The sculpture, part of an art installation called K19, was put in Zagreb's Fascism Victims Square in 2014. The author decided to donate it to Varazdin and the city undertook to finance its installation opposite the city synagogue.
The sculpture commemorates victims of fascism in Croatia, many of whom were from Varazdin.
After the sculpture was installed and a few days before its official unveiling, an unidentified perpetrator vandalised it by spraying a swastika and the letter U on it. The symbols have been removed in the meantime.
Speaking at the unveiling ceremony, Deputy Prime Minister Boris Milosevic said that it was important to gather for and speak at ceremonies like today's "not in order to sow divisions in society but in order to preserve the truth and prevent evil from happening again."
Milosevic said that today's Croatia was based on the values of antifascism, and that that was why similar monuments and projects should be supported.
A special advisor to President Zoran Milanovic, Zdravko Zima, said that in 1945 Germany was morally and materially devastated, "and it took it ten years to rise high and become a leader in the European Union."
Twenty-five years after the war, Croatia is still in the same place, he said.
"We consider Germany a model country in many ways and it has been systematically dealing with its Nazi past for 80 years, so let us do the same and put our own house in order," said Zima.
Attending the unveiling ceremony were also sculptor Zlatko Kopljar and Mayor Ivan Cehok.
The head of the Varazdin City Museum, Ivan Mesek, said that many residents of Varazdin perished in the period from 1941 to 1945 and that the local Jewish community was the most affected by those crimes and never really recovered.