Tuesday, 7 July 2026 at 7 pm
The launch of the book Dotrščina will take place on Tuesday, 7 July 2026 at 7 pm in the KIC cinema hall (5 Preradovićeva Street).
Dotrščina Memorial Park is Zagreb’s most important memorial site, the largest mass execution site in the history of the Croatian capital, the most significant Holocaust site in Zagreb, and one of the largest Second World War mass graves in Croatia. Today, the memorial site has the status of a permanently protected cultural heritage site of the Republic of Croatia and is located within Zagreb’s largest city park.
During the occupation in the Second World War, the Dotrščina Forest, on what was then the outskirts of Zagreb, became the site of mass Ustasha executions, primarily of citizens of Zagreb and the surrounding area. Since the 1960s, it has been developed as a memorial landscape. Following the political transition of the 1990s, the attitude toward Dotrščina became an example of radical state revisionism and the manipulation of victims, resulting in its marginalisation as a place of remembrance.
The Dotrščina Virtual Museum was launched in 2012 as a project by Saša Šimpraga (as part of the culture of remembrance programme of Documenta - Centre for Dealing with the Past) with the aim of restoring the Dotrščina Memorial Park to the collective memory.
This monograph highlights the activities of the Dotrščina Virtual Museum - one of the most important and long-standing memorial projects in Croatia - through which a substantial body of socially engaged artistic work has been produced, alongside the development of an innovative educational programme unique in Croatia. The artworks honouring the victims of fascism in Dotrščina, produced by the Virtual Museum of Dotrščina, were created by a group of artists: Saša Šimpraga, Davor Sanvincenti, Slaven Tolj, Daniel Kovač, Zoran Pavelić, Gildo Bavčević, Sandra Sterle, Tonka Maleković, Driton Selmani, Diana Sokolić, Vlado Martek, Patricia Pisani, and Tomo Savić-Gecan.
The following speakers will discuss the book:
Tvrtko Jakovina, PhD, reviewer (together with Christel Trouvé, PhD), Department of History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb
Dea Marić, Croatian Association of History Teachers, Department of History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb
Vesna Teršelič, Documenta – Center for Dealing with the Past
Darko Šimičić, curator, Tomislav Gotovac Institute
Saša Šimpraga, book editor, founder, director, and curator of the Dotrščina Virtual Museum
The book includes contributions by the following authors:
Texts: Helen Adkins, Ljubica Anđelković Džambić, Irena Bekić, Lidija Butković Mićin, Magdalena Došen, Marko Golub, Sinan Gudžević, Radmila Iva Janković, Aleksandar Hut Kono, Silva Kalčić, Bojan Dmitrović Krištofić, Ivana Mance, Dea Marić, Suzana Marjanić, Igor Marković, Nataša Mataušić, Lujo Parežanin, Jelena Pašić, Davorka Perić, Ivana Perić, Rosana Ratkovčić, Ivana Sajko, Darko Šimičić, Saša Šimpraga, Nevena Škrbić Alempijević, Krešimir Zovak
Photographs: Ivan Buvinić, Jovica Drobnjak, Inia Herenčić, Sanjin Kaštelan, Mario Krištofić, Jadranko Marjanović, Bojan Mrđenović (photo essay, including the cover photo), Ana Ogrizović, Ana Opalić, Zoran Pavelić, Iva Prolić, Jasenko Rasol, Saša Šimpraga, Katarina Zlatec
Design: Petra Milički
The book has been published in a print run of two hundred copies, and fifty free copies will be distributed at the launch event.
It was published by the Croatian Association of History Teachers and the Council of the Serbian National Minority of the City of Zagreb.
The publication was partially funded by the Office for Culture and Civil Society of the City of Zagreb and the Council of the Serbian National Minority of the City of Zagreb.