[The Guardian] Protecting Bosnia and Herzegovina’s anti-fascist legacy: Mostar’s Partisan Memorial Cemetery

Protecting Bosnia and Herzegovina’s anti-fascist legacy: Mostar’s Partisan Memorial Cemetery

The most significant anti-fascist architectural landmark in the former Yugoslavia has been neglected and left as a ruin for decades. Having survived the 1990s Bosnian war, the Partisan Memorial Cemetery in Mostar now faces its biggest threat – and possible disappearance – as organised neofascists are intent on destroying the necropolis and all it stands for. A small group of residents and activists are fighting to protect the cemetery and its history for future generations, but with a lack of political will, and facing fear of intimidation and attack, the Necropolis Defenders face an uphill struggle

• This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center

Mostar is the bucket-list city for every tourist to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its Old Town features pre-Ottoman, eastern Ottoman, Mediterranean and western European architectural features and the rebuilt Unesco-designated Old Bridge that dates back to 1459. Every spring and summer the Old Town is visited by tens of thousands of day-tripper tourists and backpackers, yet only 10 minutes away, on the west side of the city, is another equally important historical landmark that sits abandoned and partially destroyed, where few tourists ever venture.

The Partisan Memorial Cemetery has no clearly visible ideological design or signage – it was supposed to mark a shared start for all the ethnic groups that made up Yugoslavia after the second world war

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Source: Protecting Bosnia and Herzegovina’s anti-fascist legacy: Mostar’s Partisan Memorial Cemetery

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