From pain to peace: Ol Rappaport visits Vukovar

‘Peace is not made by victory.’

by Ol Rappaport 14th August 2026

In June 2018 I was on a cruise from Budapest to the Black Sea Delta. We stopped at the Croatian town of Vukovar to learn about the siege and massacre of 1991. What I learned in Vukovar was not simply about the brutality of war, but about the extraordinary capacity of ordinary people to live together again among the rubble and ashes.