ZAGREB, April 29 (Hina) - The names of persons killed in a concentration camp in World War Two were read at Zagreb's central cemetery, Mirogoj, on Tuesday. This was the beginning and end of the marking of Yom ha-Shoa, the Jewish
remembrance day for Holocaust victims.
ZAGREB, April 29 (Hina) - The names of persons killed in a
concentration camp in World War Two were read at Zagreb's central
cemetery, Mirogoj, on Tuesday. This was the beginning and end of the
marking of Yom ha-Shoa, the Jewish remembrance day for Holocaust
victims. #L#
According to the tradition the global Jewish memorial project
called "Unto Every Person There Is a Name", the names of people
imprisoned in an Ustashi concentration camp for women and children
in Loborgrad, of whom none survived, were read out in front of
Moses' monument at Mirogoj today.
This year's commemoration was held on the 60th anniversary of the
Jews' uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and tribute was also paid to
prisoners who had carried out a breakthrough from the Jasenovac
Ustashi concentration camp in late April 1945.
Apart from top state officials, Zagreb City, various religious
communities and non-governmental organisations, the
commemoration was attended by President Stjepan Mesic. He was the
first Croatian president to attend this event. In the past years,
presidential envoys attended the commemorations.
The head of the co-ordinating body of Jewish Municipalities in
Croatia and of the Zagreb Jewish community, Ognjen Kraus, recalled
that Yom ha-Shoa was established as a day to remember the six
million Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust. Kraus stressed that
every tenth Jew had been involved in the resistance movement in
European countries, while in Croatia, they had joined partisan
troops in a proportionally higher percentage than their
representation in society.
"The Jewish community in Croatia opposes the solving of conflicts
with weapons and advocates solutions through agreement and
understanding," he said.
Kraus regrets that the war option prevailed in Iraq, but hopes that
life in that country will normalise with the assistance of the U.N.
He said Jews in Croatia were today under no threat, but the
development of the Jewish community could be helped by the
government returning their property.
Kraus, however, is satisfied with Zagreb's support in the
reconstruction of a synagogue and the construction of a Jewish
Centre in the city, for which a tender for architectural solutions
will be announced at the end of the year.
Also today, an exhibition of photographs called "Courage for
Remembering -- Holocaust 1933-1945" was set up at the Gallery of
Arts in Osijek on the occasion of Yom ha-Shoa.
The exhibition was organised by Osijek's Jewish Community and the
Simon Wiesenthal Centre from Los Angeles. It began with a minute of
silence for victims of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto.
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