After World War I , Vukovar became part of Yugoslavia. And after World War II Vukovar developed to become a powerful centre of textile and food industry and as such became one of the most highly developed cities in the former Yugoslavia.
Vukovar was heavily damaged during the Croatian War of Independence. Approximately 2,000 self-organised defenders (the army of Croatia was still in an embryonic stage at that time) defended the city for 87 days against about 30,000 JNA troops supported by various paramilitary forces from Serbia and local Serbs supplemented with 110 vehicles and tanks and dozens of planes. The city suffered heavy damage during the siege and was eventually overrun. It is estimated that 2,000 defenders of Vukovar and civilians were killed, 800 went missing and 22,000 non-Serbs civilians were forced into exile. The damage to Vukovar during the siege has been called the worst in Europe since World War II, drawing comparisons with the World War II–era Stalingrad.
The city's water tower, riddled with bullet holes, was retained by city planners to serve as a testimony to the events of the early 1990s.
Since the war in Croatia, much of the native Croat population has moved to other areas of Croatia or emigrated to Western Europe (notably Germany or Austria) and many Serbs have either moved to Serbia or to Canada and Western Europe. Fifteen years after the war, in 2006, the city's ethnic makeup showed equal percentages of Croat and Serb residents. The city remains very divided, as a deeper sense of reconciliation has failed to take root. The ethnic communities remain separated by mistrust, divided institutions and disappointment. Separate schooling for Croat and Serb children remains in place. Incidents involving Croats and Serbs occur regularly, and public spaces have become identified not by the services they offer but by the ethnicity of those who gather there. Even coffee shops are identified as Croat or Serb.
The Vukovar massacre was the killing of Croatian prisoners of war and civilians by Serb paramilitaries and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) at the Ovčara farm southeast of Vukovar on 20 November 1991. The massacre occurred shortly after Vukovar's capture by the JNA. .In the final days of the battle, the evacuation of the Vukovar hospital was negotiated between Croatian authorities, the JNA and the European Community Monitor Mission. The JNA subsequently refused the ICRC access to the hospital despite the agreement and removed approximately 300 people from its premises. The group, largely consisting of Croats was transported to the Ovčara farm south of Vukovar. Once at the farm, the prisoners were beaten for several hours before the JNA pulled its troops from the site, leaving the prisoners in the custody of the Croatian Serb TO and Serbian paramilitaries. The prisoners were then taken to a prepared site, shot in groups of ten to twenty and buried in a mass grave.
The mass grave was discovered in October 1992. The ICTY convicted two JNA officers in connection with the massacre, and also tried former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević for a number of war crimes, including those committed at Vukovar. Milošević died in prison before his trial could be completed. Several former members of the Croatian Serb TO and Serbian paramilitary units have been tried by the Serbian judiciary and convicted for their involvement in the massacre. The site of the mass grave is marked by a monument, and the storage building used at Ovčara farm to hold the prisoners in captivity before their execution was rebuilt as a memorial centre in 2006. Since then, the centre has been visited by half-a-million tourists.
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| An empty hotel today | The Water Tower | 1991 Serbs burn Croatian flag | 1991 Destroyed Serb tank | Vukovar in 1991 | Vukovar today |
"Kod Joze Trskana" in Aljmas
Aljmas is a small Croatian village about 25 km due north on the Danube, and faces directly to Serbia on the other side of the Danube
During the 1991 Croatian War of Independence, the Catholic church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Aljmaš was destroyed, and had to be built almost completely anew in 2006. Tens of thousands of pilgrims visit the site every year on August 15, the Catholic holiday of the Assumption of Mary.
The group was split into sub groups of 8, and we went to this guest house. We had wonderful fresh visne, a sour cherry non-alcoholic drink which was home made and cherry cakes at this Guest House which has 9.5 on Booking.com . There was a glass of Sour Cherry Schnapps to round it off. Sour cherries are, you might guess, a local specialty.
The owners were living in Aljmas when Vukovar fell, and, when the Serbs were at the outskirts of town, they had to escape at night with very few possessions. They expected that they would be back in a couple of days or weeks, but the war and its aftermath meant that they did not return till 1998. Their home was still standing, but everything in it had been taken--the furniture, their personal possessions, everything. Like the other homes in the community, it had been taken and lived in by Serbs. They started this B&B in order to make a living, and have made a success of it
I did not think I would enjoy this "opportunity to talk to a family that had suffered in the Croatian war", but it was fascinating and deeply moving.
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Novi Sad
On to Novi Sad in Serbia for a technical stop to clear the boat into Serbia, and an opportunity to stretch our legs around the town.The town centre has not changed much since 1900 when the black and white photo below was taken
In doing so, we came across a political demonstration, which was cordoned off by a vast army of Serb Police. Discretion dictated that we did not investigate it, but I later found the answer on the web
Around 2,000 people gathered outside public broadcaster Radio Televizija Vojvodine (RTV) in Novi Sad on the evening of June 13, to protest against the decision by RTV's newly appointed managing board to sack programme director Slobodan Arezina and 14 news editors. The demonstration took place two days after thousands rallied in Belgrade over the demolition of buildings in the Savamala district to make way for the Belgrade Waterfront development.
These are the third in a series of protests in each city - numbers are not huge. They are not expected to present a threat to Aleksandar Vucic, who is in the process of forming a new government after his Serbian Progressive Party won another landslide in the April 24 election. However, they show that the opposition is still active, and whether the protests continue will depend very much on Vucic’s response. The Novi Sad demonstration followed wide-ranging personnel changes made less than a month after regional elections that brought Vucic’s SNS to power in Vojvodina for the first time.
The Podrzi RTV (Support RTV) movement announced on June 13 that the protest would be stepped up because none of its requests have been met. The protest organisers also claimed that the Vojvodina public broadcaster has been increasingly affected by censorship. The initiative has demanded unconditional resignations of RTV’s board and the cancellation of the decisions it has made, as well as independence of public services from state bodies, and for the national parliament to elect new members of the Regulatory Authority of Electronic Media (REM). According to the initiative, if the REM members are changed it would be able to elect new members to the RTV board in line with citizens' interests rather than the interests of political parties. Podrzi RTV also asked for an apology for accusations of un-objective reporting. The initiative is expected to continue protesting until its demands are met.
Never know what you might meet if you take a stroll around a Serb city after dark.
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