CRO. DELEGATION ATTENDS MAUTHAUSEN LIBERATION ANNIVERSARY

MAUTHAUSEN, May 5 (Hina) - The 57th anniversary of the liberation of the former Austrian concentration camp Mauthausen, today a museum, was marked on Sunday with the laying of wreaths for the victims of Nazism. Among the many delegations attending was a Croatian one headed by Furio Radin, chairman of parliament's committee on human rights and the rights of national minorities. #L# "We owe it to the victims and survivors of National Socialism to bolster the front against every form of violence, intolerance, and racism," said Michaell Haeupl, Vienna mayor and president of an association of former Mauthausen inmates. "The victims of the Holocaust bind us to alertness and resistance as that must never happen in Europe again," he said. The Croatian delegation laid wreaths by the principal monument to the victims and by a memorial plaque which the Croatian parliament placed on the so-called "weeping wall" last year. "Camps are the consequence of every totalitarian regime and not of political ideologies," said Radin. "By laying wreaths we pay respect to the Croatian and all victims of all camps," he said, adding that human and minority rights were "completely endangered in all camps." Croatian Ambassador to Austria Drazen Vukov-Colic said the memorial plaque the Croatian parliament placed last year "pays tribute to the members of the Croatian people who were the victims of National Socialism." He recalled the history of the death camp established in August 1938. In seven years of its existence, it held 195,000 inmates, of whom 105,000 were killed. Also in attendance were representatives of the Alliance of Anti- Fascist Fighters and the Association of Croatian Volunteers and Homeland War Veterans. (hina) ha