| title | credits | layout | short-name | permalink | location | prev-mon | next-mon | published |
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Jasenovac "Stone Flower" Memorial |
Credits can go here. Person 1 shot the video for this monument. Person 2 wrote the test. Person 3 took the photographs. |
monument |
jasenovac |
/jasenovac/ |
Stone Flower Jasenovac, Croatia 44324 |
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/kadinjaka/ |
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Jasenovac was the site of the largest and most barbarous concentration camp in Yugoslavia during World War II.
The Jasenovac monument stands on a vast open plain just behind the flood- protection dams along the River Sava bordering northern Bosnia. Jasenovac was the site of the largest and most barbarous concentration camp in Yugoslavia during World War II. Thousands of Serbs, Jews, homosexuals, Romani, Partisans, political opponents, and people from all ethnic backgrounds were murdered at Jasenovac concentration camp by the fascist Ustasha regime in collaboration with German occupying forces.
At the time of planning the memorial not much was left of the concentration camp except for some traces of the rail connection that had been used to deliver inmates to the camp from all over the Balkans. The history of the camp had left an open wound in the newly founded socialist Yugoslav state, yet it wasn’t until 1967 that the site was turned into a memorial site.
Due to the delicate nature of the Jasenovac site, the architect Bogdan Bogdanović decided on the reconciling gesture of a formalized concrete flower. The sophisticated, elegant, filigree form of the sculpture makes full use of the possibility to create free and organic forms with reinforced concrete. The flower rises out of a small mound underneath which is a crypt. The sculpture is reached via a path made from the wooden railway sleepers of the one-time rail connection to the camp, which meanders past a small lake upon whose surface the flower sculpture is mirrored.
Parts of the former camp have been marked by small mounds and craters whose relevance is deciphered on a small bronze relief placed along the path. The monument is complemented by a small, modernist study-center located in pavilions on the edge of the site. The memorial site suffered some damage during the civil war and has since been renovated and restored.