The central commemoration was held at the renovated Jewish Cemetery in Pozega, organised by Pozega-Slavonia County and the Beth Israel Jewish community from Zagreb.
President Stjepan Mesic said the importance of a people was not in numbers but in its contribution to the country it lived in and to the progress of mankind.
"Measured by that, the Jews' contribution to the development of world culture, civilisation and spirituality is immeasurable. (Their) contribution to the development of Croatia and the city of Pozega is immeasurable. Unfortunately, this was not sufficiently acknowledged in the past," said Mesic.
He therefore underlined the value of Pozega prefect Zdravko Ronko's initiative to renew the local Jewish cemetery so that local residents could pay credit to every generation of the Jewish community.
Mesic said Jews in Croatia had passed through various stages of development, including some extremely difficult and tragic ones, such as the 1930s when they were subjected to plunder, deportation and the Holocaust.
"Our duty is to constantly remind young generations of that, to inform them and warn them about the perniciousness of the ideas of fascism and Nazism and about the absolute unacceptability of even the smallest traces of racial, national, religious or any other form of discrimination," said Mesic.
Speeches were also held by Beth Israel president Ivo Goldstein, Israeli Ambassador Shmuel Meriom, and the president of the Croatian-Israeli Society, Milan Beslic. Chief Rabbi Kotel Da Don said mass.
A commemoration organised by the Zagreb Jewish Municipality was held at Zagreb's Mirogoj cemetery.
Wreaths were laid at the monument to Moses by representatives of all Jewish municipalities in Croatia, the state, the diplomatic corps, other religious communities, and the Antifascist Alliance.
As wreaths were laid, the names of women and children killed at the Djakovo concentration camp during WWII were read out. Mass was said by Rabbi Zvi Eliezer Alonie.
The president of the Zagreb Jewish Municipality, Ognjen Kraus, said the repeating of every victim's name was a warning that each of the six million people killed during the Holocaust had their own personality and fate, a warning about the evil that had been done.
He expressed regret that people were still being killed and had their homes destroyed, while perpetrators were given mild sentences and were rarely punished.
"Still fresh in our memory is the bitterness of the surviving residents of Srebrenica when they found out that the highest international court is incapable of naming the perpetrators of the genocide that horrified the world," said Kraus, saying this was happening in Darfur and Rwanda today.
He also spoke about the problem within the Zagreb Jewish Municipality in which he said "the state authorities too have interfered by the principle divide and conquer".