Biography
Janko Vračar completed his primary and secondary education in Banja Luka and graduated from the Department of History at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Banja Luka. Since 2003, he has been employed at the Museum of the Republic of Srpska, where he heads the Department for History from 1878 to 1941 and the Numismatic Collection. He passed the professional exam for Curator at the National Museum in Belgrade in 2005, and in 2018, he attained the rank of Museum Advisor. He is the author of sixteen thematic museum exhibitions (including Currency from Antiquity to the Modern Era; Vrbas Banovina; The Great War 1914; The Age of Chivalry; The Vrbas Sword in Stone; Eagle, Lion, and Lily, etc.), as well as two permanent museum exhibitions. He was a member of the expert team for the regional historical exhibition Imaginary Balkans – Identities and Memory in the Long 19th Century, realized under the auspices of UNESCO. Additionally, he has authored ten museum catalogs and monographs, along with numerous scientific and professional papers in the fields of history, numismatics, and museology. From 2006 to 2010, he served as the Secretary of the National Committee of ICOM (International Council of Museums), and from 2007 to 2012, he was a board member of the ICOM Regional Alliance for South-East Europe. He also served two terms as a member of the Culture Council of the Banja Luka City Assembly.
The Ustashe Damnatio Memoriae in Banja Luka as a Prelude to the Genocide Against Serbs
Abstract: Through the concept of damnatio memoriae, I have attempted to describe the activities of the Ustashe authorities in Banja Luka during the first months of the existence of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), specifically referring to the forced erasure of traces of the Serbian people's presence in this city. These activities involved the banning of the Cyrillic script and the Serbian language in public use, the removal of all symbols of Yugoslav and Serbian statehood, the changing of street and place names, and finally, an assault on the Serbian Orthodox Church, whose hierarchy and property were targeted by the Ustashe authorities. At the head of the Ustashe apparatus leading this confrontation was the Ustashe Stožernik (Headquarters Commander) Viktor Gutić, a pre-war lawyer from Banja Luka. In this paper, I utilized archival materials preserved at the Museum of the Republic of Srpska, as well as professional and scientific literature pertaining to this historical period.
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