range of reasons, with some Catholic clergy participating in forced conversions of Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism in accordance with Ustaše policy. Under the Treaties of Rome of 18 May 1941, Italian occupation troops had withdrawn south of the so-called "Vienna Line" which divided the NDH into Italian and German spheres of influence. They re-occupied this area in August in order to properly secure the Adriatic coast. However, in June 1942, they again withdrew most of their troops from this area, concentrating only on securing large population centres and railroads. Included in this withdrawal were Italian troops that had been garrisoned in the Jastrebarsko area. Origins The decision to establish the Jastrebarsko children's camp was taken due to the large numbers of Serb children who had been rounded up during anti-Serb massacres conducted by NDH forces since April 1941. Children had also been taken during anti-Partisan operations conducted by German, NDH and other collaborationist forces between April 1941 and June 1942, such as the Kozara Offensive. Their parents and older siblings had often been killed or sent to labour camps both within the NDH and elsewhere in Axis-occupied Europe. Those children who had not been killed in the massacres and counter-insurgency operations were rounded up, as their villages had in most cases been burned to the ground, and they had no means of support. By mid-1942, over 1,000 children that had been rounded up during the Kozara Offensive were being held at the Stara Gradiška concentration camp, itself a sub-camp of the Jasenovac concentration camp complex. Information about the plight of these children was passed to concerned citizens in the NDH capital, Zagreb, one of whom was Diana Budisavljević, an Austrian. Budisavljević approached an Ustaše-appointed member of the board of the Croatian Red Cross, Kamilo Brössler, and told him about the children at Stara Gradiška. Brössler was horrified, and with the support of representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, began to place pressure on the NDH government to release the children. Budisavljević also used her contacts with the German Army to intervene with the Ustaše regime on behalf of the children. The NDH government struck upon the idea of trying to re-educate the children to become something akin to an Ustaše version of the Hitler Youth, thereby turning them against their Serb parents. The regime saw this as a more effective way of placing pressure on the Partisan