Goals of the Croatian Family Roots Association project

To ensure that the graves of our emigrants’ ancestors in their place of origin or elsewhere in Croatia (hereafter: the local cemetery in the homeland) are maintained and marked with dignity, in line with the emigrants’ wishes and the regulations that govern this area.

To ensure that an emigrant’s family in Croatia, during the emigrant’s lifetime or after their death, has all the necessary information about the emigrant’s potential or actual grave and cemetery abroad (the local cemetery in the diaspora).

At the local cemetery in the homeland, at the emigrant’s wish, to commemorate in a fitting way notable people of a particular clan, family line or surname who were of special importance to the place where the emigrant’s ancestors lived.

To make it possible, in a fitting way at the local cemetery in the homeland — on a marble plaque at the grave, on a plaque at the cemetery entrance, on a specially prepared wall around the cemetery or on a wall built for this purpose, in a special book kept in the cemetery chapel or church, or on a plaque on the inner walls of the chapel or church — to list the emigrant’s ancestors buried there whom the emigrant wishes to honour, together with the qualities they showed in life and their contributions to their region and its people.

Alongside the deceased described in the previous point, to make it possible to list the names, surnames and locally recognisable nicknames of emigrants from that clan, family line or surname whom the emigrant wishes to include, so that local people know where those emigrants are buried, if they have died, or where they live.

To make it possible, at the wish of emigrants or interested people in Croatia, to connect local cemeteries and particular graves in the homeland with local cemeteries and individual graves in the diaspora through suitable virtual means.

To develop cooperation with local and church authorities in Croatia and abroad so that, based on available records and other sources, appropriate databases can be established and used for many purposes — family trees, local monographs and historical studies, but also for exercising the rights of local people and emigrants, especially in matters of property inheritance and land registry.

The project places special emphasis on abandoned cemeteries which, for various reasons, nobody maintains and which are left to decay — and with them decays the memory of the vibrant life once lived in those places, of many customs and of real people.

In particular, to protect from decay and oblivion the cemeteries abandoned because of the ethnic cleansing and expulsion of our people from their centuries-old homes, where, besides the help of our emigrants and exiles, cooperation is expected from state and church authorities and the relevant governmental and non-governmental institutions and associations.

To develop among our diaspora and their descendants the custom of visiting the graves of their loved ones — a centuries-old heritage of Croatians at home — especially on important dates of their lives and on religious holidays (All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day), giving thanks to God for their lives and the role they played in family and community life. In some countries of our diaspora this custom is not as widespread.

To strengthen Croatia at home and abroad through a togetherness that is not broken even by an emigrant’s death. The project encourages visits to graves both in Croatia and abroad, which will further strengthen family and national bonds and bring closer the places people left and the places they settled.

To establish the family roots of our emigrants and make them proud of their ancestors in Croatia, as well as of their often very successful emigrant ancestors, who not only raised families abroad but also generously helped their relatives at home survive times that could not have been survived without their help.

To inspire a movement among our emigrants to visit their departed loved ones in the old country regularly — ideally once a year, on religious holidays or on dates that marked the lives of those they loved.

To encourage young members of emigrant families to marry in the old country, in the home places of their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers, in the local churches there, and to experience unforgettable moments in the homeland of their ancestors, so that, proud of what they have seen and experienced, they keep coming back. The family lines in their ancestors’ homeland are strong and unbroken, built on clear religious and moral foundations, and can be a clear spring of renewal for young people today. Such a wedding, whose celebration fittingly includes a presentation of the bride’s and groom’s family trees, could rightly be called a “Croatian Wedding”.

To encourage historians, sociologists, demographers, geographers, art historians and other experts to use the databases of graves and cemeteries in Croatia and abroad to research the historical path of our people and its present moment — from political, historical, cultural, religious, artistic, sociological and, above all, demographic perspectives.

Through the project, to help resolve the painful and unresolved question of the unknown and unmarked burial sites of tens and hundreds of thousands of our compatriots from the recent and more distant past, which has long weighed on our national reality, both emotionally and politically.