Vukovar hero city
The Vuka is clandestine, the Danube flows quietly, and quieter still, as
if it has stopped, as if suspended ...
The night is lonely like widows immersed in memories...
Vukovar has learnt to be silent, unnoticed, proud in its dilapidated
memory and pain that cuts to the bone...
and no matter whether someone feels he is getting well,
standing on his own,
growing and
renewing,
Vukovar is still not yet alive...
as if it has ceased to be Vukovar...
What happened in Vukovar on 18th November 1991? Who handed over the town
to the Yugoslav National Army? There are thousands of pages written on the
matter. What is the truth on Vukovar? No one knows exactly. But what they
do know is how a town of some thirty thousand was defended by barely 1,800
soldiers, more than a thousand of which are missing or were taken from the
hospital 261...
The fate of many is not known to this day.
No one speaks of Croatia's Hiroshima or Guernica, as this symbol of
suffering in the war was to be later known, without emotions. The mothers
of those missing and killed, taken prisoner, exiled. They each have their
own story, each fate more horrific than the next.
It is known that the war in Vukovar began on 24th August 1991 and lasted
until mid November 1991 and it is known that Vukovar lived under ground,
in cellars without electricity, water and medical help a hundred and two
days. For three months it resisted the attacks of the most elite unit
backed by three armoured brigades, some 4,000 soldiers and 360 tanks...
Today, Vukovar is slowly rising from the dead; houses are being renewed,
people are returning. True, nothing will ever be as it used to. But those
who left the town ten years ago, heads bowed listening to the farewell
song of Chetniks, have returned and are still returning. And they prove
that the legendary Vukovar journalist Siniša Glavašević was right when,
before his executioners killed him, he defiantly said:
"The town? Don't you worry about it. All this time it has been in you, but
hidden so that the assassin could not find it. You are the town!"
Source :
http://www.hrt.hr/arhiv/vukovar/index_eng.html
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