Memory War: WWII Memorials in Bosnia as Instruments of Division and Conflict

Designed by the revered Yugoslav architect Bogdan Bogdanovic, the memorial was officially unveiled in 1981 and became part of the broader Yugoslav narrative of fascist terror and Yugoslav ‘Brotherhood and Unity’.

For the rest of that decade, it was the local League of Communists that organised commemorative events at the site. Then, in 1991, as Bosnia teetered on the brink of war, the 50th anniversary of the massacres took on a distinctively religious – Serbian Orthodox – tone and was organised by newly formed Serb national bodies. The ‘official’ death toll increased dramatically.

“In this way, Garavice was assigned an entirely new political function,” said historian Dino Dupanovic, director of the Una-Sana Canton Museum.

“It became a place where the narrative of Serbian endangerment and the need for ‘self-protection’ in the forthcoming war was constructed. In this sense, Garavice represents a paradigmatic example of transforming an authentic tragedy into a tool of mobilisation.”

Bosniak and Croat communities in Bosnia began to do something similar, Bosniaks with the Kulen-Vakuf killings and Croats with the crimes committed in Krnjeusa, both in 1941.

“These processes were indeed an expression of a long-standing sense of injustice and unresolved trauma, but at the same time they contributed to the fragmentation of the shared Yugoslav memorial matrix and opened the possibility for competing narratives of victimhood,” said Dupanovic.

For decades, World War Two occupied a central place in collective memory and public discourse across the territory of socialist Yugoslavia. Thousands, possibly tens of thousands of monuments mushroomed across the country, celebrating the National Liberation Struggle, NOB, and honouring the victims of fascism.

The monuments, official narratives and symbolism constructed by the Yugoslav authorities held pronounced socio-political significance: they served to foster unity among the various peoples of Yugoslavia and were central to the state’s ideological narrative.

But as the federation unravelled and nationalist parties came to power, the once dominant narrative acquired an additional dimension, becoming a tool of ethno-national politics aimed at mobilising and homogenising national groups and deepening interethnic divisions.

Former symbols of anti-fascist struggle and unity were transformed into instruments of manipulation, historical revisionism, and political propaganda.

Memorials and memories of WWII, constructed over decades with the goal of preserving collective memory and unity, became arenas of division and conflict through which new nationalist symbolism was articulated. They became instruments for the legitimisation of the conflicts that followed.

This was particularly evident in Bosnia, which endured three and a half years of war in the early 1990s. Today, the culture of memory remains extremely sensitive.

Nationalisation of anti-fascism

Monoliths in the Garavice Memorial Park near Bihac commemorate people killed by fascists in World War II. Photo: Ajdin Kamber.

In the early 1990s, political elites across Bosnia vigorously reinterpreted the history of WWII in order to justify their own national projects, said historian Dragan Popovic.

“Serb elites revived narratives about the ‘repetition of genocide’ from 1941; Croatian elites constructed a continuity of suffering and endangerment in the Independent State of Croatia and during the communist period; while Bosniak elites emphasised the neglected or marginalised suffering of Muslims during the war,” he said.

“Such reinterpretations had a direct mobilising effect, giving new conflicts the appearance of historical inevitability and a defensive character.”

According to historian Nedzad Novalic from the NGO Centre for Nonviolent Action Sarajevo/Belgrade, the memorialisation of WWII promoted by the socialist authorities contributed negatively to the wars of the 1990s. Flawed memory politics were not the sole cause of the war, he said, but they undoubtedly contributed to it.

“An overly simplified image of the war, the sweeping under the rug of certain topics, manipulation of victim numbers, and the failure to acknowledge the suffering and pain of specific victim groups – all of this was (mis)used by political elites in the 1990s to homogenise ethnic groups, create myths of endangerment, and enable ‘preventive’ violence,” Novalic said.

New practices of remembrance, as noted by historian Amra Custo, were characterised by the nationalisation of antifascism.

“Antifascism is recognised exclusively as belonging to one’s own national group, accompanied by a completely uncritical attitude toward the past and a lack of sensitivity toward the victims of the ‘others,’” Custo said.

Societies across what we know as the post-Yugoslav space have yet to come to terms properly with the events of WWII in the way they truly need to be understood, said Dupanovic. A narrative remains in which the defeated forces of WWII are portrayed as victors, and vice versa, he told BIRN.

“This became particularly evident at the beginning of the 1990s, when national politics began seeking strong support in such narratives,” he said. “At the same time, this meant that the issue of memorialising the events of WWII strongly shaped – and in some cases even acted as the driving fuel for – the outbreak of the conflicts of the 1990s.”

Dupanovic quoted the Vietnamese American essayist Viet Thanh Nguyen, who said that every war is fought twice: once on the battlefield and a second time in the culture of memory.

Shared past denied

The annual anti-fascist gathering at the Partisan cemetery in Mostar in 2017. Photo: Ajdin Kamber.

The 1990s are littered with examples of political manipulation of historical memory.

In the buildup to war and during the fighting, for example, Serbian media and politicians persistently portrayed the Ustasha-run concentration camp Jasenovac during WWII as a symbol of an ongoing, not merely historical, threat, said Popovic.

Croatian leaders, on the other hand, turned to commemorations of Bleiburg – the 1945 massacre by Yugoslav partisans of tens of thousands of Ustasha soldiers and Croat and Bosniak civilians, either sympathisers, families of Ustasha officials, of just civilians fleeing feared Partisan reprisals – and reinterpretations of the Ustasha-Partisan conflict to legitimise its own territorial ambitions and burnish a narrative of ‘defence against the Serbian aggressor’.

“In the Bosniak context, references to the suffering of Muslims in eastern Bosnia during the 1940s were used to portray the conflicts of the 1990s as a repetition of historical patterns and to reinforce the narrative of eternal victimhood,” said Popovic.

Different interpretations, revisions, and reckonings with memorials and figures from WWII were not limited to words – they were carried out in practice.

In the run-up to Yugoslavia’s bloody collapse and more intensively during the fighting, monuments dedicated to WWII disappeared from public spaces across Bosnia or were destroyed, losing their social significance.

“Almost no city escaped the removal or vandalism of such monuments as a memory of a shared past,” said Custo. “This was an act of reckoning not only with previous memory but also with the Yugoslav state and society.”

Illinois-based writer and researcher Donald Niebyl founded the Spomenik Database to examine the history and legacy of monuments, public art, and architecture of the former Yugoslavia, facilitating learning and better understanding of historical artifacts that are often misunderstood.

“Slovenia, for instance, has been quite excellent in their preservation of NOB memorial sites, while places like Bosnia or Croatia have experienced the removal, destruction or replacement of many of such monuments,” said Niebyl.

“In these regions, such impacts have been a consequence of a great many factors, such as fallout from the Yugoslav Wars, anger towards the Yugoslav Army, disillusionment with communism, as well as changes in ideology, identity, nationalism, religion, etc.”

There are numerous examples of busts of ‘undesirable’ Partisans and participants in the National Liberation Struggle disappearing or being destroyed from public spaces. Busts of people belonging to other ethnic groups were removed or smashed, while those representing the ethnic group constituting the majority or holding power in a given area were deliberately left intact.

Novalic said WWII itself has become “ethnicised”, so that only heroes of the “correct” ethnic affiliation survive in the public memory.

Collaborationist forces are simultaneously being rehabilitated because, from a national perspective, they are seen as those who “fought for our cause” and therefore deserve respect, he said.

In Bosanski Petrovac, in the west of the country, a Park of National Heroes used to contain 22 busts of the town’s ‘national heroes’. Today, only three remain. The rest, according to the local mayor, were removed and melted down.

Those removed represented individuals from different ethnic communities and did not fit into nationalist projects, said Dupanovic.

“The destruction of almost the entire park, of which only three out of 22 busts remain today, represents not only an act of erasing cultural-historical heritage but also an attempt to completely sever the city’s antifascist identity.”

Partisans also to blame

Busts of anti-fascists have been removed from this graveyard in Bihac. Photo: Ajdin Kamber.

Arguably, Yugoslav authorities laid the ground for such a turnaround.

Instead of open discussion about the wartime past, including the crimes committed by Partisan units, sensitive issues were swept under the carpet in favour of a selective, controlled creation of memory culture.

“Among the most sensitive issues were the actual number of victims, interethnic violence, the identity of the victims – especially civilians – and the responsibility of different actors for the crimes committed,” said Custo.

Sead Dulic, president of the Association of Fighters of the National Liberation War of Yugoslavia, SUBNOR Bosnia and Herzegovina, said: “Any cover-up, concealment, or silence about the truth ultimately costs the one who does it.”

“Once it was all over, when things calmed down, politics should have left it to historical science to clearly explain, and today many relationships would be different.”

Instead, said Dupanovic, individual experiences and memories of WWII remained largely confined within “four walls” and then suddenly exploded into public discourse at the beginning of the 1990s.

“Simply put, all personal memories, tragedies, crimes, etc., could not be ‘fitted’ into what we know as ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ while expecting that it would not eventually start bursting at the seams,” he said. “And it started when the one person who could keep it all under control – Josip Broz Tito – was gone.” Tito died in 1980 and Yugoslavia limped on for only a decade more.

Novalic also faulted the communists for inflating casualty figures in the hope of securing greater reparations from Germany. “The Partisans also messed things up,” he said. “Perhaps the most concrete example is the number of victims.”

Exaggerations occurred in other cases as well, creating a distorted picture of suffering that would later serve the manipulation of collective memory, the fuelling of a sense of permanent endangerment, and the mobilisation for new conflicts.

Novalic cited the example of Jasenovac: some exaggerated the number of victims, speaking of a million murdered Serbs in order to demonstrate beyond doubt the “genocidal nature” of Croats; others minimised the numbers and described it as merely a labour camp or collection centre.

“All of this fed traumas, generated mistrust and fear, which were then exploited to initiate or justify violence,” he said.

Swastika instead of red star

Nazi and Ustasa symbols spraypainted in the Partisan Cemetery in Mostar. Photo: Ajdin Kamber.

For decades, February 14 was etched into the collective memory of the residents of Mostar on the Neretva River in southern Bosnia, as the day in 1945 when Partisan units entered Mostar. The date served for decades as a bond among the peoples of this region – or so it seemed.

Several years ago, one of the authors of this article witnessed a group of masked assailants lobbing stones at antifascists who, under police escort, were visiting Mostar’s Partisan Memorial Cemetery beneath Bijeli Brijeg to mark the February 14 arrival of Partisan units. Such incidents have become regular occurrences.

The cemetery itself is largely in ruins; hundreds of stone plaques bearing the names of Partisans have been smashed, while hate speech, Ustasha and Nazi symbols cover the walls of the complex.

“I think the matter is quite simple,” said Dulic. “For many years now, in a large part of the country, those in power have been followers of the ideas defeated in 1945. In other words, we have followers of neo-fascist ideas in power.”

Mostar itself remains deeply divided along national lines having been the scene of fierce clashes during the 1992-95 war.

Dulic said that parts of Bosnia where the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, is in power, any mention of the antifascist struggle is considered hostile; efforts are made to erase all trace of it, he said, “while members of the Ustasha movement are proclaimed to have been the Croatian army that fought for the freedom of the Croatian people”.

Divisions even among anti-fascists

A vandalised World War II monument on mount Makljen near the town of Prozor. Photo: Ajdin Kamber.

The anniversary of the 1943 Battle of Sutjeska is still marked, but on different dates and by different veterans’ associations.

Some 7,356 Partisans are buried beneath a towering monument to the battle in Tjentiste, Bosnia, at the foot of the mountains Maglic, Zelengora, and Volujak; they died in one of the most important battles fought by the Partisans, in which they broke through a tightening noose of Axis forces. The monument is made of two concrete chevrons, 19 metres high, that seem to lean together and then shear apart.

On June 15 last year, the anniversary was marked by the Association of Veterans of the National Liberation Struggle of the Republika Srpska, SUBNOR RS, and six days later by Dulic’s SUBNOR Bosnia and Herzegovina. Republika Srpska is the predominantly Serb-populated entity of Bosnia, the other being the mainly Bosniak and Croat Federation.

A monument that for decades was a place of bonding between the peoples of Yugoslavia and a symbol of the anti-fascist struggle has today become a symbol of division and competing interpretations of the past.

“Because national politics divided them, because nationalists took control of anti-fascist associations,” said Dupanovic, adding that WWII commemorations such as those at Sutjeska, Kozara, or Donja Gradina have largely lost their original, universalist, and anti-fascist character.

“Especially after the breakup of Yugoslavia, these commemorations are increasingly experienced less as shared places of remembrance of the anti-fascist struggle and civilian victims, and more as platforms for national politics seeking legitimacy for contemporary political goals in the past,” he said.

Custo added: “They have turned into sources of conflict even among associations of World War Two veterans, which were once the most active guardians of the official memory of the anti-fascist struggle.”

Popovic said such practices have created lasting ethnic divisions that persist to this day, and sites of memory such as Jasenovac, Bleiburg, and Kozara have become more political than memorial spaces.

“Narratives about World War Two remain a key weapon in shaping identities, mobilising voters, and delegitimising the ‘others’,” he said. “As a result, collective memories of World War Two have become one of the main factors that continue to burden the processes of transitional justice, reconciliation, and the building of a shared future in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

In a Bosnian-Herzegovinian discourse marked by opposing politics of memory, historian Custo observes a continuous process of creating and adapting memory, as well as establishing new interpretations of the past related to historical anti-fascism.

“Precisely because of the ethno-national circumstances in which memorial practices are developing today, and within the context of transitional justice, it is difficult to expect that monuments will be used to foster inclusive and critical reflection within the culture of memory,” Custo said.

The culture of memory in Bosnia – with regards both WWII and the war of the 1990s -remains an extremely sensitive field, marked by intense debate, deep divisions, and pronounced political instrumentalisation.

Instead of creating space for inclusive dialogue, fragmented and mutually conflicting narratives prevail, burdening inter-ethnic relations, contributing to the transmission of transgenerational trauma, hindering the construction of a shared future, and increasing the risk of future conflicts.