ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the Jasenovac Memorial Site within the broader context of Croatian museums dealing with World War II and socialist Yugoslavia. The first part looks at the role of museums in dealing with controversial issues and provides a historical overview of how World War II was depicted prior to the 1990s, and the transformation after Croatian independence. Despite the centrality of wars in the twentieth century in the creation of the modern Croatian state, few museums in Croatia deal with the legacy of World War II or communism, unlike former Soviet-bloc countries (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania), which quickly established memorial museums dedicated to these periods. The second half focuses on the memorial museum at the former Jasenovac concentration camp, one of the only permanent memorial museums dedicated to World War II in Croatia. The Jasenovac Memorial Site has been a constant target of right-wing revisionism since Croatia’s entry into the European Union (2013). The museum has long been a bastion of scientific research and education about the crimes of the Ustaša regime, which has resulted in attacks by those seeking to rehabilitate the Ustaša movement and discredit the anti-fascist Yugoslav Partisan movement.
