memorial cemetery

Memorial cemetery, Vukovar - Part of the main cemetery for Vukovar in eastern Croatia is a section with the dead of the Battle of Vukovar, including 938 bodies from a mass grave now marked by white crosses. In front of these stands one of the main local war memorials, which features an eternal flame. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: See under Vukovar and Croatia in general. What there is to see: By the car park and main entrance is a stone monument giving the cemetery's name next to a flagpole flying the Croatian flag. Nearby is another memorial stone, which turned out to have nothing to do with Battle of Vukovar but commemorates some Bulgarians from another conflict (I couldn't quite work it out). To get to the Homeland War memorial part of the cemetery from the main entrance you have to first make your way through the general part of the cemetery – which is just an ordinary cemetery with mostly rather ordinary graves (the black marble tombstone with little portrait photos style is very prevalent here). At the end of the central avenue you come to a grove of trees and beyond this are two square plots of land covered with plain white-marble crosses , reminiscent of those war cemeteries at the Somme and Verdun or the D-Day beaches . There are said to be 938 crosses in total, the number of bodies found in a mass grave here. The crosses bear no names – but the rows of graves to the south are the named graves of the war dead, reburied in individual plots. The website of the Memorial Centre claims that this field of white crosses marks the site of what was the largest mass grave in Europe since WWII .