Young Serbs on Landmark Visit to Croatian Siege Town

Iva Martinović

IWPR-trained reporter and outreach assistant

Tuesday, 22 November, 2011

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On cold and sunny November day in Vukovar, an elderly man sat fishing on the banks of the river Danube. Nearby, a group of young people stood listening to a grey-haired man recounting events which 20 years ago changed this eastern Croatian city forever.

“Two million shells fell on Vukovar between August and November 1991,” Croatian war veteran Danijel Rehak told the group of youngsters gathered around him. “The sky was always black, as the constant shelling turned day into night.

Pointing at the baroque facades behind him, many of them still bearing the scars of war, he said, “There were civilian casualties in each of these buildings – some were killed, some seriously wounded.”

Rehak was addressing a group of 20 young people from the city of Pancevo in Serbia who came to Vukovar last week to mark the 20th anniversary of the city’s fall to the Yugoslav National Army, JNA, and to pay tribute to the Croat victims of the three-month siege.

Vukovar is today a symbol of Croatia’s 1991-95 war of independence from Yugoslavia, and the city that the heaviest losses of the entire conflict. According to some estimates, around 5,000 residents were killed or went missing. Ninety per cent of buildings in this once beautiful town were destroyed.

The worst single crime was committed at nearby Ovcara on November 20, 1991, when JNA forces removed about 260 non-Serbs from Vukovar’s hospital and transported them to a farm building where they were beaten, tortured and eventually murdered.

The Hague tribunal indicted three former JNA officers for these crimes – Mile Mrksic, Veselin Sljivancanin and Miroslav Radic. Mrksic and Sljivancanin were sentenced to 20 and ten years’ imprisonment, respectively, while Radic was acquitted.

The university students from Pancevo, a town near Belgrade, arrived in Vukovar accompanied by Ljiljana Spasic, executive director of the non-government Pancevo Civil Initiative, as part of the Culture of Remembrance Against the Culture of Oblivion project. The project seeks to help young people from Serbia face up to the past.

“I’ve had this idea for a long time, but I have always been afraid people wouldn’t want to join me on this path of remembrance,” Spasic said. “Most people in Serbia still refuse to face the past, and the Serbian authorities are not interested in speeding up this process“.

The visitors were greeted by the mayor of Vukovar, Zeljko Sabo, who shared his memories of the war with them.

“Back in 1991, Vukovar looked like Hiroshima,” he said. “It was horrible – God forbid this happens to anyone ever again.”

Most of the Serbian youngsters were visiting Vukovar for the first time, and the group followed Rehak in silence as he took them to the hospital.

The basement of the Vukovar hospital is now a museum, and has been left unchanged since 1991. The ceiling of the dimly-lit room is pockmarked with craters. Video footage from 1991 plays on one of the walls.

The room is crowded with hospital beds and the basic equipment used by the handful of medics who cared for the wounded before Serb forces took them to Ovcara.

The injured inmates, children and medical staff of the time are represented by white human-size figures, some of them with limbs missing.

The names of the victims, including hospital staff, are written on the walls of the cold and damp hallways.

Rehak told the students from Serbia that despite the huge Red Cross flag hung outside the hospital, between 500 and 700 mortar bombs hit the building every day.

Hospital documents removed by the JNA after the fall of Vukovar are still in Serbia and have never been returned to Croatia, but it is estimated that 3,500 people passed through the hospital in 1991.

“People were born and died here, under constant shelling. I think this museum should be visited by everybody in the region,” Rehak said.

The museum made a strong impression on Serbian student Zarko Jelisavcic.

“I will remember this day as long as I live,” he said. “I have never seen anything like this before.”

Another Pancevo visitor, Filip Milenkovic was equally shaken.

“These images will stay with me forever,” he said. “You can still smell the war in that basement. I can only imagine what it was like to live there under constant shelling, in a perpetual state of fear and anguish.”

The tour continued through the streets of Vukovar. Although there has been a great deal of reconstruction, one still sees ruined homes, scorched trees and other signs of devastation, reviving memories of the days when the city was almost levelled to the ground.

The Serbian youngsters then travelled with Rehak to the Ovcara farm, a few kilometres outside Vukovar. Fenced-off hangars were used as a prison camp to hold Croats detained by Serb forces in 1991, and it is estimated that 3,000 to 4,000 people were held there before being transferred to camps in Serbia.

Today, the metal doors of the hangar where Vukovar hospital inmates and staff waited to be executed are kept wide open. In the middle of the dark, cold space inside, a candle burns in memory of those killed there 20 years ago. Photographs of the victims, personal documents and belongings are scattered around the room.

Milenkovic was visibly moved by what he saw there.

“This is where one can see the true nature of war and the scale of destruction it causes,” he said. “This is a great lesson for us all.”

Although visiting Vukovar was a very painful experience for them, the students from Serbia agreed that all their peers should visit this place and face the crimes that were committed by their compatriots.

“We should look to the Germans”, said one of the visitors, Nemanja Kranjc. “They know better than anyone how important the culture of remembrance is. A visit to Vukovar should be made mandatory for all young people in the region.”

Iva Martinovic is reporter for RFE/RL and IWPR in Belgrade.