Monument to the Fallen Fighters and Victims of Fascism from Slabinja ( hr, Spomenik svim borcima i žrtvama fašističkog terora sela Slabinja), simply known as the Slabinja Monument, is a war memorial sculpture located in

Slabinja Slabinja (; hu, Szlabina; sr-cyr, Слабиња) is a village in the Sisak-Moslavina County in the central part of Croatia. It is in the Una Valley near the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, southeast of the town of Hrvatska Kostajnica, ...

, Sisak-Moslavina County, near Hrvatska Kostajnica, Croatia. The site is dedicated to 547 fallen soldiers and civilians of Slabinja who were killed during the

World War II in Yugoslavia World War II in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia began on 6 April 1941, when the country was swiftly conquered by Axis forces and partitioned between Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and their client regimes. Shortly after Germany attacked the US ...

. Author of the monument is Stanislav Mišić. The construction of the monument was completed in 1981. According to a Croatian researcher Sanja Horvatinčić, this monument seems to be directly inspired by the 1919 Russian constructivist poster '' Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge'' by

El Lissitzky Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (russian: link=no, Ла́зарь Ма́ркович Лиси́цкий, ; – 30 December 1941), better known as El Lissitzky (russian: link=no, Эль Лиси́цкий; yi, על ליסיצקי), was a Russian artist ...

Work on the monument

In the late 1970s, many in Slabinja felt it was necessary to build a proper

memorial A memorial is an object or place which serves as a focus for the memory or the commemoration of something, usually an influential, deceased person or a historical, tragic event. Popular forms of memorials include landmark objects or works of a ...

complex to commemorate the people who had died defending the region during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. With help from national League of Communists and regional union of fighters (SUBNOR), the local council of Slabinja organized the monument's construction project, choosing

Zagreb Zagreb ( , , , ) is the capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Croatia#List of cities and towns, largest city of Croatia. It is in the Northern Croatia, northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slop ...

-based sculptor Stanislav Mišić to create the complex. The monument was symbolically unveiled to the public on 30 May 1981, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the people's uprising against oppression and also was the same month in which the village was finally liberated from Axis forces in 1945. The occasion was celebrated by thousands of the region's inhabitants during a ceremony that included theatrical plays and poetic readings by writer Đorđe Đurić. Speaker of the Parliament of SR Croatia

Jure Bilić Jure Bilić (12 September 1922 – 27 January 2006) was a Yugoslav communist politician. Bilić was born in Makarska in 1922. In 1941 he joined the Yugoslav Partisans and became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. After the World W ...

held a speech during the opening ceremony, while retired Yugoslav Air Force

Major General Major general (abbreviated MG, maj. gen. and similar) is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. The disappearance of the "sergeant" in the title explains the apparent confusion of a ...

Zdravko Kolar unveiled the monument.

Monument description

The central sculptural element of the monument is a 15 meters tall

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...

clad in stainless steel, with a large red-painted concrete

triangle A triangle is a polygon with three Edge (geometry), edges and three Vertex (geometry), vertices. It is one of the basic shapes in geometry. A triangle with vertices ''A'', ''B'', and ''C'' is denoted \triangle ABC. In Euclidean geometry, an ...

intersecting the spire at a sharp angle. Arranged around the monument are five engraved stone markers telling the detailed story of Slabinja from 1941 to 1945. On the central stainless steel spire of the monument are engraved the names and ages of 547 fallen victims (107 soldiers and 441 civilians) of the Axis occupation and aggression. Additionally, in front of the monument, there are five engraved stone markers set into the ground.

References

External links

*
Slabinja Monument
on Spomenik Database
Slabinja Monument
on Architectuul {{DEFAULTSORT:Slabinja Monument 1981 sculptures Buildings and structures completed in 1981 Buildings and structures in Sisak-Moslavina County Concrete sculptures Hrvatska Dubica Stainless steel sculptures Yugoslav World War II monuments and memorials World War II memorials in Croatia

Work on the monument

Monument description

See also

References

External links