Size can be deceiving, at first the concerete flower is just a shape in a huge open field, but as you get closer it grows to a size that allows you to walk inside.
As get closer, the structure's physical presence imposes on you, mirroring the weight of the what it represents. This monument is just one of many in Croatia to the victims of war and genocide in WW2. It is a memorial for the nearly 100,000 victims who were executed by fascist Ustaše forces at the Jasenovac forced labour and extermination camps. At time of my visit, the estimate of murdered people at this location was 45,000–52,000 Serbs, 15,000–27,000 Roma, 12,000–20,000 Jews, and 5,000–12,000 Croats and Bosnian Muslims.
Like most WW2 monuments in former Yugoslavia, the stone flower is made from steel reinforced concrete, giving it a towering brutalist look and feeling. But unlike most others it features sweeping curves, radiuses that flow into one another, and rotational symmetry. There is beauty in these concrete shapes, a positive forward view of the future, at odds with its past and the landscaping of earthen mounds that mark the previous locations of death camp buildings.
