Mostar’s inhabitants regarded it as an old soul that connected the two parts of the city together through a simple and friendly gesture.
Writing of the Stari Most, the bridge designed in the sixteenth century by the Ottoman architect Hajrudin, destroyed during the Bosnian war in 1993, and reconstructed in 2004, Arna Mackic continued,
Due to the city’s current extreme segregation…the connection has disappeared. The old bridge is no longer a connection but rather a separation of the city.*
Though there are still pock marked buildings and roofless carcasses with trees growing through them, the centre of Mostar today is picture-book pretty. Cafes are packed with tourists, their attention focused on the bridge in the hope of witnessing a high dive. Yet there is a dark underside to the town; the segregation of which Mackic speaks remains and is exemplified in the two schools under one roof policy, whereby Croats and Bosniaks enter by separate doors, attend segregated lessons with different teachers, and learn different versions of history and religion.
Leaving behind the riot of souvenir shops and ice cream parlours, I walked to the western outskirts of the city in search of something else. During World War II, Mostar had been known as the Red City on account of its particularly strong resistance to the Nazis. In 1965 the Serbian architect, Bogdan Bogdanovic, who had himself been a Yugoslav Partisan, designed and supervised the construction of the Partisan Necroplis to honour the 810 Yugoslav Partisans – Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, and Jews – from Mostar who had fought against the Axis powers occupying Yugoslavia and against Ustasa, the fascist organisation operating a Nazi puppet state in Croatia.
The necropolis is set on a hillside overlooking the city and Bogdanovic designed it to mirror the town, explaining that “the two cities” would forever
look each other in the eyes: the city of the dead antifascist heroes, mostly young men and women, and the city of the living, for which they gave their lives.**
Speaking of the purity of their motives and their self-sacrifice, he sought to give the young Partisans, who were mostly aged between eighteen and twenty-five, something beautiful:
I thought that the fallen Mostarian antifascist fighters, all still boys and girls so to say, have the right, at least symbolically, to the beauty of dreams…Their small superterranean city overlooked, as I had promised their families, the heart of old Mostar and the then still existing bridge built by the great architect Hajrudin, once the most beautiful and daring stone bridge in the world.**
The City of My Friends, as Bogdanovic called it, was built by stone masons from Korcula in Croatia, assisted by voluntary youth brigades. Often, they worked through the night to avoid the heat of the day, and something magical emerged. Five terraces built into the side of the hill are reached by stone staircases. On the top terrace a cosmological sundial features the sun, planets, and moon. From beneath this a fountain once cascaded down the hillside to a pool at the base of the hill, symbolising the Neretva river flowing through Mostar and the tears of the Partisans. Domestic herbs – rosemary, lavender, cistus, sage – were planted.
There was deliberately no religious, nationalist, socialist or war imagery, no symbols of any ideology, the memorial was to honour all victims of fascism. Abstract stone grave markers, which have been likened to felled trees symbolising fallen youth, were laid on the terraces, each one commemorating a partisan. The stones bore only a name, age, and place of birth and death.
Tito was present to celebrate the completion of the memorial, and as Bogdanovic had intended, it became not just a necropolis but a loved and much used park, a picnic place, a playground:
The lilting, heathen character of the Partisan Necropolis could not remain unnoticed. Its terraces were quickly seized by children, whose playful voices echoed in a choir…sometimes until deep in the night.**
In an interview in 2009 the architect recalled,
Once a girl from Mostar told me that her parents had conceived her in the Partisan Necropolis. For me it was the most beautiful thing that could have happened there.***
Bogdanovic spoke out strongly against the nationalism which tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1980s and 1990s. As a result, he was subject to defamation and physical attacks which led him to self-imposed exile in Vienna.
During the Bosnian war, between 1992-95, the memorial was severely damaged. After the war it suffered neglect, malicious vandalism, and deliberate acts of desecration. Bogdanovic wrote from Vienna in 1997,
the only thing I could still wish for is…the right to, as honorary citizen of Mostar, create a secret niche to the left of the entrance gate, to accommodate my future urn. However, it now seems like I will not be in the company of my friends that way: the gravestones have cold-bloodedly and sadistically been crushed in a stone grinder. All that is left of my original promise is that the former city of the dead and the former city of the living still look at each other, only now with empty, black, and burned eyes.**
Bogdanovic died in Vienna in 2010. He was cremated there and his ashes returned to Belgrade where they were buried in the Sephardic cemetery next to his monument to the Jewish victims of fascism.
Partial repair and reconstruction of the Partisan Necropolis took place in 2005-2006 but later it was again subject to rubbish dumping, and destructive defacement. Overgrown and littered with beer bottles, it was described as a dangerous place, host to drinking and drug taking, and people were advised against visiting. In 2022 nationalist graffiti and swastikas, Ustase symbols, slurs against Bosniaks, and vilifications of Tito appeared, and the grave markers were again deliberately smashed. A British newspaper article in June 2023 reported,
When anti-fascists visit the site to lay flowers they need police protection, as there have been clashes with right wing groups on commemoration days… It can be dangerous even to talk about the necropolis now, never mind to visit it.****
And yet I had visited the Partisan Necropolis less than a month before that article was published. There were no signs to guide me and the unmarked approach from the road lay across an unpromising, scrubby expanse where a couple of cars appeared abandoned rather than parked. It was hot, silent, and uninviting. But beyond the inauspicious lower gateway, any sense of unease dissipated. Two men were determinedly scything the overgrown vegetation, and twenty metres above me I could see the terraces reached by worn paths winding through the trees. It was like entering an ancient site dominated by a great theatre.
Weeds grew through the pathways, the fountain and pool were dry, and the stone grave markers still lay smashed on the terraces. But the evil graffiti had been removed and the entire site cleaned of debris.
In two hours walking around and sitting in the sunshine, I encountered few other people: a couple of other tourists, two local people walking their dog, a small group of teenage boys. For all the desecration caused by the despicable attacks, it remains a beautiful place, albeit a quiet, melancholy beauty today, with none of the joyful, exuberance of its early days. Sead Dulic describes it:
This is our statue of Liberty, our triumphal arch, out Taj Mahal. It is a celebration of life and Mostar. It was built as a city of the dead mirroring the city of the living for a city that lost so much.*****
Mostar may still be a city divided. Fascist groups may wreak repeated destruction on the stones of the Partisan Necropolis and mount ugly, violent attacks on their political opponents. But though bruised and battered the Necropolis is still there, still treasured, still embodying the memory of the Partisans, their bravery, their self-sacrifice. Visit them if you are in Mostar, however short your time there, for despite Bogdanovic’s late despair, their necropolis remains not just a memorial to their courage and ideals but an inspiration and encouragement, a symbol of hope for a better world.
And although Bogdanovic’s ashes may lie in Belgrade, if there is such a thing as a spirit, his is surely here alongside his comrades.
*******
*Arna Macki, The Partisan Necropolis: Mostar’s Empty Stare, 6 October 2015, https://failedarchitecture.com>the-partisan-necropolis
**Bogdan Bogdanovic, The City of My Friends, translated by Arna Mackic and reprinted in The Partisan Necropolis.
***Quoted in Mostar, Spomenik Database, https://spomenikdatabase.org >Mostar. There is also more information about the architecture of the necr0polis and some wonderful photographs here.
****Chris Leslie, Protecting Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Anti-Fascist Legacy, 2 June 2023, https://www.theguardian.com>Protecting Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Anti-fascist Legacy
*****Sead Dulic, theatre director and head of the National Association of Anti-Fascists, quoted by Chris Leslie, above.