Editing Jasenovac concentration camp (section)

===NDH legislation===
{{See also|The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia}}

[[File:Rasni zakoni NDH.webp|thumb|Ustaše newspaper proclaims NDH Race Laws, noting that The Leader, [[Ante Pavelić]], signed legal provisions on racial affiliation and the protection of Aryan blood and honor of the Croatian people]]
Some of the first decrees issued by the leader of the NDH [[Ante Pavelić]] reflected the Ustaše adoption of the racist ideology of [[Nazi Germany]]. The regime rapidly issued a decree restricting the activities of [[Jews]] and seizing their property.{{sfn|Lemkin|2008|pp=259, 625–626}} These laws were followed by a decree for "the Protection of the Nation and the State" of 17 April 1941, which mandated the [[death penalty]] for the offence of high treason if a person did or had done "harm to the honor and vital interests of the Croatian nation or endangered the existence of the Independent State of Croatia".{{sfn|Lemkin|2008|pp=259, 613}} This was a retroactive law, and arrests and trials started immediately. It was soon followed by a decree prohibiting the use of the [[Cyrillic script]], which was an integral part of the rites of the [[Serbian Orthodox Church]].{{sfn|Lemkin|2008|pp=260, 626}}

On April 30, 1941, the Ustaše proclaimed the main race laws, patterned after Nazi race laws – the "Legal Decree on Racial Origins", the "Legal Decree on the Protection of Aryan Blood and the Honor of the Croatian People", and the "Legal Provision on Citizenship".{{sfn|Goldstein|Goldstein|2016|p=115}} These decrees defined who was a Jew, and took away the citizenship rights of all non-Aryans, i.e. Jews and Roma. By the end of April 1941, months before the Nazis implemented similar measures in Germany, the Ustaše required all Jews to wear insignia, typically a yellow Star of David.{{sfn|Goldstein|Goldstein|2016|p=121}} The Ustaše declared the "Legal Provision on the Nationalization of the Property of Jews and Jewish Companies", on 10 October 1941, and with it they confiscated all Jewish property.{{sfn|Goldstein|Goldstein|2016|p=170}}

The Ustaše enacted many other decrees against Jews, Roma and Serbs, which became the basis for Ustaše policies of genocide against Jews and Roma, while against Serbs – as proclaimed by an Ustaše leader, [[Mile Budak]] – the policy was to kill a third, expel a third, and forcefully convert to Catholicism a third,{{sfn|Alexander|1987|p=71}} which many historians also describe as genocide. The decrees were enforced not only through the regular court system, but also through new special courts and mobile courts-martial with extended jurisdiction.{{sfn|Tomasevich|2001|pp=383–384}} Almost immediately the first concentration camps were set up, and in July 1941 the Ustaše government began clearing ground for what would become the Jasenovac concentration camp.