Kozara National Park

Listen first. Wind moves through the beech leaves above you, a soft and steady rushing sound, like distant water. The air up here is cooler than in the valley, and it smells of damp earth, moss, and old leaves. Underfoot, the paths are soft with forest litter. This is Kozara, a long, wooded mountain rising above the plains of northwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina, a short drive from the town of Prijedor. It is a quiet place to stand.

Kozara is not a dramatic, jagged range. It is a rounded green massif, a mountain of gentle ridges and deep valleys. On a map, it sits between several rivers. The Sava runs to the north, and the Una, the Sana, and the Vrbas wind around its other edges. For centuries, this forest was a refuge for people in the surrounding lowlands. Its thick cover gave shelter in hard times. That idea of shelter becomes very important to this story.

The mountain was declared a national park in 1967. The protected area covers the central, highest part of the massif. Most of it is forest. You will see beech everywhere, with their smooth grey trunks. There is also oak on the lower slopes, and fir and other conifers in the cooler, higher places. In autumn, the beech woods turn copper and gold. In early summer, the canopy closes overhead, and the light on the forest floor becomes green and dim.

The heart of the park for most visitors is Mrakovica, a plateau near the top of the mountain. Here you find the visitor area, places to eat, walking trails, and the reason many people come at all — the memorial. To understand that memorial, we need to go back to the Second World War, and to one summer in particular. It is a hard story. But it is the reason this mountain matters so much to people across the region.

In 1942, Bosnia was part of the so-called Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state allied with Nazi Germany. Kozara had become a stronghold for the Partisans, the communist-led resistance movement. Thousands of civilians from nearby villages also lived under their protection in the forest. That summer, German forces and troops of the Croatian fascist regime, with other Axis units, surrounded the entire mountain. Their goal was to destroy the resistance and empty the land around it.

The offensive is remembered as the Battle of Kozara. The Partisans were heavily outnumbered. They tried to break through the ring of enemy troops so that people could escape. Some did get out. Many did not. Large numbers of fighters died in the forest. And tens of thousands of civilians — men, women, and many children — were captured and sent to concentration camps. Many of them were taken to Jasenovac, the largest camp of that regime. A great number never came home.

Here is something many visitors do not expect. The memory of Kozara lives not only in stone, but also in song. There is a traditional circle dance from this region called the Kozara kolo — a kolo is a Balkan folk dance where people hold hands in a ring. Local tradition holds that people danced it during the war, even in the forest, as a way to stay together. Today, the song and the dance still carry deep emotion in this region.

Now, look toward the monument itself. It is the work of the sculptor Dušan Džamonja, one of the best-known artists of the former Yugoslavia. It was unveiled in 1972. From a distance, it looks like a tall, pale column rising out of the trees. Up close, you see that it is made of many vertical concrete ribs. Between the ribs are narrow gaps. Light passes through those gaps, and the shape changes as you walk around it.

This kind of structure belongs to a wider group of memorials. Across Yugoslavia, from the 1960s to the 1980s, the state built large, abstract monuments to the war. They did not show soldiers with rifles or heroic statues. Instead, they used bold geometric forms in concrete and steel. Today, people from all over the world travel to photograph these memorials. They are sometimes called spomeniks, from the local word for monument. Kozara is one of the most important of them.

Walk closer and you can step into the space inside the ribs. Stand still for a moment and look up. The concrete closes around you, and the sky shows as thin strips of light. Many people say it feels like being inside a forest of stone, or inside a crowd standing shoulder to shoulder. The artist left the meaning open. You are free to find your own. Notice how the sounds of the plateau become softer once you are inside.

Near the monument, there is a long memorial wall. It carries the names of people who died in the fighting on Kozara. The list is very long, and it takes time to walk its full length. You may see flowers left at its base, or candles. Families from the surrounding villages still come here to find the names of grandparents and great-grandparents. Please move gently here. For many visitors, this is not a sight. It is a grave.

Kozara has also entered the culture of the region in other ways. In 1962, the director Veljko Bulajić made a feature film simply called Kozara, about the offensive. It became one of the best-known Yugoslav war films. Generations of schoolchildren also came here on organised trips. So if you see older visitors standing quietly near the monument, they may be remembering their own first visit, many decades ago, as well as the war itself.

But Kozara is also simply a mountain, and a living one. Beyond the memorial, trails lead into the forest. You can walk, cycle, or just sit in the shade. The woods are home to deer, wild boar, foxes, and many birds. Local people come up at weekends to escape the summer heat of the valley. They bring picnics and walk with their children and dogs. In winter, snow often covers the plateau, and the forest becomes very quiet.

Before you leave, take one more look around you. Look at the grey trunks of the beech trees, and the pale ribs of the monument above them. Feel the cool air on your face, and listen again to the wind in the leaves. The forest that once sheltered people, and then became a trap, is now calm again. As you walk back toward the path, notice how the column slowly disappears behind the trees.