Šumarice Memorial Park, Memorial complex in Kragujevac, Serbia.
Šumarice Memorial Park covers 352 hectares around Kragujevac, with a 7 km circular road leading to the valleys of the Erdoglija and Sušica streams where executions took place. It contains 10 monuments on mass graves, including Miodrag Živković's Interrupted Flight for murdered schoolchildren and teachers, and the 21 October Museum, designed by Ivan Antić with windowless facades and 33 plexiglass pyramids.
The site became a place of remembrance following mass executions by occupation forces in October 1941. Over subsequent decades, the area was gradually developed into a memorial park with monuments and museums.
The park's name comes from the Šumarice woods where the executions took place, and its central monument, Miodrag Živković's "Interrupted Flight," is dedicated to the murdered schoolchildren and their teachers. A gift from the Romanian city of Pitești, the "Monument of Friendship," was added in 1994. The 21 October Museum, designed by Ivan Antić, has facades without windows, a form meant to suggest the dead end facing the unarmed people that day.
The site can be explored on foot, with the various monuments spread across an extensive area. It is recommended to wear comfortable shoes and allow adequate time to visit all sections.
The 21 October Museum, opened in 1976, has no windows on its facades, a design meant to suggest the dead end facing unarmed people before machine guns. Its 33 concrete cubes stand for the 30 mass graves in the park and three more in Ilićevo, Maršić and Grošnica, with plexiglass pyramids on top.
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