Jasenovac, Sisak-Moslavina County

Jasenovac stands beside the Sava, at the southern edge of Lonjsko Polje Nature Park and on the railway connecting it with Novska, Sunja, Sisak and Zagreb. The village is inseparable from the Jasenovac Memorial Site, created on the grounds of the former Second World War Ustaša camp III Ciglana. Bogdan Bogdanović’s reinforced-concrete Flower, unveiled in 1966, dominates a memorial landscape approached by a raised path between lakes, earth mounds and hollows marking former camp buildings and killing sites. The Memorial Museum, built in 1968 to Petar Vovk’s design, preserves documents, objects and testimony connected with victims and survivors. Jasenovac also contains an Orthodox monastery centred on the Church of the Nativity of St John the Baptist, whose history includes construction in 1775, destruction and repeated rebuilding. Beyond the memorial heritage lie the Sava, floodplain woods and Posavina villages of Lonjsko Polje, making nearby Krapje and its traditional timber architecture a meaningful extension of a visit.

Jasenovac is a Posavina village shaped simultaneously by the Sava, the edge of Lonjsko Polje and the difficult memorial heritage of the Second World War. The Memorial Site lies about one kilometre east of the centre on the former camp III Ciglana grounds, where the Flower has become Jasenovac’s defining landmark. Earth mounds, lakes, the raised access path, memorial trees and the Limani camp cemetery form a landscape that avoids reconstructing the former barracks. The Orthodox Jasenovac Monastery within the settlement adds a distinct layer of sacred and traumatic history. Surrounding floodplain forests and timber-built Posavina villages place Jasenovac within the southern part of Lonjsko Polje’s broader cultural landscape.