Croatia commemorated the victims of a concentration camp of the Second World War, where tens of thousands of people perished in the hands of the Nazi intermediate puppet regime.
Croatian officials and representatives of Serbian, Jewish, Roma and Antifascist organizations attended the ceremonies that have marked 80 years since hundreds of prisoners tried an escape on April 22, 1945.
According to data from Jasenovac Memorial Center Center.
Camp prisoners, known as Balkan Auschwitz, also included women and children.
Slavko Milanovic, born in 1937, was just a child when he was brought to Jasenovac with his mother, aunt and sister. Milanovic still remembers how the prison guards separated their mother's children.
“When my mother saw that she covered me and my sister of rags on which we sleep,” said Milanovic. “My sister was fragile, she died right there in my mother's arms.”
Jasenovac, located about 100 kilometers southwest of the capital Zagreb, was the most notorious in a system of camps in the region where the victims were gathered, brutally tortured and executed.
Official Croatian data shows that more than 83,000 people were killed in Jasenovac while Serbs say that the figures were much higher, perhaps in the hundreds of thousands.
Tuesday ceremonies included the installation of flowers and crowns, candle lighting and a commemorative program.
Participants have covered a path marked with railways that were used to transport the camp prisoners.
“Such crimes should never be forgotten and what is even more important, they should never be repeated,” said Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic.
In the past, the conservative government of Plenkovic faced accusations that it did not do enough to slow down the pro-Nazis feelings released in the country, which led to a boycott of the years of commemoration ceremonies of Jasenovac, managed by the State, by the Serbian and Jewish groups.
“I am extremely happy that everyone is participating,” said Ognjen Kraus, who heads an association of Jewish municipalities in Croatia.
“Commemoration, after a long time, was as it should be.”
Croatia, now a member of the European Union, was part of the first Yugoslavia led by the Communists after the Second World War.
ADVERTISEMENTThe federation of six members broke out in the 1990s in a series of ethnic conflicts, forming Bosnia today and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.
