It is a place where war crimes were committed by the members of the JNA (Yugoslav People’s Army) and Serbian paramilitary units on the night between the 20th and 21st November 1991. In that cold night more than 200 patients and medical staff from the Vukovar hospital were killed.
In September 1996 the exhumation from a mass grave began, lasting for 40 days. Two hundred bodies were exhumed, and the victims were aged 16 to 72. Sixty people are still missing, but their fate is certain.
The author of the monument at the site of the mass grave at Ovcara is Slavomir Drinkovic. The monument was revealed on 29 December 1998. It is in the form of a black obelisk with a dove and an inscription:
“In memory of 200 injured Croatian soldiers and civilians from the Vukovar hospital who were executed during the Serbian aggression against Croatia.”
Two hundred bushes, one each for each victim, were planted at the site of the mass grave representing the location and dimensions of the grave. In front of the grave there is a memorial plaque and a cross that became home to thousands of rosaries.