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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