Gradiška
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Gradiška
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Gradiška (Serbian Cyrillic: Градишка), formerly known as Bosanska Gradiška, is a town and municipality in northwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is located on the right bank of the Sava river, across Stara Gradiška in Croatia, and north of Banja Luka. It is administratively part of Republika Srpska.
According to the written documents, Gradiška was first mentioned a little more than 700 years ago under the name of Gradiški Brod. However, the life in the area of the present town, its immediate and wider environs, dates back to the prehistoric times. In the time of Roman Empire, the city named Serbinum existed at this location. Some Serbs consider it to be the oldest Serbian settlement ever recorded in the Balkans.
Gradiška was mentioned as a free town. In the Middle Ages, Gradiška had a major importance as the place where the Sava river used to be crossed.
In 1537, this place fell under the rule of the Ottomans who stayed in these regions until the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary in 1878. In these regions the Serbian people have never reconciled themselves to the violence and injustice. They organized uprisings against the Ottomans and other conquerors, successfully resisted the enemy and came out of all the wars as the victors.
The people of this region who lived to see the end of the Second World War found themselves in looted places and deserted hearths. At battlefields and the death camps in Jasenovac, Stara Gradiška, Jastrebarsko, and other places of torture, some 13,000 Serbs lost their lives among them about 4,500 children below fifteen years of age.
In 1991, the municipality of Bosanska Gradiška had a population of 60,062, of which there were 35,989 Serbs (59.9%), 15,888 Bosniaks (26.4%), 3,422 Croats (5.6%), 3,245 Yugoslavs (5.4%) and 1,518 others (2.5%). The town of Bosanska Gradiška itself had 18,671 residents: 43.5% Bosniaks, 37.7% Serbs, 10.3% Yugoslavs, 4.6% Croats, 3.9% others.
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