Summary

Vukosavlje municipality was created as a result of the Dayton Peace Agreement, and is largely composed of territory previously belonging to Odžak municipality, with small areas of Modriča also having been ceded to form the municipality.

During the course of research, only one monument or memorial was found to exist on the territory of the municipality; a memorial plaque to commemorate fallen fighters on the village elementary school (Aleksa Šantić elementary school) in Gnionica. This plaque has previously been profiled in the book Knjiga drugova: otrgnuti od zaborava (Tadić & Borojević, 2008, p.161), although this solely presents a transcription of the plaque’s text, and says nothing about its history.

The enumeration of the 1966-73 survey undertaken by the Republic Institute for the Protection of Monuments of Culture presented by Tihić (1981) is, as a result of territorial rearrangement in the wake of the 1992-95 war, unfortunately of little help in determining whether other memorials may lie on the territory of the municipality. Without the original reports for Modriča (created from a survey undertaken from 4 to 6 November 1971) and Odžak (created from a survey undertaken from 16 to 18 September 1971), it is impossible to extract information specifically relating to present-day Vukosavlje.

While the book Spomenici NOR-a (1941-1945): područje Opštine Modriča (Nijemčević, 2017 p.14) states that, by 1983, the (then-)municipality of Modriča had a total of 55 monuments and memorials (a significant increase on the results of the 1971 survey, where just 10 were recorded) upon its teritory, unfortunately it limits itself to the profiling of just 32 monuments and memorials on the territory of the present-day municipality, thus omitting those that potentially existed on the territory of Vukosavlje.

In addition to these books focusing on memorialization of the NOB, one monograph, Jakeš kroz vrijeme (Zahirović, 2012), covers the history of Jakeš; the largest settlement (by population) in the present-day Vukosavlje municipality. However, this makes no mention of any memorials to the NOB.

Vukosavlje’s 2013-2033 Spatial Plan (Opština Vukosavlje, 2016), in its section on monuments of culture (pp.117-120) makes no mention of any monuments or memorials to the NOB on the territory of the municipality. Furthermore, it would appear that no ‘list of monuments and memorials of great importance for the unit of local self-government’ has to date been created in line with the Republika Srpska’s 2012 Law on Monuments and Memorials to the Liberation Wars of the Republika Srpska (Sl. glasnik Republike Srpske 28/12). Such a list could provide additional (although by no means definitive[1]) information on the (potential) presence of other monuments or memorials.

As a result of this limited information, this report is relatively short, detailing just the one memorial that is known to exist today.

Map

Key

(precise coordinates can be obtained by contacting the author

Resources