ABSTRACT
The town of Vukovar lies at the banks of the Danube, where the river Vuka flows into it. It is the most eastern part of Croatia, in Slavonia. In 1990 there were about 45,000 inhabitants of which 47% were Croatian and 32% Serbs. The town became known to the world when the war between Serbia and Croatia exploded. The beginning of the war started right after the 1990 elections in the former Yugoslavian republics. In Serbia the Communist Party under the new name of the Socialist Party remained in power and claimed that all Serbs should live in one state as they were supposedly in danger. Serbian extremists in Croatia were armed by the former Yugoslavian army. Road blocks around Knin in the Krajina region appeared. In the early summer of 1991, bombardments in the Vukovar region started. Early August most of the surrounding villages of Vukovar were occupied by the Serbs. On September 14 a fierce attack on Vukovar took place. Over 600 tanks surrounded the city. For each of the next 15 days about 60 to 80 severely wounded people were brought into the hospital. During the siege of 3 months more then 1,800 people, most of them civilians, were treated in the hospital. Lightly wounded stayed at home as going to the hospital was
dangerous. On October 4 the Vukovar hospital was bombed. The people of Vukovar fled to shelters, housing up to 700 people. On November 18 the city fell (Silber & Little, 1995; Stengl, 2003). The city was no more. More than 500 people died during the siege. Two thirds of them were civilians, including eight children. Photos of Vukovar’s destruction resemble the destruction of the city of Ieper during the battle of Passendale in the Great War.
