ABSTRACT
Developed as a transitional justice policy, and designed to manage the transgenerational transmission of trauma and remembering in post-war Croatia, the government of Croatia has sponsored a national educational project in the city of Vukovar (since the 2016/2017 School Year) making a field trip to the Vukovar memorial sites mandatory for all Croatian 8th Graders. Systematic experiential learning is used as an integral part of students’ history classes about the Croatian liberation war and the 1991 Battle of Vukovar, both provided by the Memorial Centre of the Homeland War in Vukovar. Based on the surveyed students’ and teachers’ narrations produced in the aftermath of their field trip, the research provides an insight into how history, knowledge, and experience developed through systematic experiential learning impact students and teachers alike. The teachers’ and students’ retrospections (a particular narrative template) show that Croatian 8th Graders are impressionable and affected by the experiential learning experience in Vukovar. The impact of the educational methods used in this context can be considered as positive. The retrospections analysis indicates that students’ impressions about what they have learned and experienced in Vukovar contain no hostility towards the enemy and/or the aggressor, which can be subsumed under the slogan “To forgive, but never to forget!” and/or “Never again!”
