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Croatian PM inaugurates memorial park to Croats in Villefranche

VILLEFRANCHE DE ROUERGUE, Sept 17 (Hina) - Croatia is learning a lesson from history and is participating in the building of a new Europe, Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said in Villefranche on Sunday as he and French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy inaugurated a memorial park dedicated to Croatian and Bosnian soldiers who rebelled against the Nazis in 1943.
VILLEFRANCHE DE ROUERGUE, Sept 17 (Hina) - Croatia is learning a lesson from history and is participating in the building of a new Europe, Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said in Villefranche on Sunday as he and French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy inaugurated a memorial park dedicated to Croatian and Bosnian soldiers who rebelled against the Nazis in 1943.

The opening of this memorial park testifies primarily to our unity, meaning that all of us in Europe are determined not to forget the past but learn from it, said Sanader. This means that we are building a new Europe together, a Europe of peace, prosperity and unity of all its peoples, he added.

Douste-Blazy emphasised the importance of the Croatian prime minister's presence in Villefranche in a moment of remembering. Here we are remembering the Croatian and Bosnian children who died for freedom, he said.

This is also a place of the future, a future in which Croatia has its place in the new Europe which does not want new wars and destabilisation, said Douste-Blazy.

In Villefranche de Rouergue in the night of 17 September 1943, members of the 13th pioneer battalion of the German army's 13th SS division rebelled and in several hours gained control of the town. Those soldiers were originally from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The rebellion was crushed and about 100 rebels were killed or deported.

Sanader underlined that this had been the first case of organised rebellion in the German army in World War Two.

That event, known in recent French history as the Croats' Rebellion, was controversial in the former Yugoslavia, but in Croatia the rebellion has become part of the national, cultural and historical conscience, said Sanader.

Those who researched what actually happened in Villefranche established one truth -- that the brotherhood of the rebels, who were Roman Catholic and Muslim, was never brought into question, said Sanader.

The memorial park was designed by Croatian architect Ivan Prtenjak and includes sculptor Vanja Radaus's casts. It was financed by the French authorities and the Croatian Culture Ministry.

We are proud of the fact that France, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina built this monument together, but we are especially proud of the fact that Croatian sculptor Vanja Radaus is the author of this memorial park, where all those who remember the brave people who resisted Nazism will come, to build the new Europe, said Sanader.

Given that Radaus's casts for Villefranche were sent to Pula in 1952 at the orders of the then Yugoslav government, Pula and Villefranche today became twin cities.

Attending the inauguration of the park, which also has a Croats Avenue, were Croatia's Deputy PM Jadranka Kosor and Culture Minister Bozo Biskupic, Mayor Serge Roques, representatives of Croatian veterans' associations and French politicians.

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