Exhibition on Valjevo hospital in Great War opens

VALJEVO - The exhibition on Valjevo during the epidemic of typhus in 1914-15, when the whole town was one big hospital, opened in the National Museum of Valjevo to honour the numerous victims of war who died during the epidemic in 1914 and 1915.

The exhibition was opened late on Thursday by Serbian Minister of Culture and Information Ivan Tasovac who said that it is in the wartime Valjevo hospital that an important moral line between the past and the future was established which must not be forgotten.

The exhibition honours all victims and those who helped beat the spotted fever epidemic, Director of the Valjevo National Museum Vladimir Krivosejev said.

Up to 150 soldiers and civilians died in Valjevo daily, and the data from the period of the spotted fever epidemic shows that around 3,500 soldiers and over 4,000 civilians, as well as a large number of Austrian soldiers, died in the area at the time, exhibition author Dragana Lazarevic Ilic said.

The opening ceremony marked the centenary of death of Nadezda Petrovic, Serbia's most important female painter of the time, who contracted typhus while volunteering as a nurse in Valjevo and died in 1915.

Photo Tanjug Video