In 1972, a monumental memorial by sculptor Dušan Džamonja was erected on one of the peaks of the Kozara mountain range in Bosnia. It serves as a reminder of the battle which took place between Yugoslav partisans and the Croatian army, Ustaša militia and the German Wehrmacht in July 1942.
In early 1941, the Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia and dismembered the country. Subsequently, the fascist Croatian Ustaša movement proclaimed the Independent State of Croatia (Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) on the territory of present-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Soon, partisan groups were established all over former Yugoslavia in resistance to both the occupying regime and the Ustaša rule in the Independent State of Croatia. The German Wehrmacht and its allies fought fiercely against the partisans, carrying out particularly brutal measures against the civilian population as well. In the spring of 1942, Germany, Croatia and Hungary formed »Kampfgruppe West Bosnia«, a special unit for combating partisans in the region. An attack against the partisans was launched at the end of June in the Kozara mountain range. In the course of the battle, the German and Croatian soldiers killed a vast number of men, women and children who inhabited the region. Only few of the killed men were armed partisans. In August 1942, 50,000 men, women and children, mainly from Serbia, were held in German and Croatian captivity in the Kozara region. Many of them were deported by the Ustaša to the Jasenovac camp and murdered there.
About 1,700 partisans were killed during the Battle of Kozara. How many civilians were deliberately killed by »Kampfgruppe West Bosnia« in the Kozara mountain range is not known.
Today, most of the Kozara mountain range is part of a national park. The resistance of partisans against the German and Croatian armies in the Battle of Kozara became an important symbol of resistance under Tito's rule in post-war Yugoslavia. For example, in 1962, a monumental film was made about the battle entitled »Kozara«. In 1972, a memorial by sculptor Dušan Džamonja was dedicated to the victims of the battle on the peak of the Mrakovica high plain. The Kozara memorial is one of many partisan monuments – erected in Yugoslavia especially during the 1970s – and is considered representative of modernistic socialist concrete architecture.
- Name
- Spomenik na Mrakowizi
- Address
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Kozara National Park
Kozara - Open
- always accessible