The head of the Zagreb Jewish community, Ognjen Kraus, said that the offices of the Jewish Municipality were open to visitors who wished to become acquainted with the Municipality's chronology and the past, present and future of the Jewish community.
Recalling that the Zagreb Jewish Municipality would mark its 200th anniversary in 2006, Kraus announced a project of the new Jewish centre in Zagreb's Praska Street, at the location where a synagogue once used to stand.
A representative of the Zagreb Jewish community, Sanja Tabakovic Zoricic, said that the Patent was one of the first documents relevant for the history of Croatian Jews.
She described as particularly important the adoption of the 2002 Constitutional Law on the Rights of National Minorities, which enables minorities to elect their councils, representatives and coordinating bodies.
Historian Ivo Goldstein delivered a lecture dedicated to the Patent of Tolerance, stating that it was the first legal document enabling Jews and other persons of different religion, for example Protestants, to settle in some countries of the Hapsburg monarchy, including Croatia.
"That document marks the beginning of democratisation and of the process of establishment of equality for Jews in the Hapsburg monarchy," Goldstein said, adding that the equality of Jews in Croatia had been achieved only some 90 years later, in 1873.
The event at the Zagreb Jewish Municipality was also attended by the chief rabbi in Croatia, Kotel Da Don, and Zagreb deputy mayor Milan Bandic.