For Second Year, Croatia's Jews to Boycott Holocaust Tribute

Via Haaretz:

Croatian Jews said on Monday they would boycott the country's main Holocaust remembrance event this week, accusing the authorities of playing down crimes perpetrated under the Nazi-backed Ustasa regime during World War II.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is held on January 27 each year, the date in 1945 when the biggest Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz in occupied Poland, was liberated by Soviet troops.

Three months ago, rightist veterans of Croatia's 1991-95 independence war raised a commemorative plaque in the town of Jasenovac to comrades killed there at the beginning of the conflict Zagreb fought to secede from Serbian-led Yugoslavia.

Included in the veterans' plaque are words from a salute used by the Ustasha regime that killed tens of thousands of prisoners including Jews, Serbs, Roma gypsies and anti-fascist Croats, in the 1941-1945 Jasenovac concentration camp.

That prompted the association representing Croatia's remnant population of Jews, numbering somewhat over 1,500, to pull out of its primary Holocaust remembrance event, which is normally conducted in the Zagreb parliament.

"We took the decision on the basis of reactions by the government, parliament and the president. The problem is not [just] a plaque in Jasenovac including the Ustasha salute, but the relativization of everything [to do with the Holocaust]," community leader Ognjen Kraus told the state news agency Hina.

The center-right government of Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic - now on an unrelated visit to Israel - proposed last month forming a commission that would legally regulate reappearances of symbols from any past totalitarian regime.

Kraus dismissed the gesture. "If swastika or Ustasha symbols are equated with the [communist] red star, what are we talking about? Are we going to revise history? Establish a commission to tell us what World War II was about?" he said.

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Croatian School Removes Anne Frank Exhibition

Via BalkanInsight (h/t glykosymoritis):

A travelling exhibition about Holocaust victim and diarist Anne Frank was removed from a high school in the coastal town of Sibenik after the school’s director complained that it portrayed the Croatian fascist Ustasa movement negatively, local media reported on Thursday.

The educational exhibition for pupils depicts the life of Anne Frank but also shows the broader context of World War II and the Holocaust, as well as its effects on Croatia and the region, highlighting crimes committed against Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist by the Ustasa.

School director Josip Belamaric asked the organisers of the exhibition, the Hermes NGO – local partner of the Amsterdam-based Anne Frank House museum – to remove six panels describing the local context of the war.

“According to these panels, it seems that the Ustasa were criminals who slaughtered Serbs, Jews, starved children, and the [Yugoslav anti-fascist] Partisans were innocent. What about the crimes committed by the Partisans?” Belamaric old local news site Sibenik In.

Belamaric asked why there were no billboards showing what happened in May 1945 when “Partisans killed Croats” in Bleiburg in southern Austria, or about the Yugoslav prison camp on the island of Goli Otok which was run by the Communists.

Maja Nenadovic from the Anne Frank House told BIRN that this was the first problem they had encountered after 23 successful exhibitions in Croatia, which attracted over 40,000 visitors.

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Croatia: President poses with pro-Nazi regime symbol

Via Times of Israel:

Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic sparked online debate Saturday as it emerged she posed for a photo during her recent Canada trip with a flag carrying a symbol of her country’s wartime pro-Nazi regime.

Her office shrugged off the incident, insisting there was “nothing questionable” about it.

The photo, posted on Facebook by a Croatian man living in Canada, shows Grabar-Kitarovic posing with him and others in front of a flag bearing the coat of arms used by Croatia’s World War II-era Ustasha regime, which persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascists.

The checkerboard-patterned shield in the middle of Croatia’s current national flag has 25 red and white squares, starting with a red one in the top-left corner.

A different version with a white square in that corner has been used at other points in Croatia’s history — notably by the Ustasha. It was replaced by the current shield after World War II when Croatia was part of the former Yugoslavia.

Both versions were briefly in use in 1990 ahead of Croatia’s declaration of independence, but under a December 1990 law the national flag bears the red-first version of the shield.

The presidency batted off the row over the photo of Grabar-Kitarovic, telling N1 television, “We see nothing questionable in it.” It noted that such a flag was displayed in front of the Croatian parliament in 1990.

The president’s view on the wartime regime is “clear and she voiced it on several occasions,” it added. Grabar-Kitarovic has condemned the Ustasha in the past.

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Croatia: Debate over use of Nazi-related greeting

Via B92:

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic has reacted to a debate currently underway in Croatia about the use of the "Za dom spremni" greeting.

"For home ready" (Croatian: "Za dom spremni") was used by the Ustasha in the Nazi-allied Independent State of Croatia (NDH) - an entity that existed from 1941 until 1945 and operated death camps for Serbs, Jews, and Roma, including in Jasenovac.

Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic said over the weekend that "the issue" of the Ustasha greeting "should be solved by judicial organs."

"These days there is a debate in Croatia about how to legally arrange the use of the Ustasha greeting 'For home ready'. With the desire, of course, to allow its use," Dacic said, and added:

"In fact, this is a clear indicator of the state of affairs in Croatia, an EU member that is rehabilitating the fascist Ustasha NDH."

"Imagine such a debate, or the use of Nazi symbols in Germany, where one goes to jail for using the greeting 'Sieg Heil'. Or, if the swastika was used in any country, surely it would be associated with Hitler - although it's a symbol of Eastern religions. When Prince Harry wore a shirt with a swastika, the English public accused him of Nazism, not of Buddhism or Hinduism," said Dacic.

The minister in the caretaker government added that the "For home ready" greeting is tied with the Ustasha, their leader ("poglavnik") Ante Pavelic, who used it first in 1932, and with the Nazi Ustasha NDH.

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Croatia: Court annuls conviction of Ustasha collaborator

Via Jerusalem Post:

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has expressed outrage over the recent annulment of the 1946 conviction of Croatian Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, for treason and collaboration with the Nazi-aligned Ustasha regime.

“As the leading Catholic priest in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), Stepinac’s responsibility was to speak out on behalf of the innocent victims of the Ustasha, not to lend spiritual support to their murderers,” said the Wiesenthal Center’s top Nazi-hunter, Dr. Efraim Zuroff. “The genocidal campaign waged by the Ustasha against Serbs, their active participation in Holocaust crimes against Jews, and the murder of Roma and anti-fascist Croatians carried out in their network of concentration camps are among the most heinous crimes of World War II. No person who supported that regime should have their conviction annulled.”

The Zagreb County Court Judge Ivan Turudic overturned the verdict last week, saying it had violated the right to a fair trial, the prohibition of forced labor, and the rule of law.

Zuroff was dismissive of accounts that Stepinac later condemned Ustasha atrocities against Jews and Serbs.

“Bottom line is, he was [NDH leader] Ante Pavelić’s priest – that says it all, and it’s totally unforgivable,” he told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. “He openly supported the regime which committed mass murder, and afforded them spiritual comfort and support.”

Zuroff said the stance Stepinac took was of “huge significance,” and that for this reason, the annulment of the verdict is cause for celebration for nationalist and ultra-rightwing Croatians.

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Croatia: Jews fear growing intolerance under conservatives

Via Times of Israel:

“Nostalgia” for a pro-Nazi past, spurning of ethnic minorities and pressure on the press: Croatian activists say an alarming climate of intolerance is taking hold under a new conservative government.

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Since the ruling coalition took power in the European Union country in January, critics say authorities have turned a blind eye — and even contributed to — concerns over a far-right surge.

Last week, in response, angry Jewish, ethnic Serb and anti-fascist groups refused to attend a ceremony remembering tens of thousands who died at Jasenovac, the most notorious concentration camp under Croatia’s pro-Nazi Ustasha regime during World War II.

The boycott was a “brave and correct decision in the face of the wave of neo-fascist Ustasha nostalgia which is sweeping Croatia”, said Efraim Zuroff at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish rights organization.

Although the Ustasha’s so-called Independent State of Croatia was a Nazi puppet state — killing hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma and others — their modern sympathizers see them as the country’s founding fathers.

The downplaying of their atrocities “has existed for years, but in a different intensity,” historian Tvrtko Jakovina told AFP.

“It has now penetrated cabinet ministers and the mainstream media.”

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Croatia: Historian Condemns Minister’s WWII Rhetoric

Via Balkan Insight (h/t glykosymoritis):

Culture minister Zlatko Hasanbegovic has never expressed any regret for his controversial statements in the 1990s praising Croatian Nazi-allied Ustasa fighters as heroes, Natasa Matausic told BIRN in an interview.

Matausic, who was the acting head of the Croatian History Museum for several months last year, said that it was time for Hasanbegovic to apologise.

“I would like him more, if it’s even possible for me to like him, if he openly admitted everything he was, everything he did and everything he wrote. And apologised for that,” she said.

“Who is he deceiving? Himself? People thinking the same as him? Us?” she asked rhetorically.

Matausic also criticised more recent statements by Hasanbegovic in which he has described a reference to anti-fascism in the Croatian constitution as “an empty phrase” and insisted that Croatia was “tragically defeated in 1945” when the Nazi-allied Independent State of Croatia, NDH was ousted by the Partisans led by Josip Broz Tito.

Since he was appointed, Hasanbegovic has been criticised by artists, writers and civil rights activists. But he has insisted that his conscience is clear and that his detractors are guilty of the “selective manipulation of facts from the distant past”.

“I have never in any way been an apologist for any criminal regime, regardless of whether it was an Ustasa or communist regime,” he said in February this year.

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Croatia: Culture Minister praises film denying Jasenovac was an extermination camp

Via Balkan Insight (h/t glykosymoritis)

Croatian Jewish representatives expressed outrage after the culture minister praised a film claiming the number of people killed by the country’s pro-Nazi WWII regime at the Jasenovac concentration camp was exaggerated.

Claims that Jasenovac was not really a concentration camp, raised in a new documentary that was screened in Zagreb on Monday evening, have angered representatives of the country’s Jewish community.

The documentary entitled Jasenovac - The Truth, made by Croatian director Jakov Sedlar, questions the number of killings at the camp which was run by the WWII-era fascist puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia, NDH.

Croatian culture minister Zlatko Hasanbegovic, who has run into controversy in the past for his views about the NDH, attended the screening and praised the film.

“Such films are useful because they speak about a number of taboo topics. This is the best way to finally shed light on a number of controversial places in Croatian history,” Hasanbegovic said afterwards.

(...)

Slavko Goldstein, a prominent historian dealing with the Holocaust and Croatia during WWII, was also at the screening on Monday and told BIRN that Sedlar’s film promotes the idea that “Jasenovac was not a death camp, but merely a labour or prisoner camp”. 

(...)

“In my book, over a hundred or so pages, I refuted all these claims using proven facts, while these claims were again, de facto, restated in this movie,” Goldstein said.
“The movie… repeats a similar thesis that Jasenovac was a punitive camp, without massive executions,” he added.

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Croatia: Jews to Boycott Official Holocaust Remembrance

Via Voice of America:

Croatia's Jews will boycott the country's official ceremony honoring the victims of the pro-Nazi regime of World War II, accusing the current government of doing little against what they say is a resurgence of neo-Naziism.

The main Jewish agency says it will hold its own commemoration "in line with the Jewish tradition."

Spokesman Ognjen Kraus said demonstrators chanted pro-Nazi slogans at an anti-government march in January and during a football (soccer) match between the Israeli and Croatian national teams.

"The state is simply not doing anything about it and does not want to," Kraus said Monday.

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Croatia: Football fans shout fascist slogans during Croatia-Israel game

photo: nezavisne

Via NRG:

Croatian fans shouted fascist slogans during a Croatia-Israeli football game at Osijek.

The fans shouted "Za dom spremni!", the Ustaše movement equivalent of the Nazi "Sieg Heil".

During the cries, Prime Minister Tihomir Orešković was spotted in the stands smiling.

Croatia: Culture Minister justifies Mufti al-Hussein, says he was victim of militant Zionism

Zlatko Hasanbegović is a historian.

Via Total Croatia News:

In an interview, Minister Zlatko Hasanbegović has expressed his understanding for the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem al-Husseini and his transgressions before, during and after the World War II. He basically said that the Mufti was a victim of historical circumstances, of British colonialism and militant Zionism.

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Holocaust denial on the rise in Eastern Europe

Via Ynet News:

After Lithuania changed the definition of 'genocide' and Baltic countries have turned murderers of Jews into national heroes, Holocaust researchers are accusing the State of Israel of standing idly by as history is being re-written.

The testimonies are fading away, the memorial sites are turning into entertainment centers, and the historical story is seen as just another "Jewish narrative": If anyone thought that Holocaust denial was a marginal phenomenon among a few anti-Semites and Israel haters, evidence shows that is it a much wider, more well-established and dangerous phenomenon that is receiving reinforcement on the ground from eastern European countries.

In Lithuania, for example, people are doing everything to downplay the significance of the horrors of the war as a unique event in the history of mankind, and in Ukraine a famous mass murder site has turned into a thriving jogging spot.

(...)

Rabbi Avraham Krieger, head of the Shem Olam Institute for Holocaust education and research, believes the new Holocaust deniers are driven by a psychological motive, namely an attempt to dissolve the perception of the Holocaust as a unique phenomenon in favor of a historical description which will minimize the feelings of guilt among the countries which actively participated - or whose citizens actively participated - in the murder of Jews.

Dr. Zuroff sees it too. He says there is an attempt to conceal and blur the eastern Europeans' role in the massacre. "In Lithuania there was a systematic killing of Jews by the local population," he explained. "That is the reason why 96 percent of the Jews there did not survive and many communities were completely erased. The intentional goal is to conceal this fact.

"The mass murderers of Jews among the local population are perceived as national heroes because of their war against the communists, and streets, squares and governmental institutions have been named after them. How can anyone acknowledge their role in the annihilation if the murderers are considered heroes?"

Lithuania is not alone. According to the two researchers, "soft denial" is taking place in Baltic countries like Estonia and Latvia, as well as in Poland, Croatia and Hungary.

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Croatia: Wiesenthal Centre urges end to Nazi allies pensions

Via AFP:

The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center on Tuesday urged Croatia to stop paying pensions to people who served in the country's World War II Nazi-allied armed forces, labelling the policy an insult to their victims.

"In view of the horrendous war crimes committed in the so-called Independent State of Croatia (NDH)... such a policy is inherently mistaken," the centre's chief Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff said in a letter to Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic.

Paying pensions to members of the WWII Ustasha armed forces is a "horrific insult to the victims, their families and all Croatians with a sense of morality and integrity," Zuroff stressed in a Wiesenthal Center statement quoting from his letter.

The Nazi-allied Ustasha authorities persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and anti-fascist Croatians.

Croatia is currently paying around 10,000 such pensions, to those still living or their spouses, which costs the European Union member around 50 million euros ($56 million) yearly, according to estimates.

Croatia: President pays tribute to killed pro-Nazi collaborators

Via AFP:

Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic paid tribute Thursday to the country's pro-Nazi collaborators and civilians who were killed by communist partisans in Austria and Slovenia after the end of World War II.

Grabar-Kitarovic lit candles and laid wreaths at Bleiburg in southern Austria, as well as in Macelj and Tezno across the border in Slovenia, to pay "respect to victims killed in the tragic events in May 1945," a statement from her office said.

"The end of World War II and the victory against Nazism to which Croatian people gave a big contribution marked one of the most tragic chapters of Croatia's history," she said in a reference to the killings in Austria and Slovenia.

"A crime is a crime and it cannot be justified by any ideology."

Croatia: Hundreds attend mass for of ‘one of Europe's biggest mass murderers’

Pavelic (left) and Mussolini (1941)

Hundreds of Croatians attended a memorial mass in Zagreb on Sunday for World War II-era dictator Ante Pavelić, local media reported.

Pavelić’s fascist regime was allied with Nazi Germany and was responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Jews. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs were also murdered under his rule. [...]

The founder of the extreme nationalist Ustaše movement, Pavelić advocated armed rebellion against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and engaged in acts of terror in furtherance of this goal. After the Germans conquered Yugoslavia in 1941, he was installed as head of the new puppet state, described by Yad Vashem as a “fiercely cruel regime” in which “hundreds of thousands of Serbs and tens of thousands of Jews were murdered in death camps and in other awful ways, such as being thrown off cliffs or burned alive in their homes.” Following the war, Pavelić made his way to Argentina, where he was wounded in an assassination attempt. He died in 1957. [...]

“It is hard to believe that in the center of the capital of a member of the European Union, very close to Zagreb’s Jewish community, hundreds of people gathered yesterday to commemorate the memory of one of Europe’s biggest mass murderers,” Efraim Zuroff, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem office, said in a prepared statement. “Such a ceremony is an insult to the memory of Pavelić’s hundreds of thousands of innocent victims,” Zuroff said. “It is also a badge of shame for the Catholic Church, which allowed such a ceremony to take place in the Basilica of the Heart of Christ – who, had he been alive during World War II, would have been targeted for annihilation as well.”

More: Jerusalem Post

Croatia: Anti-Israel Palestinian-propaganda movie co-opts Anne Frank

Co-opting Anne Frank for political purposes and trivialising the Holocaust is what Jakov and Dominik Sedlar, two Croatian film-directors did. The film is produced by Branko Lustig. Aussie Dave is (rightly) shocked:

We are already used to the Israel haters co-opting Anne Frank for their propaganda, but seeing this still shocked me.



The publicity material:

Now, 70 years since the Frank family were discovered in hiding, What Does Anne Frank Mean Today? is a fascinating look at Anne Frank’s life and diary and how the words and thoughts of this exceptional young woman in hiding have relevance in today’s world. Shot entirely on location amidst the turmoil of Gaza, Ramallah, Jaffa and Kosovo, the film takes a modern look at how relevant her thoughts and dreams are for young people in these regions today through conversations with ordinary Palestinian youths who talk about love, their first kiss and other subjects covered in Frank’s diary. Sedlar faced many challenges shooting during the most recent conflicts in Gaza, trying to shoot scenes in between bombings and was witness to horrific images of war. The film will have six young Palestinian actresses portraying Anne Frank between the ages of 12 and 14 and Sedlar hopes that the film being done in Arabic (with English subtitles) will ‘open some eyes.’ ‘We must not repeat history,’ Sedlar adamantly vows. 

I am truly saddened some of those who say ‘Never Again’ are helping the cause of those who want ‘Again.’

More: Israelly Cool

Croatia: Historic Jewish cemetery vandalized

pictures via CFCA

Vandals seriously damaged several graves in a more than 400-year-old Jewish cemetery in Split, Croatia. 

According to Ana Lebl, the president of the Jewish community in Split, unknown persons forced open three graves and also damaged their headstones and fences. In addition, they knocked over and broke a fourth headstone and damaged other tombstone decoration.

More: JTA

Croatia: Joe Simunic defends ‘pro-Nazi celebrations’ after World Cup play

Croatia’s Joe Simunic has defended his use of ‘pro-Nazi’ celebrations in the aftermath of his country’s World Cup 2014 qualification.

(...)

Video footage shows Australian-born Simunic taking a microphone to the field after the match and shouting to the fans: ‘For the homeland!’ The fans respond: ‘Ready!’

That was the war call used by Ustashas, the Croatian pro-Nazi puppet regime that ruled the state during World War II when tens of thousands Jews, Serbs and others perished in concentration camps.

More: Metro