page_title: Vukovar massacre
section_title: Commemoration
hierarchical_section_title: Vukovar massacre / Aftermath / Commemoration
caption_attribution_description: Ovcara Memorial, Near Vukovar, Croatia-1
context_page_description: The Vukovar massacre, also known as the Vukovar hospital massacre or the Ovčara massacre, was the killing of Croatian prisoners of war and civilians by Serb paramilitaries, to whom they had been turned over by the Yugoslav People's Army, at the Ovčara farm southeast of Vukovar on 20 November 1991, during the Croatian War of Independence. The massacre occurred shortly after Vukovar's capture by the JNA, Territorial Defence, and paramilitaries from neighbouring Serbia. It was the largest massacre of the war and the worst war crime in Europe since World War II up until that point.
  In the final days of the battle, the evacuation of the Vukovar hospital was negotiated between Croatian authorities, the JNA and the European Community Monitor Mission in cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross. The JNA subsequently refused the ICRC access to the hospital despite the agreement and removed approximately 300 people from its premises. The group, largely consisting of Croats but also including Serbs, Hungarians, Muslims and two foreign nationals who fought on the side of the Croatian National Guard, was initially transported to the JNA barracks in Vukovar.
context_section_description: Since 1998, the victims of the Battle of Vukovar and the events that occurred in its immediate aftermath are commemorated annually on 18 November by a procession starting at the Vukovar hospital and reaching the city's memorial cemetery. In 2014, the event drew 80,000 participants. A monument sculpted by Slavomir Drinković that marks the site of the mass grave at Ovčara was unveiled on 30 December 1998. Monuments of the same design have subsequently been used to mark all the other mass graves from the Croatian War of Independence. The massacre itself has come to be referred to as the Vukovar massacre, the Ovčara massacre, or the Vukovar hospital massacre. It was by far the largest massacre committed during the Croatian War of Independence.
  In 2006, the Ovčara Memorial Centre, designed by Miljenko Romić, opened at the site of the former Ovčara farm. The centre opened in a remodeled storage building where prisoners were held on 20 November 1991 before they were executed. The dim interior of the building, accessed through a glass-encased foyer, features illuminated photographs of 200 victims exhumed from the mass grave and the 61 missing who were executed at Ovčara. The concrete floor contains encased spent cartridges and the Spiral of Evil (Serbo-Croatian: Spirala zla) sculpture displaying the names of 261 victims. The ceiling contains 261 lighting fixtures symbolising the number of victims. The centre also contains an exhibition of personal belongings and documents found in the mass grave. The completion of the centre was funded by the City of Zagreb at the cost of 2 million kuna (c. 270,000 euro). By July 2014, the centre was visited by about 500,000 people. In the same year, Croatia launched an education programme which entails visits to the centre by eighth-grade pupils, and 50,000 pupils are scheduled to visit the centre annually. In 2010, Serbian President Boris Tadić visited the memorial centre and the mass grave site, as the first Serbian head of state to do so. He laid wreaths at the site and apologized on behalf of the Serbian state.
  Several victims of the massacre are honoured individually in Vukovar. There is a monument honouring Kačić together with his father who was killed on 2 October 1991 during the Battle of Vukovar, a bridge in the city is named after Nicolier, and one of the city's schools is named after Glavašević.
caption: By 2014, the Ovčara Memorial Centre had received about 500,000 visitors
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