ZAGREB JEWS WARN ABOUT ANTI-SEMITIC CLAIMS

ZAGREB, March 2 (Hina) - The Zagreb Jewish Community Council and the Coordination of Jewish Communities of Croatia on Tuesday warned that the number of anti-semitic claims in Croatia had been on the rise recently. They especially protested against claims made by reporter Branka Separovic, Lieutenant Marinko Liovic and priest Vjekoslav Lasic, describing them as the most extreme anti-semitic statements. The Coordination of Jewish Communities of Croatia and the Zagreb Jewish Community Council today issued a statement concerning the above-mentioned claims. Conclusions from the statement were accompanied by additional clarifications, presented by Ognjen Kraus, president of the Zagreb Jewish Community and the Coordination of Jewish Communities of Croatia, and members of the Zagreb Jewish Community Council Slavko Goldstein and Jasminka Domas, at a news conference held in Zagreb today. Kraus said that the anti-semitic claims had been discussed by the Zagreb Jewish Community Council at a session held on February 22. The Coordination of Jewish Communities of Croatia later supported the Council's decisions, he added. The statement mentions the Croatian Radio Television (HRT) programme "Ecology and Ethics" by Branka Separovic, broadcast as part of the HRT's documentary programme on December 16 last year. Apart from using the language of hatred throughout the programme, Separovic directly accused "the insipid Serb-Jewish lobby acting against Croatia, which through its international Jewish sponsor is also working on destroying the entire Croathood". According to the statement, in an interview with the "Novi list" daily of February 8 this year, Lieutenant Marinko Liovic claimed that The Hague Tribunal was acting against Croats and Croatia because it had been established "by American free masons and Jews". The Zagreb Jewish Community Council and Coordination of Jewish Communities of Croatia believe that statements like these and the repeated glorification of Ante Pavelic by priest Vjekoslav Lasic are the most extreme cases of anti-semitism in Croatia lately. Slavko Goldstein acknowledged and expressed gratitude to some individuals and some representatives of Croatian authority for publicly opposing anti-semitism and rehabilitation of the Ustasha ideology. In connection with that, Goldstein mentioned a statement made recently by Croatian Defence Minister Pavle Miljavac during his visit to Jerusalem. However, Goldstein said that he was worried that the majority of the Croatian public, including the state authorities and most political parties, were reacting to those anti-semitic statements with silence, which meant that they were tolerating them. Reporters were also informed about the recent cases of glorification of the Ustasha ideology and the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in various books, news articles, readers' letters and elsewhere, while at the same time attempts were being made to conceal the criminal character of the Ustasha ideology and the NDH. Croatian Jews are particularly insulted by the absurd and false claims that the NDH had not been enforcing racial laws and that proportionately, it was Jews who had been saved in largest numbers from the Holocaust, because the Ustasha authorities allegedly had been saving them. Facts and data are clear - before World War II, 39,000 Jews had lived on the territory of NDH and only 8,000 remained to see the end of the war. About 25,000 Jews were killed on the territory of NDH, of whom between 15,000 and 17,000 were killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp, said Goldstein. (hina) mm rml .