while not null: Europe Trip 2025 - Zagreb

This is my second blog about Zagreb. The first one is here.

This one will be mainly about two museums I went to, but let’s start with a monument at the main train station, behind this steam engine:

Steel suitcases

"From this place about 800 Zagreb Jews were deported to the Nazi camp Auschwitz in August 1942”. Note: nowadays, the official name of the Auschwitz museum includes the word German, to remove any possible confusion about who the "Nazis" were.

Travelling in Slovenia and Croatia I saw plaques and monuments to the heroes of Yugoslavia. This one is in Zagreb:

Commemoration of Zdenka Baković (1918- Zagreb 1941), and Rajka Baković (Oruro, Bolivia, 1920 - Zagreb 1941), members of the anti-fascist resistance movement.

In the Europe Square in Zagreb, there is this simple monument:

1 July 2013 - the day when Croatia joined the EU as the 28th member. No other country joined the EU since then, and one left.

Zagreb City Museum

Located in the old town. Not all photos and exhibits have English descriptions.

The impression I had while visiting and learning about Slovenia and Croatia was that the history of the region, that was in my youth known as Yugoslavia, was much more complicated than the history of Poland. Thinking about this now, half a year later, I think that history of a country is more complicated the more neighbours it has, especially powerful ones, and the more complex internal composition in terms of ethnicity, religion, language, and wealth. My short stay in Slovenia and Croatia gave me only a glimpse of the history of the region. I know a lot more than I knew before the trip, but still just scratching the surface.

Entrance to the museum

People lived where Zagreb is today for millennia, but very little survived, because of wars, fires, floods, earthquakes, passage of time, re-use, and more recently, perhaps because of "renovations".

Archeological sites in Zagreb.

Roman era find.

Reconstruction of a helmet found in one of the archeological sites.

The mid XVII century church on the left, "renovated" in the early XX century.

If something was not needed anymore, or was crumbling, or was obscuring the view, like in this case (XV century walls and the Bakacev tower), it was dismantled. This is what happened to medieval walls in many European cities.

The part that survived the "renovation".

Some art pieces from the inside of the old church...

...and from the outside.

Kingdom of Yugoslavia

WW2 and Fascist Croatia

The interesting thing for me was how the war started for Yugoslavia. It was unique. First, on 25 March 1941 Yugoslavia signed up to the German-led fascist axis. Two days later, on 27 March, there was a military coup and the new government refused to ratify the signing. Later the same day Hitler signed an order to attack Yugoslavia (and Greece) about a week later, on 6 April.

Yugoslavia was invaded by Germany, Italy and Hungary and capitulated after 10 days. Parts of Yugoslavia were annexed by Germany, Italy, Hungary, Albania and Bulgaria. Croatia became a fascist state, known as Independent State of Croatia. Germans set up a puppet Serbian government and a volksdeutche Banat government. The situation in Slovenia was a mess.

Generally, the people in all of Yugoslavia were in a terrible situation. Italians had genocidal aims towards Slovenes. Croatian nationalists were committing a genocide of Serbs, Roma, Jews and Muslims. Germans were murdering Jews and anybody who opposed them. There were partisans royal to the king and partisans loyal to Tito. Communists were killing nationalists, including after the war. About 1 million people lost their life: 530k Serbs, 192k Croats, 102k Muslims, 57k Jews, 20k Montenegrins, and 125k others. Relative war losses compared to the expected population in 1948: 78% of Jews, 31% of Roma, 10% of Montenegrins, 7% of Serbs, 7% of Muslims, 5% of Croats, 5% of Germans, 2.5% of Slovenes, 1% each of Albanians, Macedonians, Hungarians.

German army in Zagreb on 10 April 1941.

The "Ž" stands for Židov - Jew in Croatian.

The sign in the bottom photo says that entry is forbidden to German soldiers - this was a street of sex workers.

Socialist Yugoslavia

Democratic Croatia

"The fall of the Berlin Wall led to the collapse of communism in all countries across Central and Eastern Europe" - I see this falsification of history often. By the time the wall fell in November 1989, Poland already had partially free elections and a non-communist prime minister. Hungary was also more advanced on the way out. East Germany was the 3rd in line in the Revolutions of 1989.

Nikola Tesla Technical Museum

A very interesting museum, except the exhibits showcasing bitcoin, NFTs for art, and suggesting that climate change has been always happening and anyway the volcanoes are to blame - I think that was sponsored by some fossil fuel company.