research into the ‘big historical topic’ of Goli Otok. This paper addresses the author’s ‘journey’ into researching the Goli Otok labour camp from the basic research idea to the shaping of a methodological approach to a complete history of the camp, to the obstacles encountered while working in the archives in Croatia and Serbia. Various practices imposed by archival management as well as lawmakers (as well as the discrepancies between rules and practices), presented significant difficulties during research. Interviews with former inmates (oral history) also give a unique perspective on the lasting legacy of the labour camp, notwithstanding all the flaws and benefits associated with this method. This paper will address an important historiographical issue; how historians researching Yugoslav history should approach the heavily controversial Goli Otok labour camp, a topic which is still shadowed by the political changes that occurred in 1991 in the former Yugoslavia.