Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito commissioned several memorial sites and monuments in the 1960s and 1970s dedicated to World War II battles, and Nazi concentration camp sites. They were designed by notable sculptors, including Dušan Džamonja, Vojin Bakić, Miodrag Živković, Jordan and Iskra Grabul, and architects, including Bogdan Bogdanović and Gradimir Medaković. After Tito's death, a small number were built, and the monuments were popular visitor attractions in the 1980s as patriotic sites, and since the Yugoslav Wars and the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the sites are mostly abandoned.
In Slovenia, World War II Veteran Organisation and its branches yearly hold many commemorative events in regard with the subject of the monuments and people remember the fallen on the Day of the Dead.
On August 28, 2018, author Donald Niebyl published a book titled Spomenik Monument Database, the first-ever English-language guidebook on the WWII monuments of Yugoslavia, after conducting several years of intensive research.
For the list of World War II monuments in each republic of the Former Yugoslavia, see:
Josip Broz, commonly known as Tito, was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman, serving in various positions of national leadership from 1943 until his death in 1980. During World War II, he was the leader of the Yugoslav Partisans, often regarded as the most effective resistance movement in German-occupied Europe. He also served as the president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 14 January 1953 until his death on 4 May 1980.
Yugoslavia was a country in Southeast Europe and Central Europe for most of the 20th century. It came into existence after World War I in 1918 under the name of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes by the merger of the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs with the Kingdom of Serbia, and constituted the first union of the South Slavic people as a sovereign state, following centuries in which the region had been part of the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. Peter I of Serbia was its first sovereign. The kingdom gained international recognition on 13 July 1922 at the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris. The official name of the state was changed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 3 October 1929.
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, commonly referred to as SFR Yugoslavia or simply as Yugoslavia, was a country in Central and Southeast Europe. It emerged in 1945, following World War II, and lasted until 1992, with the breakup of Yugoslavia occurring as a consequence of the Yugoslav Wars. Spanning an area of 255,804 square kilometres (98,766 sq mi) in the Balkans, Yugoslavia was bordered by the Adriatic Sea and Italy to the west, by Austria and Hungary to the north, by Bulgaria and Romania to the east, and by Albania and Greece to the south. It was a one-party socialist state and federation governed by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, and had six constituent republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Within Serbia was the Yugoslav capital city of Belgrade as well as two autonomous Yugoslav provinces: Kosovo and Vojvodina.
Vladimir Nazor was a Croatian poet and politician. During and after World War II in Yugoslavia, he served as the first President of the Presidium of the Croatian Parliament, and first Speaker of the Croatian Parliament.
The Bleiburg repatriations occurred in May 1945, after the end of World War II in Europe, during which Yugoslavia had been occupied by the Axis powers, when tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians associated with the Axis powers fled Yugoslavia to Austria as the Yugoslav Partisans took control. When they reached Allied-occupied Austria, the British Army refused to accept their surrender and directed them to the Partisans instead. The prisoners of war were subjected to forced marches, together with columns captured by other Partisans in Yugoslavia. Tens of thousands were executed; others were taken to forced labor camps, where more died from harsh conditions. The events are named for the Carinthian border town of Bleiburg, where the initial repatriation was carried out.
The League of Communists of Yugoslavia, known until 1952 as the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, was the founding and ruling party of SFR Yugoslavia. It was formed in 1919 as the main communist opposition party in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and after its initial successes in the elections, it was proscribed by the royal government and was at times harshly and violently suppressed. It remained an illegal underground group until World War II when, after the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, the military arm of the party, the Yugoslav Partisans, became embroiled in a bloody civil war and defeated the Axis powers and their local auxiliaries. After the liberation from foreign occupation in 1945, the party consolidated its power and established a one-party state, which existed until the 1990 breakup of Yugoslavia.
Korenica is a village in Lika, Croatia, located in the municipality of Plitvička Jezera, on the D1 road between Plitvice and Udbina. According to 2011 census it has 1,766 residents. It is the seat of the Plitvička Jezera Municipality.
Memorial Park Bubanj is a World War II memorial complex built to commemorate the shooting and execution of more than 10,000 citizens of Niš and people from Serbia and other parts of the country, but according to some data, over 12,000 people, and it is located in Palilula municipality of Niš, Serbia.
The Partisan Memorial Cemetery in Mostar is located in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was built in 1965 in honor of the Yugoslav Partisans of Mostar who were killed during World War II in Yugoslavia. It's located on Bijeli Brijeg and displays all the features of a complex architectural, aesthetic and landscape design. It is a unique monument in the urban scale of the city of Mostar, and is of particular ambient value.
Monument to the revolutionary victory of the people of Slavonia or Monument to the people-hero of Slavonia is a former World War II memorial sculpture by Vojin Bakić, that was located in, now uninhabited, Serbian village of Kamenska, Brestovac, Slavonia, Croatia. It was destroyed by the Armed Forces of Croatia in 1992.
The Monument to the Uprising of the People of Kordun and Banija is a World War II monument built on Veliki Petrovac, the highest peak of Petrova Gora (English: Peter's Mountain), a mountain range in central Croatia. The site of the monument is shared between three municipalities: Gvozd and Topusko, in Sisak-Moslavina County and Vojnić, in Karlovac County.
The art of Yugoslavia is the visual art created by a number of painters, sculptors and graphics artists in Yugoslavia.
The architecture of Yugoslavia was characterized by emerging, unique, and often differing national and regional narratives. As a socialist state remaining free from the Iron Curtain, Yugoslavia adopted a hybrid identity that combined the architectural, cultural, and political leanings of both Western liberal democracy and Soviet communism.
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement. Its capital, Belgrade, was the host of the First Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in early September 1961. The city also hosted the Ninth Summit in September 1989.
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