Lipa pamti – memorial centre

lipa-pamti-logoLipa is a small village on the Croatian side of the Slovenian-Croatian border in the municipality of Matulji. On Sunday 30th April 1944 it was the scene of a horrific retaliatory attack by the occupying Nazi German forces trying to quell the Partisan resistance in which 269 men, women, children and old people were killed, the village ransacked and their houses torched.

lipa german fotosOne eyewitness’s account:

“Here is where a terrible massacre took place when they burned people alive. About 260 people were slaughtered. On the following days, 1st, 2nd, 3rd May they collected the corpses from the village and transported them down to a little house into which they were stuffed and also burnt.”

 

After World War II the village was partially rebuilt whilst some buildings were left as ruins. In the 1960s a memorial building was established and in April 2015 it was reopened after a complete refurbishment and redesign by designers Gamulin & Sevšek as the Memorijalni centar Lipa pamti  (the Lipa Remembers Memorial Centre).

memorial centre lipaInside is a modern museum space which tells the story of Lipa and the surrounding area, the events of 1944 as well as a growing ethnographic collection.

pic courtesy of Novi list

pic courtesy of Novi list

I provided the English translations of some of the exhibition’s captions and documentation on behalf of the municipality of Matulji and the museum organisers PPMHP.

lip pamti interior museumYou can find more info on the memorial centre’s website here.

DE-helmets-lipaPhotos by Damir Gamulin, PPMHP, Novi list, German State Archives.

The Sails of Kvarner – catalogue translation

Jedra Kvarnera (The Sails of Kvarner) is a permanent exhibition at The Maritime and History Museum of the Croatian Littoral Rijeka (PPMHP).
The exhibition presents an historical overview of the development of the shipping industry and shipbuilding in the region of the Northern Adriatic in the period from Late Antiquity, through the Mediaeval development of the shipping industry of the Eastern Adriatic and the Modern Age, to the beginning of the 20th century.

jedra kvarnera sails of kvarnerI provided the English translation of the accompanying catalogue which features a snapshot of the exhibits on show and a description of the sections of the exhibition such as the types of vessels, navigational and ship equipment, paintings of ships, anchors and the history of the shipping industry in the Northern Adriatic, Kvarner and Rijeka areas.

You can find more info at the museum’s website: PPMHP