MUSEUM OF NATIONAL LIBERATION

It is officially called "Museum of the Second Session of the Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council of Yugoslavia" (Muzej 2. Zasjedanja AVNOJ-a). This name is as long as the visit can be fast. For this venerable institution, founded in 1953, was 90% looted by the Bosnian Serb army during the last war. But it is a historical place. It was in this building, a former school, that socialist Yugoslavia was born on November 30, 1943. On that day, in the middle of the war, 142 representatives of the partisans of the six future republics laid the foundations of the new federal state. The entrance is guarded by the statue of the writer of the declaration signed that day: Moša Pijade, a Jew from Serbia, Tito's right-hand man, who died in Paris in 1957. A small locomotive is also placed at the entrance: it is this Krauß model from 1903 that transported the Croatian and Slovenian delegates to Jajce. Inside, the exhibition consists mainly of panels without translation. In the main room, the hall of the second session is reconstructed, with the highlight being the authentic chair in which Tito sat. But where the museum is truly unique is that it is scalable. Since 2015, a network of museums from all over the former Yugoslavia has been created to recover the stolen objects. For example, in 2018, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Banja Luka returned drawings by Slovenian painter Božidar Jakac (1899-1989) made here in 1943. More restitutions are to come.