BREZOVICA/SISAK, June 22 (Hina) - The 61st anniversary of the establishment of the first anti-Fascist armed unit in Croatia and Europe was marked on Saturday in Brezovica Forest near Sisak (60 kilometres south of Zagreb).
BREZOVICA/SISAK, June 22 (Hina) - The 61st anniversary of the
establishment of the first anti-Fascist armed unit in Croatia and
Europe was marked on Saturday in Brezovica Forest near Sisak (60
kilometres south of Zagreb). #L#
The celebration of anniversary began with the wreath-laying by
delegations of Croatian President, government, parliament, local
authorities, the "SAB" association of war veterans who were anti-
Fascist fighters in World War Two, Jewish communities and political
parties.
The wreaths were placed in the "Vlado Janic Capo" memorial park
named after the first commander of this unit.
Addressing the gathered, Milan Mesic, one of founders of the unit,
said the first armed anti-Fascist squad in Europe had 77 members,
Croats from the Sisak region, and 39 of them lost their lives in WW2.
Ten members were declared national heroes.
Mesic added that at the day of Hitler's attack on the then Soviet
Union 61 years ago, members of the Communist Party in Sisak,
responded to the call of the local party leadership, gathered in
Brezovica Forest and set up their armed unit at whose helm was a
Croat and anti-Fascist fighter from Sisak, Vlado Janic Capo.
A member of the government's delegation, Labour Minister Davorko
Vidovic told Hina that "values of the anti-Fascist movement and
struggle, 61 years after the set-up of the first anti-Fascist unit
in Europe, had lost no importance in the contemporary world."
This was a crucial period in the history of humankind when a
majority of the human race said for the first time very clearly and
resolutely that they should resist all sorts of intolerance, hatred
and violence over a minority, Vidovic added.
The SAB President, Ivan Fumic, said "the fight against Fascism and
Nazism meant and today means the fight against bigotry and
hatred."
Fumic said the incumbent Croatian authorities were firmly oriented
towards anti-Fascism. He, however, claimed that "there is also a
very strong block that (...) would like to see Croatia based on
narrow-mindedness and one-track politics."
The incumbent minister of war veterans who fought for the
independence of Croatia in the early 1990s, Ivica Pancic, stressed
that the Croatian people was among first European nations to rebel
against Fascism and Nazism and the Croatians should be proud of it.
Thanks to the participation in the anti-Fascist struggle, which was
the best organised in Croatia compared to other European countries,
the Croatian people was a part the victorious anti-Fascist
coalition, Pancic said.
Thanks to this victory in WW2, Istria, islands and parts of Dalmatia
were reintegrated into the motherland, and the Croatia with the
current border-lines was created, he added.
The anti-Fascism in WW2 was a basis for the new anti-Fascist war
against the Greater Serbian Fascism in 1991 when Croatia won its
full independence and liberation, the veterans' minister said.
For many years anti-Fascism was equated with Bolshevism, and it was
not good. Anti-Fascism is a universal value which helped fighters
who were for freedom, justice and solidarity to win the Second World
War and the Homeland Defence War, Pancic concluded.
(hina) ms