Studia Polensia, Vol. 14 No. 1, 2025.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.32728/studpol/2025.14.01.08
Memorials of the Second World War in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia – Between Oblivion and Aesthetisation
Daniela Škandul
; FMK Fakultet za medije i komunikacije u Beogradu
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
Commemorating rituals of the events of the past, as well as their
memorials and the production of collective memory in communities are
necessarily part of the ideological production of state policies.
The monuments that commemorated fight against the fascism in
the Second World War in the former Yugoslavia are today forgotten, left
to decay. Built only one generation ago, during a different political system,
today they are losing their role in the formation of memories - they are
incomprehensible to the new generation, they no longer speak to them
- as they are exponents of a system that no longer exists. Inaccessibility
and dilapidated condition separated them further from the practice
of commemorating. In addition, they withdrew an ancient residue of
unprocessed difficult feelings of the ex-yu nations, and have become the
target of destruction, and thus the narrative is dismantled... into oblivion.
In modern times they have reached the focus of social interest
in a strange way again - through remediation in photography and
aestheticization, that presents their condition (physical degradation) as
pure sculpture, a valuable work of art. Their original meaning is evoked
in new documentation, but the act of destruction of a new inscription also
comes into focus. The actual state of ruins, devoid of restoration, is the
only credible feature through which the traumatic events of reckoning can
be resolved - therefore occurs a double-bound inscription into memory.
The paper tries to determine the dynamics of the deterioration of
the monumental heritage and obliivion of the events, the disconnection
from the basic meaning with which they were connected. Rehabilitation
needs one true statement: „never again“.
Keywords
World War II monuments; memorial spaces; forgetting; formation of memories; making of memories
Hrčak ID:
340351
URI
Publication date:
5.12.2025.
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