The initiative aims to promote a new victim-centred approach to memorializing the wartime suffering of the population during the 1990s through narrative and art workshops with psychological support for family members of Serb nationalities from the Republic of Croatia. The public will be presented with new methods of memorialization through video stories about victims, public events, and a study visit of a group of young people from Serbia to Osijek and Vukovar, Croatia, dedicated to introducing the memorialization of war suffering in this area.
The target groups of the project will be refugees and family members of murdered and missing persons of Serbian nationality from the Republic of Croatia who live in the Republic of Serbia today, as well as persons of Croatian nationality from the Republic of Serbia who were persecuted during the 1990s. In addition to the stories of suffering that will be immortalized through literary and artistic works and video stories, stories about examples of inter-ethnic solidarity and help that were recorded in Serbia and Croatia during the nineties of the last century, when neighbors and fellow citizens of different nationalities helped each other, will be documented and published.
Memorialization in the form envisaged by this project will enable the general public to learn about war suffering from the past from the point of view of the victims. In this way, it contributes to public awareness of the wartime suffering of the population, but also to the construction of a culture of remembrance that focuses on the personality of the victim. With this approach, the public develops a sense of empathy towards the victims, but at the same time resistance to tendentious nationalist narratives which, by manipulating events from the past, try to encourage and maintain inter-ethnic mistrust and intolerance in the present as well.
Partners:
- Center for Development of Democratic Society "Europolis" (project coordinator)
- Suza association of families of the missing and dead
- Vojvodina Civic Centre
