Memorial Centre Lipa Remembers

The Centre is dedicated to the one event of the World War II history, to the suffering of 30 April 1944 when 269 inhabitants of Lipa were killed in just a few hours. Victims were all civilians, mainly elderly people, women and children. This crime was committed by the Nazis and Fascists during the Braunschweig offensive, a military operation aimed against the partisans. The killings of civilians were followed by ransacking and arson of their homes and outbuildings. Around a hundred Lipa inhabitants survived, those who were lucky enough to be absent from the village at the time of the massacre: men being in partisans, women taking food to the partisan hideouts, children taking cattle to pastures, few man preparing traditional bonfire on the surrounding hills etc. Those survivors greeted the end of World War II homeless and desperate. A long and strenuous reconstruction began with lives affected by a sense of loss.