Garrett, Linda and Sandra Maric. Vukovar: Both Sides Now (CreateSpace, 2011).
Twenty years later, war and postwar stories from one Balkan town. The tragedy that struck the small town of Vukovar in 1991 was the prelude to the war that engulfed the former Yugoslavia from 1991-1995. Interviews with dozens of residents and survivors, Serbs and Croats, twenty years later. Vukovar Croatia Balkans Yugoslavia Reconciliation Ethnic Cleansing Serbia Bosnia Postwar Social Recovery.
Ingrao, Charles W. Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies (Purdue University Press, 2009).
This book presents the findings of an international research initiative of over 160 leading historians, social scientists, and jurists that brings together in one volume key evidence presented by all sides in the recent Yugoslav conflicts. It represents a direct assault on the proprietary interpretations that nationalist politicians and media have impressed on mass culture in each of the entities of the former Yugoslavia. Given gaps in the historical record and the existence of sometimes-contradictory evidence, the volume does not pretend to resolve all of the outstanding issues that divide the peoples of the former Yugoslavia. Yet, a combination of original research, the validation of existing evidence, and the exposure of widely held, bogus myths that anchor public perceptions should narrow considerably the parameters within which opposing sides can still engage in reasoned debate.
Miller, Frederic P., Agnes F. Vandome and John McBrewster (editors). Battle of Vukovar (Alphascript Publishing, 2010).
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Battle of Vukovar was an 87-day siege of the Croatian city of Vukovar by the Yugoslav People's Army, supported by various Serbian paramilitary forces, between August-November 1991 during the Croatian War of Independence. It ended with the defeat of the local Croatian National Guard, the destruction of Vukovar and the murder or expulsion of most of the Croat population of the city and surroundings. Although the battle was a significant and symbolic loss for Croatia, which did not regain control of the town until 1998, it was also a costly victory for the JNA and helped to gain international support for Croatian independence. As such, it is widely regarded as having been a crucial turning point in the course of the war.
Stover, Eric. The Graves: Srebrenica and Vukovar (Scalo Publishers, 1998).
On the morning of July 16, 1995, after storming the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, Serbian militiamen massacred hundreds of Muslim civilians. They buried their victims in a mass grave in a wheat field on the outskirts of town, after having been congratulated by their general, Ratko Mladic, who told them, "Finally, the time has come to take revenge on the Turks."
Mladic and his soldiers went about orchestrating other atrocities, but the dead of Srebrenica came back to accuse them through the work of an American-led team of forensic anthropologists who reconstructed erased lives from scraps of bone and cloth. Eric Stover's well-written account of the scientists' work in the killing fields of Bosnia, accompanied by photographs by journalist Gilles Peress, makes for disturbing but hopeful reading---hopeful because, through such documentation, the perpetrators may eventually be brought to justice.
~ Gregory McNamee
The Final Cut
The Final Cut” is the name of the first Croat-Serb documentary film about the victims of Vukovar during the war, made in the style of BBC documentaries, with witnesses and participators from both sides giving accounts.
Working on the film were Croatian journalist Drago Hedl and Serbian director Janko Baljak, famous for the documentary film about Belgrade mobsters, “See You in the Obituary,” which was shown on HRT several years ago. The film was finished last week, and will receive its premier public showing at the Zagreb Documentary Film Festival.
“The best aspects of the film are that we are showing a bunch of never-before-seen material, which includes findings which our Serbian colleagues have been able to get from the archives of the former YNA and from Belgrade and Novi Sad television stations. There is also very valuable, rough television material, recorded right after the fall of Vukovar,” Hedl said.
Especially shocking is the footage of Vesna Bosanac, the legendary director of the Vukovar hospital, in a military vehicle looking for her mother around Vukovar after its occupation. Also, for the first time, footage will be shown of the talks between the YNA and the Croatian Military about the surrender of Mitince, as well as the sequence of events in October 1991, when the “hog” bomb, weighing 250 kilograms, went through the roof of the hospital and went all the way down to the basement where patients were being held, and thankfully, did not explode.
“This is the first film to show witness accounts from both sides. I must stress however that it does not put the blame on anyone nor does it try to create a balance of any kind, because it is very well-know why and what happened in Vukovar.” Hedl said.
The film is divided into three parts, which each last a total of 40 minutes. In the film, 70 protagonists of the period reconstruct the events occurring between the first elections of Croatia and the massive killing at the Ovcara farm in 1991, while the ending scene tells of Belgrade’s court process of uncovering these crimes, which ended last year.
