Croatia Jews Hold Own Holocaust Commemoration — Shun Government
Image by Getty Images
Croatian Jews held a Holocaust commemoration a week before the scheduled government event that the community said it would boycott.
Some 300 Jewish residents of Croatia attended the ceremony held Friday at the Nazi death camp at Jasenovac, near Zagreb, The Associated Press reported.
Earlier this month, the Coordinating Committee of the Jewish Communities of Croatia said it would hold its own commemoration “in line with Jewish tradition” instead of participating in the government one at the death camp, in order to protest alleged government inaction to curb neo-Nazism.
The committee’s president, Ognjen Kraus, said at the time that the move followed cases of open anti-Semitism, including chants by demonstrators of pro-Nazi slogans at an anti-government march in January and during a soccer match between the Israeli and Croatian national teams last month.
Every April, Croatia honors the victims of the Jasenovac death camp, which was operated by the pro-Nazi Ustasha regime of World War II. The camp is known as “Croatia’s Auschwitz.”
In all, some 30,000 of Croatia’s Jews died during the Holocaust — 80 percent of the country’s Jewish population, according to the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
