Locating Memorials: Transforming Partisan Monuments into Cultural Heritage

During and after the war in Croatia in the 1990’s, almost half of the 6000 partisan monuments erected between 1945 and 1990 were demolished. National sentiments ran high and these monuments were perceived as tokens of the regime that attacked Croatia in order to deny it independence. Most of these monuments were in places were fighting in the Second World War had taken place. In other regions, they became objects which were and are being culturally bracketed. Based on ethnographic examples, mostly from the peninsula of Istria, this chapter puts nationalism into the context of local experience and production of meaning as well as in a national and international frame. It analyzes/presents monuments as dynamic objects that can be emotionally charged, physically challenged, or pass into oblivion.