Dejan Lukic has included material on Goli Otok in his dissertation. See Lukic 2007
- On Location
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On Location
Sveti Grgur and the Camps
The boat skirts Sveti Grgur portside. The captain brings her as close to the coast as safety allows, and we see the rocky coast drop straight into the crystal-clear sea. Having in mind the landscape of the desert islands of Greece the sight of Sveti Grgur, which has been described repeatedly as such another desert island, catches me by surprise. The island is about the size of Yáros, with an elevation of two hundred meters at its highest point (about six hundred feet). But where I expect to see only rocks, I see thick pine forest rising from sea level all the way to the island’s peak. I have the naïve thought that, if the Greek desert islands had so much forest on them many more prisoners would have succeeded in escaping. The forested landscape suggests this. Surely these thick forests could have provided full coverage. The geography, given how close Sveti Grgur is to the northern point of Rab, invites it. It is a short swim from one island to the other. Of course there are watch towers, bunkers, and search lights, but the thought sticks with me- until we reach the bend and see the ruins of the women’s prison. In a cove at the beginning of the rocky part of the island are the remnants of the prison’s stone structures. Built on an incline, this settlement is an exercise in stone. No one can escape from here. Nothing can move without being noticed. Everything is stone, and stone is everything. The single path that leads uphill from the buildings, the small, pebbly beach, the slopes surrounding the cove, everything, as far as we can see, everything is the muddy off-white.
The roofs of the buildings have been pillaged long ago, there is no discernible structuration to the settlement, nothing that would indicate how each building was used. An oblong building sat on the slope to the left entrance of the cove, separate from the rest, looking strangely like a miniature Byzantine basilica, a chapel. But we know better. This could not have been a church; it must have been the administration building. Grgur was the women’s prison and, as Mestrovic mentions, the place “where most of the killings took place”
The vacationers, ironic highlights of color and laughter, intensify the brutality of the landscape. A young woman in a brightly colored bikini emerges from one of the abandoned buildings. Yachts and zodiac boats are at anchor. People are diving into the crystal, emerald waters, children frolicking, a couple embracing. Do they know what this is? I wonder. Do they know where they are? I could not get the same thought, the same question out of my mind when I visited Makronisos in 2003. Would I swim here, in such a place? I have been pondering this, as an ethical question, since that summer. For pleasure, on a scorching day such as this one, would I plunge into this magnificent water in the presence of these ruins? I cannot see the sharks that Venko Markovski in his diary (translated and published in 1984) claimed were in these waters, and the bathers do not seem to be worried about them, either. Sharks are not the problem right now.
The captain does not linger for long. He turns the bow of the boat and heads to Goli Otok. The two islands are very close to each other, the channel between them is very narrow, although not as narrow as the passage between Rab and Grgur. Seeing the dramatic view of Goli has a profound and dramatic (but also traumatic and frightening) effect. The first thing one sees is the marble quarry that dominates the southwestern part of the island. Goli (as is usually referred to) is about seven miles long and two miles wide, about the size of Grgur but of much lower elevation. There are no high peaks here, or, better said, the high peaks of the island are marble rocks. I keep thinking about what Markovski
wrote about Goli Otok, which I have seen repeated in so many accounts of the place. “Goli means bare, naked; and Otok means island: the bare island. Nothing grows here; there are rocks everywhere, and not a blade of grass. When the first prisoners were brought here there was nothing on the island. The convicts themselves have built the jail with their hands, without picks and shovels, without pickaxes—with only their sweat and blood.” I have prepared myself for this encounter for a few years now. A rock of marble in the middle of the Adriatic, with not even a blade of grass, never inhabited, never visited prior to its establishment as a rehabilitation camp.
As the boat sails along the coast, the first administrative buildings and the workshops for the quarry come into view. All around them are watchtowers, bunkers, searchlights, barbed wire. Further ahead we can see the small port, and the landscape starts looking more and more like the Greek islands of the Saronic Gulf. Pine trees come down all the way to the water, interspersed with outcroppings of marble. Before we get to the port, we see the ubiquitous motor- and sailboats. The captain has already informed us that we can stay at the harbor and have something to eat or drink there, but nothing has prepared us for what is actually there: a large covered structure, open on three sides, attached to a restaurant that serves everything from hamburgers to fried calamari, with a variety of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. Off to one side is a small kiosk selling ice cream and souvenirs—T-shirts with “Goli Otok” printed on them, two different dvds about the island, trinkets. On the opposite side, another kiosk sells exactly the same items.
We start walking up the road that will take us to the prison. Behind us follow the families with small children, grandparents, and prams who were on the boat. The road splits to three. To the right is the south road to the prison, which goes to the administrative building and has the most shade, since it winds through the pine grove. To the left is a short track to the Kino, the cinema, where propaganda films were shown during the days when Goli Otok was a dissident camp; when it was transformed into a civil-law prison popular films played there. Straight ahead, the central, interior road goes to the prison camp. We continue straight on, while most of the families veer off to the right, to the main administration building of the prison, situated in the middle of the pine grove. A few follow the path to the cinema.
The walk uphill towards the prison is taxing. For the first five hundred meters or so, the cement road is flanked by workshops, with no tree in sight. The temperature must be close to 45 degrees Celsius (around 113 Fahrenheit). We go in and out of the buildings, to take photographs and to find refuge from the sun and the heat. We continue towards the prison and note the abandonment of the place. Sheep are kept in some of the buildings; there are sheep droppings everywhere; until, walking fast, we find ourselves at the crest of the hill. To the left of the road is an expanse of marble. To the right are acacia and Judas trees, and further, in the northeast of the island, we can see pine groves. The heat is intense. We keep pouring water on our heads and shoulders and swirl it in our mouths, though we have only walked three kilometers (about one and a half mile). It is impossible to imagine what the prisoners must have felt and experienced, being forced to run this distance carrying heavy loads of marble in this scorching heat or in the bitter cold of winter.
We think we are the only ones who have made it this far until we see a slender woman, dressed in black leggings and a black T-shirt, approaching us fast, visibly upset. About a hundred meters behind her is her family, a husband and two small daughters. She stops, turns to them, and shouts, in Slovenian, telling them to go back, to let her go alone, that it is too hot. They press on along with her. We are only at the midpoint of the walk, and it has already taken us forty-five minutes to get here; we have spent a lot of time in the buildings. We doubt that the Slovenian family will be able to walk the entire perimeter of the camp and be back at the harbor on time to board the boat. We decide to walk back to the harbor and come back the next day again to start on the other end of the camp.
We make our way to the port in less than half an hour. At the kiosk I buy two dvds to watch later. We sit in the café and order cold drinks, as we are trying to put our thoughts and feelings about this experience in order. All the families are already there, everyone is having a good time, eating, drinking; the babies are not crying; the toddlers are running around. We see the Slovenian family. The woman, in her late thirties or early forties, is clearly still upset. She must have had a relative in the prison, we speculate. When it is time to embark, she sits silently alone. Balkan pop music blasts away; people drink more beer; babies are sleeping now; and in half an hour we are back at Lopar. It is almost seven o’clock, as we head back to Rab.
Markovski, Venko. 1984. Goli Otok, The Island of Death: A Diary in Letters. Boulder, Colo.: Social Science Monographs.
Mestrovic, Matthew, Introduction to Venko Markovski 1984: ix.
The distance between the tip of Sveti Grgur and Goli Otok.
The distance between the tip of Sveti Grgur and Goli Otok.
The ravine on the eastern part of Sveti Grgur, facing Rab.
The ravine on the eastern part of Sveti Grgur, facing Rab.
The elevation of the island.
A watch tower before the bend to the prison.
A bunker on the eastern part of Sveti Grgur.
A bunker right before the bend to the prison.
First view of the prison.
First view of the prison.
The zodiacs with the prison as backdrop.
The ruins of the women’s prison.
The ruins of the women’s prison.
The administrative building on the slope.
The administrative building on the slope.
The administrative building on the slope.
Sailing along the coast of Goli Otok.
Sailing along the coast of Goli Otok.
Sailing along the coast of Goli Otok.
Sailing along the coast of Goli Otok.
Sailing along the coast of Goli Otok.
Sailing along the coast of Goli Otok.
Sailing along the coast of Goli Otok.
The harbor with the speed boats and zodiacs. The mainland in the background.
The harbor with the speed boats and zodiacs. The mainland in the background.
The harbor with the speed boats and zodiacs. The mainland in the background.
The two tourist shops.
The two tourist shops.
The two tourist shops.
The two tourist shops.
The welcome sign on Goli.
The incongruity of history: a Christian cross placed at the beginning of the road.
Main building.
Main building.
Woodworking shop.
Graffiti with the letter “Z”—a reference to Kosta Gavras’s film “Z” about the murder by operatives of the parakratos in Greece of the peace activist Gregoris Lambrakis in 1963.
Graffiti on the woodworking shop.
The main road flanked by the various workshops.
The main road flanked by the various workshops.
The main road flanked by the various workshops.
The electrical workshop.
The electrical workshop.
Graffiti in the electric shop.
Pornography on the walls of the workshop. The image of the couple is from a Greek porno film.
Pornography on the walls of the workshop. The image of the couple is from a Greek porno film.
A tour bus from the time when Goli Otok was being considered as a tourist attraction.
A tour bus from the time when Goli Otok was being considered as a tourist attraction.
Happy New Year 1971. Graffiti from the second period of Goli Otok, of internment of anti-communists.
Transport of water for marble cutting.
The plateau with Prvić on the background.
The infirmary.
Peter's Hole torture area next to the infirmary.
Peter's Hole.
Peter's Hole.
Peter's Hole.
I first wrote this from memory, eager to preserve the first impressions of this encounter. A few weeks later, as I prepared the photographic material to accompany the online book, I looked at the photographs again. As you can see, the island is not as barren as my first impressions made it. There is a very dry central part of the camp, but the stone is surrounded by the forest, which starts a few feet up from the buildings. As Bill Ayers never ceases to remind us, “memory is a motherfucker” (2003:7).
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