EXHIBITION ON HOLOCAUST STAGED IN ZAGREB

ZAGREB, Nov 10 (Hina) - A travelling exhibition of the Simon Wisenthal Center, called "The Courage to Remember, The Holocaust 1933-1945", was opened on Saturday night in Zagreb's "Mimara Museum" by Croatian President Stjepan Mesic. #L# Present at the opening of this exhibition, which was in Zagreb staged by the Civic Committee for Human Rights in cooperation with the Simon Wisenthal Centre and the Heinrich Boell Foundation, were the said Centre's director, Efraim Zuroff, members of the Diplomatic Corps in the Croatian capital, other public figures and outstanding persons. The travelling exhibition with some 200 photographs and documents, was staged for the first time in Vienna in 1988 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Anschluss. Since then it has been organised on six continents and seen by several million visitors. The exhibition is opened on the occasion of the anniversary of the Crystal Night,. i.e. the night between 9 and 10 November 1938 when over 30,00 Jews in Germany and Austria were deported in concentration camps and when almost 300 synagogues were set on fire and Jewish stores demolished. The director of the Jerusalem-based "Simon Wisenthal Center" said the purpose of the exhibition was to show that the Holocaust was not only the tragedy of the Jewish people but also the tragedy of the humankind. Speaking about Croatia as the first post-Communist country to host this exhibition, Zuroff said Croatia had also the right to be proud of one legal achievement - it was the first post-Communist country to prosecute and sentence a criminal from the Nazi period, Dinko Sakic. He expressed hope that the world had learnt a lesson from the "Crystal Night" and the Holocaust, and this was particularly important now when, as he said, antisemitism was raising its ugly head. President Mesic said the exhibition was not only a display for historians but also for those who would try to revise the history. He added that the slogan of the event "The Courage to Remember" says something which people Croatia must be deeply aware concerning their treatment of the past of the truth about the past. Mesic said that courage was often needed to remember what was over and to admit what had happened, given that the past could be ugly and the truth painful. Commenting on some bids to negate or falsify the truth about the past, Mesic said it was impossible to negate the Holocaust and its atrocities. During the Second World War, Croatian areas, under control of the Ustasha regime, were unfortunately a venue for the Holocaust, Mesic said adding that the victims of the Holocaust were members of the Jewish people only because they belonged to a certain people and religion. "That is why the so-called new order led by Hitler and his bunch, including Ante Pavelic, was and remains unlike anything else. The order was based on crime, and it promoted crime to the level of politics, and its politics was the physical extermination of the entire people," the Croatian head of state said. "Following a full decade of attempts to revise the history of the WW2 in this area, and following years-long efforts to conceal the truth about the dark sides of what had occurred(...) at our side, in Croatia some courage is needed to remember. But, I will say clearly and loudly: Those who would like to negate and forget, are vociferous and aggressive, but they are a minority," Mesic said. He added that Croats would neither conceal nor justify crime either crime which had happened 50 years ago or a few years ago. No individual crime can be justified but, perhaps, it can be understood, but the politics of crime i.e. crime as the politics can neither be justified nor understood, he said. On Saturday night, the president Mesic held brief talks with Efraim Zuroff. During the opening ceremony, some 3,000 kuna were collected for the treatment of a two-year-old Iraqi girl suffering from hydrocephalus, who has not been able to undergo surgery in Croatia because her family cannot pay for it. The girl and her mother, who are temporarily staying in a refugee shelter outside Zagreb, were caught in Croatia as illegal immigrants while they were trying to reach Italy in search of a better life. (hina) ms