Bubanj Memorial Park

World War II isn’t known for those who survived it. Holocaust memorials solemnly honor the dead from Berlin to New York. Russia is speckled with hallowed battlegrounds where the bodies claimed by the winter war fell two-deep. The Normandy American Cemetery is the most vast and haunting American service cemetery outside of Arlington National Cemetery.

In Serbia, things were just as bad.

Bubanj Memorial Park marks and honors the location of one of the most horrific mass executions of the entire war, where more thаn 10,000 Serbs were taken prisoner, gathered and unceremoniously shot by invading German forces.

Estimates of the brutal event’s toll range between ten and twelve thousand lives lost to the execution. The majority of the victims were citizens оf the Serbian city of Niš, which is where the memorial park іs located.

Bubanj Memorial Park is at once a stark and empty locale meant to inspire reflection and honor, but also a functioning public park, complete with memorial trails and monuments. At the park’s center, a 23 x 2.5 meter marble monument consisting of five separate monoliths abstractly symbolizing the progression of the war and its effect on the local populace, moving from German invasion and execution squads to Serbian resistance and eventual victory.

The monuments themselves only compliment the larger memorial, which is the park itself, build on hallowed ground once the site of a human atrocity that should never be forgotten.