war crimes – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Croatian Remembrance Days For Victims of Vukovar and Skabrnja – A Personal Recount of Horror

November 19, 2023 by inavukic 8 Comments

While there are in Croatia four days (17, 18, 19, and 20 November 2023) that are set aside for marking remembrance and tributes to those who perished or are still missing from Croatia’s 1990’s Homeland War that sustained unimaginable brutality by the hands of Yugoslav Army and Serb aggression it was November 18 that dawned with the greatest ever gatherings of people paying respect to the victims that Croatia had ever seen. It was the day of remembrance of the multitudes victims of Vukovar and Skabrnja, civilian Croatian victims of massacres and slaughters and the once utterly destroyed and gutted and ethnically cleansed of Croats by Serbs, town of Vukovar, saw over 150,000 people in its procession of special piety of people from all over Croatia and abroad who came there to pay respects and give tribute to those who gave their lives so that Croatia could be free from communist Yugoslavia. Thousands came to the coastal village of Skabrnja as well.

Lest We Forget!

I will pay my tribute to the memory of victims of Croatia’s Homeland War by offering here a translation into English of personal victim account published on the Croatian portal dnevno.hr on 16 November 2023. It is good to know that this personal account and story of suffering under the brutal power of Serb aggression is also the essence of Julienne Eden Busic’s 2012 acclaimed book “Living Cells”

Snjezana Maljak is one of the few women from Vukovar who publicly and in great detail described the days of horror and imprisonment, which in her case lasted for weeks after the fall of the city.

At the same time, she said, she was constantly the victim of rapists, some of whom she knew from before the war, and she also witnessed numerous tortures and killings of her fellow citizens. Although Snjezana Maljak publicly called her tormentors by name for many years, two of them were arrested only in 2018. Other Serb rapists and murderers from this terrible time still roam the streets of Croatia or Serbia or other countries without paying the price for their war crimes! Some, regretfully, were given immunity from prosecution as part of the price Croatia had to pay in 1998 for the region where Vukovar stands to be liberated from Serb occupation!

“I was born and raised in Vukovar, today I am the mother of four children. At the beginning of August, we also went to the seaside in an organised manner, but after about 15 days we would return to the city, they said, it was not dangerous. After a few days, dad receives a threat that all of us will be killed in the house that night, if we stay. With the shooting that followed us, we ran out of the house, across the garden to the next street, and onward,” Dnevno portal wrote that Snjezana Maljak said. The police, she said, came to pick them up and transported them to Mitnica part of Vukovar, to Snjezana uncle’s place, in whose basement they suffered shelling by the aggressor for days.

“My then 3-year-old son had asthmatic bronchitis and we ran out of medication. I went to the hospital on my bike to get the medicine. Now deceased, my neighbour asked me if I would like to be (helping) in the infirmary, for the wounded, if the need arose. I had a small child. There were no others, he told me, either they have left, or they are afraid. I agreed and went back to get my clothes and tell my mother and father. My mother was crying, asking me what she would do with my child if something happened to me.”

The first major attack was on September 5, 1991, when Snjezana’s brother and cousin were wounded, but they managed to defend themselves and hold their position. The second attack, on September 14, 1991, they failed to defend themselves because the enemy attacked with planes and tanks and infantry.

“The (aggressor’s) infantry killed everyone who had anyone in the city’s defence forces or who did not report to them in time that they were in the basement. They killed a deaf elderly neighbour because she did not answer their call. In less than 24 hours, 87 civilians were killed. We haven’t found many – still. Slaughter… The next day they went from house to house and collected the dead. All of them were in Yugoslav People’s Army/JNA uniforms or in camouflage. They had to tie a white cloth on the gate so that it would be known that Croats were there.”

Snjezana Maljak told how they were slaves in the hands of Serbs and Yugoslav Army. People were taken away, imprisoned, killed, women were raped.

“They took me several times for questioning and intimidated me, threatened me. Their Territorial commander, Marko Crevar, took me to my parents’ house, stuck the barrel of a rifle against my back and lead me around the house. Turning things over that had already been turned over. In the room, I saw gold jewellery boxes on the floor, all empty. He took me to the attic and threatened to slaughter my father and brother. Then he threatened to slaughter me too. After a few days, he returned and took me again for questioning. He threatened me again…

Other Serb Chetniks came and threatened, interrogated. S. Samardzija and another from Negoslavci came and took the daughter-in-law away. After they brought her back, she cried and told me that the other one, whose name I don’t know, raped her. The second day, Serb Ivkovic came by and she asked for help. He told her that he would only help her because she was a foreign citizen. She asked him to take me out of town with her. No, he said, she’s going to Petrova Gora, to a party. On October 2, 1991, three people arrived, one of them was a local, M. Samardzija, the father of my schoolmate, and I didn’t know the other two. They summoned my cousin, took him away and thrashed him along the road. After a while they came back for us…

They took us across the garden to the neighbouring street, my street. The younger Chetnik (Serb) said that I was his prisoner, offered me a cigarette and looked at me meaningfully, while the older one put a gun to my cousin’s forehead and said that he would kill him because he looked like Franjo Tudjman (Croatia’s first President). They took us to the headquarters for questioning. The host asked me if I knew that his daughter died. I knew. He said he would kill 60 24-year-olds for her…

Interrogation proceeded in the basement, they pushed us out and beat the neighbour. Everything could be heard. By beating him, they forced him to admit that he fed the Ustashas (Croats) and that he was a “Tudjman supporter” himself. When they opened the door, blood was dripping from the neighbour’s mouth, his jaw was out, he raved deliriously. The younger one grabbed my hair and yelled at me telling me to tell him where the radio station was, or I’ll end up like my neighbour. They took him behind the house and slaughtered him. The host went to get more women.”

After interrogation, the neighbours and Snjezana Maljak were taken to a house basement:

“Everything smelled of urine and dampness. My cousin was taken to the unknown. The second day they took us to Velepromet (Serb concentration camp Vukovar), again questioning, threatening. They put us in one building and order that we be under guard. On October 13, 1991, the one who said I would be at a party in Petrova Gora came and said to me, ‘baby, tomorrow you will do my laundry.’ The next day he came to pick me up and took me away. After I had done the laundry, he ordered me to take a bath, and then to take off my clothes. I asked him not to do that, I had known him since I was a child, I cried. He said either me or ten others and then shooting. After he had done what he wanted, he took me back to the building near Velepromet. I screamed and vomited. My neighbour held me and comforted me, asking me to be quiet, because the walls ‘have ears’. A woman who was raped two houses away also heard my screams.”

After a few days, three more reservists came. One of the women called Snjezana to come out of the room and whispered that she had to choose one of them.

“For me, it was the end of the world, everything was spinning and everything was black. I felt like I was splitting in half. As forced I pointed to one of them. He came every day and took me to the house that was owned by a Serbian woman, one of their reservists, and behaved as if I were his property. I was disgusted, I suffered and waited for the day when I will come to my son, because the easiest thing was to say no and for them to kill me, but I wanted to live, I wanted to see my child…”

After the fall of the city of Vukovar on 18 November 1991, Snjezana Maljak was looking for her child, parents, and sister; she knew nothing of their destiny. The first rapist told her that her child was in Velepromet, and her father was killed behind the hangar. She asked the other rapist to take her to Velepromet to look for the child, but she did not find anyone there.

“The other two women left, one was taken to Sremska Mitrovica, and the other found her family members at Velepromet, and the Serb who raped me was helping her to go with them. They wanted to confuse us by playing good and bad. There was no one to help me. I was left with the Serbian woman to whose house the rapist took me, she said I could stay with her. There, I experienced the hell of drunken Chetniks who celebrated the fall of the city and use me for their survival – tying me to a chair, shining a flashlight into my eyes, using drugs and threats, rape. They called me an Ustasha whore.

“Years pass, I try to live normally, have a family. I am receiving medical treatment. I tried to commit suicide, because I had no one to tell how much all the horrors I had experienced were eating me up. No one asks me how I am and if I need anything…”

(Prepared and translated from the Croatian language by Ina Vukic)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Croatia, Croatian Homeland War, ethnic cleansing, REmembrance of victims of Vukovar and Skabrnja, Serb aggression, Skabrnja, Snjezana Maljak, Velepromet, Vukovar, war crimes, Yugoslav Peoples Army

Croatia – Leadership Antagonism Feeding Non-Assertion of Hard-Won Independence From Yugoslavia

May 27, 2022 by inavukic 5 Comments

_{Zoran Milanovic, President of Croatia (L), Andrej Plekovic, Prime Minister of Croatia (R)}

It is an incredible and angering preposterousness that Serbia is still acting towards Croatia as if Croatia had never become an independent state, as if it never seceded from Yugoslavia, as if the Homeland War of Serbian aggression against Croatia had never occurred (and if it did both sides were equally aggressors and equally victims!). What is equally absurd and preposterous is that Croatia is allowing this with no sanctions except cheap words and rhetoric! In persecuting Croats Serbia is using its own laws and sometimes the laws of former Yugoslavia to keep a perpetual train of indictments for alleged war crimes against Croats, allegedly committed on Croatian soil, while the brutal Serb aggression and onslaught ensued on Croatian soil, for perhaps no other reason than to press on with the obscene idea of equating the aggressor with the victim and Serbia denying its own aggression. In 2020, the Zagreb County State’s Attorney’s Office filed an indictment against six former members of the former Serb-controlled Yugoslav People’s Army JNA Air Force for rocketing the Banski Dvori (Croatia’s Government Building at the time its President Franjo Tudjman was inside) in October 1991 and so Serbia is now filing indictments against Croats for the same period of war of aggression event.

Croatia is not responding in a manner other independent states, whose independence arose from successful defence from brutal aggression, would respond. Countries that cherish their hard-won independence would at least make strong steps in diplomatic relations terms. It is utterly unacceptable that, in the least, Serbia’s Ambassador to Croatia has not been sent packing back to Serbia as Croatia’s first-hand response to the Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor Office having on 19 May 2022 indicted four retired Croatian Air Force officers: Vladimir Mikac from Ptuj, Zdenko Radulj from Osijek, Zeljko Jelenic from Pula and Danijel Borovic from Varazdin on suspicion of committing war crimes against civilians. prosecutors, ordered the rocketing of a column of refugees on Petrovacka cesta near Bosanski Petrovac and in Svodna near Novi Grad on August 7 and 8, 1995. The indictment was filed on March 31 but was returned to prosecutors on May 6 for further processing. In the mentioned event, 13 people were killed, six of them children, and 24 people were injured. According to the indictment, the prosecution proposes that the accused be tried in absentia.

According to Croatian media sources, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic stated on 20 May 2022 that at a short meeting with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in Davos, he expressed dissatisfaction with the Serbian indictment against Croatian pilots.

“We pointed out that the law, by which Serbia has been expanding its jurisdiction to the territories of other countries for years, is unacceptable to us and that such a move for Croatia is certainly a signal of a step back in our relations, not a step forward,” Plenkovic told reporters in Davos. Well, Plenkovic does rather good lip service but when it comes down to what is convincing and what Croatian people deserve, he fails miserably. He as Prime Minister must demonstrate that Serbia’s actions regarding these indictments are not acceptable by imposing strict diplomatic measures, at least. Most commonly used in free and democratic countries are official protests with Ambassadors or sending Ambassadors back to their countries until matters resolved.

“These indictments have occurred despite our years-long attempts to convince them not to play with fire and that it will cost them. I cannot be more polite; I hope they are listening to me. Leave that alone. Otherwise, they should not be surprised by reactions by right-wing lawmakers in the Parliament. The problem is that the majority of people in Croatia think like that,” President Zoran Milanovic told reporters on Tuesday 24 May 2022. President Zoran Milanovic repeated on Wednesday 26 May 2022 that Serbia should watch its actions and that he was only asking for “a fair relationship” between the two countries, adding that Croatia could have indicted Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic but made a political decision not to do it.

Fierce lip-service from both the Prime Minister and President of Croatia! No decisive actions on diplomatic levels, at least, to demonstrate they mean what they say!

Croatia has been in a political quagmire for quite a while and to make decisive steps against Serbia in this case, to protect the dignity and righteousness of Croatia’s victory against Serb aggressor, for freedom and independence, both the Prime Minister and the President must be at least on professional talking terms if such terms do not come naturally. Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and President Zoran Milanovic have not seen eye to eye on anything for quite some time and have publicly displayed intolerance towards each other as well as disturbing antagonism. But, unlike Milanovic, Plenkovic appears more interested in serving Croatia’s Serb minority than national Croatian interests even though majority of that Serb minority formed a significant part of Serb aggression against Croatian secession from communist Yugoslavia in the 1990’s! This fact would appear to be a major factor in the current political impasse and crisis Croatia is suffering currently.

It is unbelievable and cruel to the victims of Serb aggression that Croatian state policy without notable and decisive protest and action evidently permits Serbia, the aggressor, and the defeated side of the Homeland War to prosecute members of the victorious side of the war in which Serbia was the aggressor. This, of course, is not the first time this has happened with the announced indictments against four Croatian pilots who are allegedly responsible for the attack on Serb civilians after the “Storm” military operation that liberated significant parts of Croatian territory from Serb occupation in August 1995. Many would rightly so say that official Croatia permits such odious aberrations because its official heads and politicians in power since year 2000 have remained mental communists, are nostalgic of communist Yugoslavia. They are not wrong as Croatia has yet to put its official foot down at Serbia’s depraved attempts to deny its responsibilities for aggression, ethnic cleansing on non-Serbs, mass murders, genocide, destruction across Croatia.

Not only Serbia’s laws that have extended their legal jurisdiction beyond the borders of the Serbian state are of grave concern, but also the treacherousness for Croatia of the behaviour of leading Croatian politicians, which was especially evident during the persecution of Croatian generals directed by The Hague tribunal. The former President Stjepan Mesic, who testified against his country (Croatia) at The Hague tribunal, led the evil pack that attempted to criminalise Croatia’s defence against Serb aggression and yet suffered no consequences for it in Croatia! All the Prime Ministers of Croatia including the current Andrej Plenkovic have made no positive moves to turn this tragedy around and putting Croatia’s victory over Serbia’s aggression first.

The excuse of allowing the process of reconciliation with the aggressor (Serbs) has given way the emergence of many insufferable injustices against Croatians and Croatian war veterans.

Perhaps giving amnesty against indictments for war crimes to many Serbs who committed war crimes in Croatia during the Homeland War as part of negotiations for peaceful reintegration of occupied areas of Croatia’s Danube region in 1998 has given Serbs the courage to act upon their pathological idea that they had a right to commit crimes in Croatia?

On 15^th January 1998 Croatia achieved, without a single shot fired, the liberation from Serb occupation of its Danube region which two-year process is known as the Peaceful Reintegration of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Srijem.

It was the Erdut Agreement, which was signed on 12 November 1995, that enabled the peaceful restoration of Croatian sovereignty over the Croatian Danube region which was under the control of Serb paramilitaries and rebels since the launch of the Great Serbian aggression against that part of Croatia in 1991.

The Erdut Agreement on Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srijem was signed on 12 November 1995 in Erdut and Zagreb by the then-presidential chief-of-staff, Hrvoje Sarinic, the head of the Serb negotiating team, Milan Milanovic, and by the then US Ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, and UN mediator Thorvald Stoltenberg as witnesses. The treaty marked the beginning of the UN’s two-year transitional administration in the area during which Croatia restored its sovereignty over the temporarily occupied parts of Osijek-Baranja and Vukovar-Srijem counties, which enabled reconstruction in the area ravaged in the Great Serbian aggression on Croatia and the return of refugees.

The Erdut agreement was reached by Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic at a peace conference in Dayton, Ohio. The 14-point document provided for a two-year transitional period under UN supervision, a transitional administration, formation of a multi-national police force, local elections, and demilitarisation 30 days after the deployment of international peacekeepers. Seven provisions of the agreement dealt with human rights, refugee return, and property restitution or compensation…

Reintegration of Croatia’s Danube region was achieved without a single bullet being fired but, more than two decades on, it is evident that not all bullets are of fire but that there are many made of political obscenities. Croatia has still to assert the values of its own War of Independence and it is unlikely to do that any time soon with the current make up of government and leadership. Without decisive actions to that effect the political climate may, hopefully, develop into a strong push to change the current oblivion among its leaders towards what Serb aggression did to Croatian people. A great deal of work is still needed to achieve the democracy in Croatia that its first President, Franjo Tudjman, announced in his speech on 30 May 1990 at the inaugural session of the Croatian Parliament. Perhaps with all his strengths and courage even he may have never imagined that ridding Croatia of communist Yugoslavia would be so very harsh and difficult despite the fact that 94% of Croatia’s voters voted to secede! Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Aleksandar Vucic, Andrej PLenkovic, assertion of independence values, Communist Yugoslavia, Croatia, Croatian war of independence, equating victim with aggressor, Erdut Agreement, ethnic cleansing, former Yugoslavia, Franjo Tudjman, liberation of Croatiab from Serb occupation, political antagonism, Serbia, transitioning from communism to democracy, war crimes, Zoran Milanovic

„Resurrected Faces of Vukovar 1991 – 2021“ – Editor, Julienne Busic

April 9, 2022 by inavukic 6 Comments

_{From Left: Book Front Cover “Resurrected Faces of Vukovar”, Julienne Busic (Editor), Ante Nazor and Radomir Juric for publishers}

Understanding the reasons for and extent of the evil that Greater Serbia committed against the heroic Croatian city of Vukovar and the whole of Croatia constant reminders, credible corroboration, hermeneutical reading, and artistic interpretation of historical facts are required for the sake of the truth.

„Resurrected Faces of Vukovar 1991 – 2021“, published by Croatian Homeland War Memorial Centre (headed by dr. sc. Ante Nazor) and Matica Hrvatska -Zadar (headed by dr. sc. Radomir Juric) in December 2021, presents unequivocally a book of remembrance and honour to the victims of Serb aggression. Furthermore, the ethnic cleansing of Croats and wanton destruction of Croatia’s Vukovar during and after its siege from 1991 referred to in this book come alive in our minds once more, nudging us to try and understand that which is often impossible to understand because of the aggressor’s depraved cruelty involved. It was published to mark the 30^th anniversary of the Vukovar tragedy that culminated horribly in November of 1991. The book was compiled and edited by the well-known author and Croatian freedom activist Julienne Busic and is presented in a bi-lingual edition, Croatian and English. Julienne Busic also wrote the foreword for the book and several of the texts. The book is a wealth of series of texts, illustrations, pictorial presentations, documentary material, created or arose during the period and resulting from the Serb and Yugoslav People’s Army aggression and Croatia’s Homeland War of 1990’s. All material presented relates to actual events that occurred during the years of the Homeland War in the city of Vukovar.

“Resurrected Faces of Vukovar 1991 – 2021” with its contents is an overwhelming reminder of the cruelty Croatian victims either suffered, endured and/or survived because of Serb and Yugoslav People’s Army aggression. The great value of this book is not merely in its exceptionally well-chosen variety of evidentiary material of suffering in Vukovar but also in its psychological significance for the understanding of what had occurred in that depravity of Serb aggression; the aggression that saw repeated and incessant tragedies of brutal death, brutal rape, brutal torture, brutal destruction every day and every night for over three months in 1991 and afterwards in concentration camps. It is said that we must repeat seeing things that occurred those thirty years ago in Vukovar, to corroborate and verify repeatedly to understand them towards perhaps easing the deep pain that the memory of them still brings.

The renowned and widely respected journalist, a native to the city of Vukovar, Tihomir Vinkovic, knowing that many a reader who has known the horrendous suffering of Croats in Vukovar during Croatia’s Homeland War would approach reading this book with expectations of poignance, sorrow directed at the victims and even profound bitterness and anger directed at the Serb aggressor, introduces us skilfully to the historic Vukovar, both in its grandeur and its suffering. His text is followed by parts of the poem “Vukovar” by the Croatian artist and writer Tomislav Marijan Bilosnic entitled “Who are those who go against tanks”.

“The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living” section of this book is a rich collage of various government communiques, newspaper excerpts (domestic and foreign), statements regarding suffering in Vukovar by those key personalities and leaders at the time, who were tasked with verifying the existence of many mass graves and exhumed, tortured human remains of the genocide Serbs perpetrated with the assistance of the Yugoslav People’s Army in Vukovar. Accounts of Croats that are still missing, of raped women, of maimed civilians and soldiers, of the ethnically cleansed and forcefully banished from their homes – all of whom had lived through the nightmare that Vukovar was. These excerpts and records of historical facts of Vukovar 1991-1995 are a harrowing indictment against the Serbs and pro-communist Yugoslavia aggressors that Croats must never forget as Lord David Owen, the book quotes, said in February 1996 “Vukovar remains on the conscience of the world”.

The reader is then presented with the academic paper by Sanja Knezevic PhD, presented at the Eighth Regional Conference of the European Association of Women in Theological Research 2012 in Split, Croatia. This academic paper titled and subtitled “The Suffering and Resurrection of Raped Vukovar Detainees 1991 –1992: Does Postmodern Culture Tolerate Suffering? The abstract of this academic paper reads as follows: “The perception of women’s suffering in contemporary society is analysed, based on the statements of the abused and raped Vukovar women, which were recorded and made public in the book, Sunny (2011). The Vukovar story, which can be regarded as a prototype of women’s suffering and grief in all wars, shows that rape, the most serious crime against humanity and its divine image in 21st century society, still has no place in our consciousness.

In addition to not receiving any kind of civil rights in the sense of compensation for the pain they suffered, they also have not been offered psychological assistance or support. The perpetrators of the crimes against them have for the most part not been tried; society has not reacted to the seriousness of their crimes. Women who have endured rape and torture live with permanent repercussions, but they live.”

This thorough and confronting presentation of discussion and facts surrounding the suffering of Vukovar women and other detainees are a stark and sad reminder of how attitudes vary towards depravity of genocide and mass torture should only have one attitude and that attitudes encompasses intolerance with all its aspects.

There’s a very useful and clear Brief Review of the Disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Battle of Vukovar written by one of Croatia’s leading historians Ante Nazor and the propeller that drives the practice and notion of remembering what occurred and how much suffering was endured by the Croatian people as a result of Serb and Yugoslav People’s Army aggression and utter brutality.

Otherwise, dr Ante Nazor, director of the Croatian Homeland War Memorial and Documentation Centre said this about the book:

“This is a collection of works on Vukovar, from art to history, and what is very important to emphasise are parts of books that have already been published somewhere, some are not, but it is important to emphasise that everything is translated into English and thus available to the foreign public to try to understand what was happening in Vukovar. We owe special gratitude to Julienne Busic, this is a person who considers Croatia her homeland, and with her actions before and now with this book she shows how much she cares about Croatia, so that the period of the Homeland War is not forgotten ”

There is a moving excerpt, from Julienne Busic’s, “2013 A.B. Simic” award-winning novel Živa glava / Living Cells that was inspired by the testimony of a young Croatian woman who was sexually and serially abused at the beginning of the Serb aggression against Vukovar and occupation of Vukovar for the purposes of creating Greater Serbia.

Julienne Busic said in January 2022, when this book was launched in Zadar Croatia: “I have a special connection with Vukovar, I worked on the excavation of the mass graves in Vukovar, and I saw everything and wrote reports and took photographs for reports for the outside world in English, and it must not be forgotten, it must be recorded for future generations.”

An excerpt, the chapter on War in Vukovar, from the book “Vukovar Hospital: a lighthouse in the historical storms of Eastern Croatia” by historian Ivo Lucic, 2017, is a shocking reminder of the Serb and Yugoslav People’s Army unthinkable cruelty Croatians were faced with and many perished under as the aggression ensued and progressed.

In this chapter dr.sc. Ivo Lucic aptly reminds the reader of how the tragedy of aggression against Croatia started: “The most important political decision the Croatian government made was to pass in Parliament, on June 25, 1991, the „Constitutional Declaration on the Sovereignty and Independence of the Republic of Croatia“ on the basis of results of a referendum held on May 19, 1991. In agreement with representatives of the European Community, the implementation of this proclamation was postponed for three months to resolve the crisis in a peaceful manner.

However, instead of peace, a fierce attack was launched on the institutions of the Republic of Croatia, its statehood and sovereignty, which caused immense human suffering and significant material damage. A civil conflict of sorts in Croatia quickly escalated into outright aggression by Serbian-Yugoslav military formations in Croatia. The Croatian Parliament passed the ‘Decision on

the termination of Croatia’s legal relations with the SFRY’ on October 8 and the ‘Resolution regarding aggression against the Republic of Croatia’, which reinforced the initial declaration. This was the day after the Yugoslav People’s Army air force attacked Banski Dvori in an attempt by the Yugoslav Army leadership to kill the President of the Republic of Croatia and his closest associates and stop the country’s path to independence.”

The book offers the reader a very touching excerpt from the book: “We Defended our Homeland: national minorities in the defense of Croatia”, authors Ivica Radoš and Zoran Šangut, 2013 which tells the reader Nenad Gagic’s story, the story of the son of a Serbian Orthodox priest from Pacetin, Croatia, who volunteered into the Croatian volunteer defence forces because somebody was attacking “his homeland!”.

The reader is presented in the book with letters written by world leaders to the President of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, including a letter from UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, January 9, 1998, in which she concluded with these words: “As you begin the difficult and delicate process of restoring human rights, order and prosperity to Croatia’s recovered territory, you can take heart that a just cause has triumphed, and that those who gave their lives for it did not die in vain.”

The book concludes with a series of moving reproductions of paintings and statements by Austrian artist Hermann Pedit (1933 – 2014) who was present at the Vukovar exhumation of victims in 1998 and then, at his “Night of the Soul” exhibition at the Mimara Museum, which opened on September 16, 1999 with a meticulous review, Dark Body, by Academic Tonko Maroevic, presented his opus dedicated to the Serbian war victims.

“Resurrected Faces of Vukovar 1991 – 2021” is not only a book of brief and yet all-encompassing record of insufferable cruelty against Croats in Vukovar at the hands of Serb and Yugoslav People’s Army aggressors but it is also a book that channels those victims into the field of resurrections, of live presence in our lives today, so that we may assist in lasting remembrance of this painful heritage of Croatia, which brought Croatia’s independence and freedom despite the cruelty.

Ina Vukic, Sydney, 9^th April 2022