Destruction Trend Continues from the 1990s

Away from Kastel Luksic, however, many similar monuments in Croatia have disappeared or have been seriously damaged.

As Croatia grows more conservative, many monuments built in the Communist era to commemorate victims of the country’s 1940s fascist Ustasa regime or Yugoslav Partisan forces’ victory over fascism during World War II – which was known as the People’s Liberation War during the Yugoslav Communist period – are being left to decay or become prey to vandals.

The trend has continued amid a mood of historical revisionism in the country which has seen right-wingers seek to rehabilitate the Ustasa regime and denigrate the Yugoslav Communist period.

Half of the anti-fascist monuments in Croatia – about 3,000 of them – were damaged or destroyed during the 1990s war, when Croatia fought for independence from Yugoslavia, or removed by the authorities, or damaged by vandals.

The Croatian Culture Ministry told BIRN that there is no special register of heritage connected to the People’s Liberation War or what was known in the Yugoslav period as the workers’ movement, but that 592 such objects are included in a nationwide register of cultural artefacts.

Monuments that are not on that list are the responsibility of local authorities, the ministry said. “Local governments are taking over the care and responsibility of the memorial heritage of the People’s Liberation War/workers’ movement [which don’t have the] the status of cultural artefacts, but [have the status of] an artefact with local significance,” it explained.

The ministry also said that the status of such monuments and memorials, which were protected by the 1967 Cultural Heritage Protection Act, is currently under review to see what level of protection they should be given in future.

The factors that have contributed to the lack of maintenance of historical monuments are complex, said Sanja Horvatincic, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb, but one of them is clear: “I would say that primarily it is neglect by the relevant institutions,” Horvatincic told BIRN.

She argued that monuments dedicated to the People’s Liberation War and the Partisans do not fit today’s dominant ideology, which only focuses on Croatian national identity.

“They [the monuments] actually erased national [ethnic] identifiers [between the various peoples of Yugoslavia] and spoke in the name of a common struggle that was directed against the fascist occupation,” she said.

There is no detailed analysis of monument destruction in Croatia, but some data has been collected by various organisations and individuals.

The Serbian National Council, which represents the Serb minority in Croatia, said in its annual report last year entitled ‘Historic Revisionism, Hate Speech and Violence against Serbs in 2017’ that 17 anti-fascist monuments had been damaged or destroyed in 2017, the same amount in 2016, and 13 in 2015.

Yugoslav-era World War II monuments are often targets for vandals who spraypaint fascist or Ustasa symbols on them.

Ombudsperson Lora Vidovic noted in her report in November 2018 that Ustasa symbols have become increasingly prevalent in the country, and have been used in graffiti defacing Partisan monuments.

“Throughout Croatia, the [stylised letter] ‘U’ [which stands] for Ustasa, the greeting ‘Za dom spremni’ [‘Ready for the Home(land)’), a slogan used by the Ustasa movement] and its acronym ‘ZDS’, and swastikas can be seen,” Vidovic said.

Monuments Renamed for New Purposes

Antifasisticki Vjesnik (Anti-Fascist Newsweek), a website that monitors anti-fascist heritage, reported last year that many monuments dedicated to victims of the Ustasa regime are falling apart and have become overgrown with grass, to the point where some are no longer recognisable.

Horvatincic noted that such monuments are sometimes raided by scavengers for raw materials that can be sold.

“Perhaps the most striking example of this long-term destruction of a monument is the one on Petrova Gora mountain, which since the 2000s has actually gradually disappeared because the valuable raw material, stainless steel, is simply being stolen and the monument is becoming no more than a skeleton,” she said.

While addressing a panel discussion this month entitled ‘Destructive Hate in Destroying Monuments’, Horvatincic also said that some monuments have been removed from prominent public places and reinstalled in more obscure locations, where they are allowed to decay.

She recalled how a bronze monument dedicated to Partisan fighters who liberated the town of Sisak, installed in 1955, was moved at the beginning of the 1990s to the Brezovica forest, where now it stands in a terrible condition, although Brezovica forest is the main location at which the state holds the annual Anti-Fascist Struggle Day commemoration each June 22.

“Over the years, that bronze has actually vanished piece by piece. I have been in the field several times and saw less and less of that monument,” she said.

There is also the practice of repurposing monuments, or parts of them, changing their meaning. Horvatincic cited several examples of monuments dedicated to Partisan fighters being rededicated to Croatian veterans of the 1990s war.

In Zagreb’s Vrapce district, there used to be a monument dedicated to 30 people who were publicly hanged in 1944, with metal railings symbolising the executions that took place there.

“These railings, which were an interesting solution that indicated these difficult, traumatic public hangings, were removed in the 1990s, and simply replaced with a cross and another plaque,” Horvatincic said.

The plaque installed in 1995 does not mention anti-fascism, but simply says: “In memory of all victims for the survival and freedom of the Croatian people.”

A similar example is a monument in the village of Prkovci that is now known as the ‘Mother with Apples’ – showing a woman holding apples in her apron – which was originally called the Monument to Fallen Fighters and Victims of Fascist Terror.

On the pedestal of the monument used to be a list of people who died fighting fascism, plus the names of the families who were killed in Prkovci – three Jewish families and two Roma families. Now the monument stands on another pedestal which does not have the original inscription.

Activists Launch Independent Preservation Efforts

Horvatincic has noticed however that initiatives to renovate monuments have increased over the past decade.

“Maybe one of the major reconstruction projects is the Dudik Memorial Park [dedicated to 455 people who were executed by the Ustasa authorities]… in Vukovar, which was renovated after a long process of negotiation and advocacy by the Serbian National Council,” she said.

Local anti-fascist organisations have also been taking care of monuments in their own areas.

In the spring of 2015, in the coastal town of Pisak, a monument dedicated to Partisan fighters and the victims of fascism, which was vandalised in 1992, was restored.

“The monument was mined and was significantly damaged, broken into three to four parts; some parts were even lost,” said Nedjeljko Fistonic, a member of the Omis Anti-Fascist Association, which was behind the effort to restore it.

“It was transported to Zagreb to the Academy of Fine Arts and they worked for several months on its reconstruction… Now is better than it was before,” Fistonic added.

In March, a group of anti-fascists from the coastal city of Sibenik started to work on restoring the Subicevac Memorial Park, where Italian fascists executed their Croatian opponents during WWII. The makeover should be finished by August next year.

As well as the restoration of existing monuments, a brand-new new memorial was installed in May this year in Mala Ucka, a rural settlement in the Istria region, dedicated to 22 inhabitants of the village that were killed during WWII.

“It is important to mark [the site], just because of the young people, [so they could] have testimonies of events that have happened and [so they can] make decisions on their own,” said Bruno Staracic from the local branch of Croatia’s Association of Anti-Fascist Fighters and Anti-Fascists, who was involved in the project.

Horvatincic said meanwhile that some monuments have been restored by enthusiastic amateurs who repaint the fading names and symbols themselves.

“I think such practices are extremely positive,” she said. “I think they demonstrate the best the fact that this is heritage, and that it has its inheritors.”