President Milanović Participates in Marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day

On the occasion of marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the President of the Republic Zoran Milanović laid a joint wreath of the President of the Republic of Croatia, the Speaker of the Croatian Parliament and the Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia at the Statue of Moses located at the Jewish Cemetery in Zagreb’s Mirogoj Cemetery.

“On today’s date, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz, ending one of the most terrifying and hideous chapters in human history. The period of human moral idiocy in which several million Jews were killed, mainly by the Nazi Germans, the worst kind of people, was over. Unfortunately, they also had their abettors in Croatia. As a Croat, I am aware that this also happened among my people and that it happened here in Croatia”, President Milanović said, addressing media representatives after the wreath-laying.

That is why, the President believes, “this symbolic, brief obligation is an important gesture of every public official”. “It is even more important that we guide and educate our children from time to time, but persistently, about what happened and how easy it is for that banality of human evil to burst into flame in an individual and in a group of people”, the President added.

When asked by journalists what he thought about imposing a ban on symbols and insignia of the Ustasha regime, President Milanović said that he was previously very clear in regard to that. “Let those who can make that change take over this task now – the representative body of the Republic of Croatia”, he added, reiterating that his position was well-known.

“I will take this opportunity to send a message and a request to the people of HOS (Croatian Defence Forces) not to do that anymore because that salute is a Nazi salute and it only tarnishes their contribution to the defence of the homeland, to everything they in fact gave in the period in which they were active as a party militia, but not after that. It’s a request; I can’t physically prevent that, but I will indicate what my clear position is in every situation such as that one”, President Milanović emphasized.

PHOTO: Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia / Dario Andrišek