During World War II, the town was occupied by Axis troops and was included into the Pavelić's Independent State of Croatia (NDH). The fascist Ustashe regime committed the Genocide of the Serbs and the Holocaust. The house in which the inventor Nikola Tesla was born, as well as the Serbian Orthodox church in which his father had served as a priest, were destroyed by the Ustashe movement in 1941. On August 2, 1941, on Serbian Orthodox holiday St. Ilija, Croat soldiers entered Smiljan and massacred 509 Serbian civilians. The victims were slaughtered with knives, burnt alive, or thrown into deep pits. Most Serb inhabitants of Smiljan perished in this carnage, including Nikola Tesla's remaining relatives. During the same period, the Ustaše also established a concentration camp in Smiljan through which 5,000 inmates passed. The camp was part of a wider network of Ustaše concentration camps centred around the town of Gospić.