Croatian Homeland War Memorial Museums – Exhibiting Urbicides and Concentration Camps

Recently opened memorial museums and exhibitions in Croatia museumize the “Homeland War” of 1991 to 1995. This article examines the four major institutions, the Museum of the Homeland War in Karlovac as well as three sites in Vukovar: The Memorial Center for the Homeland War, the Memorial Hospital and the Ovčara Memorial Home. This first systematic site analysis compares 1) the overall narratives; 2) how enemy images from World War II are reactivated to demonize “the other”; 3) how women are represented in these war exhibitions; and 4) the topics that are left out. I argue that while there is still no national museum that includes war developments in all of the country, the two big institutions, the Museum in Karlovac and the Center in Vukovar, focus on the “defenders,” as the Croatian fighters are called – while in Karlovac strikingly marginalizing and at the Center completely omitting civilians. War here means (male) soldiers and weapons, while the other two institutions portray individual victims without discussing their biographies. In all sites, Serbs are depicted with reference to World War II: as Chetniks, running “concentration camps” who committed either “urbicide and culturocide” or a “holocaust” against Croats.