Five-gram sugar sachets with anti-Semitic messages appeared recently in some coffee bars in the central town of Gospic.
In a statement, signed by director Efraim Zuroff, the Israel-based centre
expresses disgust with the fact that such a product was made in a country where the Holocaust not only had happened, but where it had been mostly carried out by local Nazi collaborators.
It is difficult to understand what the owner of the "Pinki" factory, Anita Ivanesic, was thinking when she initiated or agreed to making such a product. If nothing else, it is a disgusting expression of nostalgia for the Third Reich, the time when Jews, Serbs and Roma in the independent Croatia were killed, the Centre said in the statement.
Asked by reporters if her factory had actually printed sachets with the controversial anti-Semitic drawing and joke and if her company had distributed such sugar sachets on the Croatian market, Anita Ivanesic said she had no comment.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre called on Croatian authorities to apply its laws against incitement to religious, ethnic or racial hatred and make the factory withdraw the controversial sachets from the market and stop producing them.
In a country where so many innocent civilians were killed by the Ustashas and Nazis there can be no tolerance for products that not only insult the memory of victims of fascism but encourage the revival of the deadly ideology of the murderers, the Centre said.