In memory of more than 700 innocent executed Serbs, Jews, and Roma between 1941 and 1944, on 26 June 2025 a memorial plaque was installed in the Slobodište Memorial Park in Kruševac as part of Vidovdan celebrations. The plaque features an excerpt from the text “Charters in the Name of the Living,” spoken by writer and academic Dobrica Ćosić at this very site exactly six decades ago. The Foundation “For the Serbian People and State” donated funds for the creation and installation of the monument at a place that is more than just a geographical point on the map of Kruševac. It is a space of remembrance and a symbol of the struggle for values that must be preserved through generations.
The unveiling ceremony was attended by Mayor Ivan Manojlović, director of the National Museum Nikola Pantelić, director of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments Kraljevo Office Katarina Grujić, representatives from the Ministry of Science and Technological Development, and representatives of public institutions and companies from Kruševac. The event was also marked by a performance of the children’s choir of the Kruševac Cultural Centre, which sang the national anthem of the Republic of Serbia.
The memorial plaque represents a moral backbone and conscience in stone, said Nikola Pantelić, director of the National Museum in Kruševac.
“At this site, Bogdan Bogdanović created in 1965 not a monument, but a place of silence, respect, and eternal remembrance. A place that does not shout but speaks louder than many want to hear. With this, we do not intend to close the past, but to open new doors of memory and responsibility. To remind ourselves and others that freedom is not a gift. It is won. With blood, pain, and sacrifice. I would also add that the ‘Charter in the Name of the Living,’ a text by Dobrica Ćosić, was spoken here exactly six decades ago. It is not a literary work in the narrow sense. It is conscience in speech. The pledge of a generation that survived the war but did not forget the sacrifice,” Pantelić said, thanking the Foundation on behalf of all those who preserve the memory of the victims shot at Slobodište for their noble donation that enabled the creation of this important monument.
Slobodište is not just a place of suffering. It is a place of pledge. And may this plaque be a new word in that book of remembrance. A quiet reminder that freedom is priceless, and that forgetting has consequences. In a time when history is often rewritten and values relativised, such places and words bring us back to what is essential — human dignity and truth.
With this act, it has once again been confirmed that the culture of remembrance in Serbia is not a burden of the past, but an obligation towards the future.
