UNDER THE MOTTO “Vukovar – my choice for better or worse”, Vukovar is marking the 32nd anniversary of the Vukovar tragedy and suffering in the Homeland War, during which 2,717 Croatian defenders and civilians were killed in this eastern Slavonian city, and 374 are still missing.

In memory of November 18, 1991, when the defense of Vukovar was broken after a three-month siege by members of the former JNA and Serbian paramilitary units, thousands of patriots from all parts of Croatia will march through the city streets in a column of remembrance.

The column of remembrance, which will pass along a 5.5-kilometer route, from the Vukovar Hospital to the Memorial Cemetery of the Victims of the Homeland War, is expected to include the highest representatives of state authorities, led by the Presidents of the Republic, Parliament and Government, who will lay wreaths and light candles at the Memorial Cemetery.

This year, as in previous years, Croatian flags will be placed in front of white crosses at this cemetery, which symbolize the 938 victims exhumed from the mass grave at the neighboring New Cemetery in Vukovar who died in the aggression on Vukovar during the Homeland War.

It is the largest mass grave in Europe after World War II and, along with the one at Ovčara, from which 200 victims were exhumed, taken after the collapse of the city’s defenses from the Vukovar hospital and killed on November 20, 1991 on that farm near Vukovar, it represents one of the most terrible symbols of Vukovar’s suffering during the aggression in the fall of 1991.

The siege lasted three months.

Vukovar was under siege for 87 days, and the battle ended on November 18, 1991, with the occupation of the city that lasted until January 15, 1998, and the peaceful reintegration of the Croatian Danube region, which returned Vukovar and other occupied places to the constitutional and legal order of Croatia.

According to data from the Vukovar hospital, 1,219 defenders and civilians were wounded during the three-month aggression on Vukovar. Around 7,000 prisoners were taken to Serbian concentration camps, and around 22,000 Croats and other non-Serbs were expelled from the city.

Hundreds of children were left without parents, and the list of missing persons from the Homeland War includes 374 people who were lost to all trace in wartime Vukovar in the autumn of 1991.

2,717 Croatian defenders and civilians were killed, whose names can be read on memorial plaques that were placed a few years ago in the Pastoral Center of the St. Bono Franciscan Monastery in Vukovar.

On November 18, we also remember the massacre of 43 Croatian civilians in Škabrnja, which was committed on the same day in 1991 by members of the JNA, Serbian paramilitary forces of the SAO Krajina, and volunteer groups from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. After the attack, Škabrnja was burned and completely destroyed, and the Catholic church was razed to the ground. After the village was devastated, the entire area was mined. Those civilians who were spared were later handed over to the Croatian side in the town of Pristeg, while the men were detained in Knin camps and later exchanged.