Kurjak is a small town. In the 1860 census we found, there were only 51 houses. I also got a list from registry office from 1989 and they only had about 60 homes (several of which were unoccupied). With such a small area, Kurjak does not have a town center. However, when you turn off
the main road, you'll immediately see the following monument:
Here's the inscription on the monument:
Deb and I tried to translate this (with the help of Google Translate) in November 2014 (and Deb did most of the good work). Here's the translation:
"During the National Liberation struggle of the years 1941-1945
in the village of Kurjak, 57 partisan fighters were killed, 37 inhabitants fell
victim to fascist terror, and 47 died of typhoid, winter of hunger, and other
miseries of war. They fell for the
sacred cause of freedom and for a better life in the great anti-fascist
struggle and revolution which was led and victoriously completed by the Yugoslavian
Communist Party with the legendary partisan Marshal Tito at the head."
If we translated that correctly, that would suggest nearly 140 people died during WWII. We are not sure if we have that correct, because the memorial only lists about 100 names (or at least that's all it has currently). Either way, that is an enormous part of the population for a village that probably only had between 50-60 households.
Here are the picture of the names at the memorial:
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