Anti-fascists, Jews boycott Croatia memorial at WWII death camp

Croatia honors the victims of its most brutal World War II death camp, an event again snubbed by ethnic Serbs, Jews and anti-fascists who accuse authorities of tolerating a pro-Nazi ideology.

Conservative Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, several ministers and foreign diplomats attend a commemoration ceremony at the site of the Jasenovac camp which was dismantled 72 years ago.

Letters by survivors of the camp known as “Croatia’s Auschwitz” — a reference to the German Nazi death camp in Poland — were read during a ceremony that includes a multi-denominational service and laying of wreaths.

The camp, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Zagreb, was run by the country’s Nazi-allied Ustasha regime who persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs, Jews, Romas and anti-fascist Croatians.

But for the second consecutive year, representatives of those groups boycotted the official commemoration denouncing what they see as a resurgence of pro-Ustasha sympathies. Instead, they organized their own separate events.

— AFP