Hundreds of children used to flock to Kosmaj, Kozara, Sutjeska and other important sites erected in memory of the victims of the Second World War. Now these visits are rare, and some monuments have not been visited for years. Most of the monuments dedicated to the anti-fascist struggle were erected during the 1960s and 1970s. They were built at sites of historically significant Second World War battles or at locations that were witness to civilian and partisan suffering. They are the works of excellent local sculptors and architects, such as Dušan Džamonja, Vojin Bakić, Bogdan Bogdanović, Ivan Sabolić, Svetislav Ličina, Vojin Stojić, Vanja Radauš, Gradimir Medaković, Miodrag Živković, Jovan Grabulovski, Janez Lenassi, Petar Krstiel, Vuko Bombardelli, Boško Kućanski and Marko Mušič. The Belgian artist, Jan Kempenaers, has explored the topic of Yugoslav monuments through his ‘Monuments: The End of an Era’ project. He caught the Western World’s attention with photographs of monuments exhibited in numerous galleries around the world. What impresses the author and the exhibition visitors the most is the abstractness of the Yugoslav monuments, their futuristic appearance and their artistic quality, which is atypical for social realism that was present in Eastern Europe in those years. “Today, monuments built to commemorate the victims of the Second World War, within the area of the states that emerged from the disintegration of Yugoslavia, are only a trace in space,” says architect Nina Stevanović. Their memorial character, she adds, given the political situation, is today often diminished, forgotten, and very often completely neglected. “Their architectural, sculptural and overall artistic value, in relation to the architecture we practice today and the art we are fond of in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, is perceived as an ‘incident’, as a moment in time, as an accessory,” she explains. She believes that today, this area, artistically and architecturally, does not welcome the artistic expression that flourished in the 1960s and 1970s. This expression is not present in today’s architecture, so these monuments are often perceived as something foreign, or miraculous, like a legacy that does not belong to us at all. “By erasing their significance and not considering their architectural and artistic style to belong to us, they simply disappear as a passing moment in time and survive exclusively as a trace in space,” she says. Architect and historian of architecture Sabina Tanović believes that the former Yugoslavia created and cultivated a specific culture of memory that was focused on the formation of collectivity and a sense of belonging. On the subject of what those monuments created in the 1960’s and 1970’s, built in memory of the victims of the Second World War, represent today, Tanović notes, “The extent to which this project has succeeded is partly reflected in the current relationship with monuments.” Specifically in Bosnia and Herzegovina, memorial sites dedicated to the Second World War are at the same time ghosts of the past, but as Tanović explains, also places of resistance and remembrance. “Civil society organizations, younger generations and activists recognize and use them as a platform for progressive messages. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true: anti-fascist symbols are appropriated for populist propaganda,” adds Tanović. Numerous memorials and memorial complexes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, created during the Yugoslav period and dedicated to the victims of the Second World War, are today mostly neglected or, as Tanović says, even adopted to promote ethnonational interests. “An example is the Vraca memorial complex in Sarajevo, which can be treated as layered evidence of history – from its opening in the 1980’s, through the aggressive destruction of the city [during the 1992-95 siege], to the systematic destruction of physical memory through negligence and vandalism over the past three decades,” she adds. Today’s authorities are primarily interested in building new monuments, memorials and memorial complexes dedicated to the memorialization of the war in BiH, Tanović explains, so they treat Vraca as a peripheral project to be used as a symbolic gathering place only for relevant anniversaries. Nina Stevanović believes that today’s authorities do not accept these monuments because, in fact, they do not know what to do with them. They cannot appropriate them, she says, because they do not fit into the nationalist narratives of today’s Balkan politics.