Posted on 11/23/2002 7:38:12 AM PST by kosta50
NEW YORK, Nov. 22 (JTA) — A Holocaust exhibit at a prestigious art museum in Zagreb is being hailed as a major step forward in Croatia’s willingness to deal honestly with its World War II history. Croatian President Stepan Mesic recently inaugurated the exhibit, entitled “The Courage to Remember,” at the capital’s Mimara Art Museum.
“This is not an exhibition for historians, but one for those who want to revise history,” Mesic said in a speech at the opening. “This is not an exhibition for those who know but for those who do not know, and even more so for those who do not wish to know.”
The exhibition has appeared in 19 different countries since it was created by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in 1988, but this is its first appearance in a post-Communist Eastern European nation.
The Civic Committee for Human Rights, a Zagreb-based NGO that focuses on the recent wars in the Balkans, brought the exhibit to the museum through a grant from the Heinrich Boell Foundation worth nearly $2,000.
Officials hope the exhibit — 40 panels documenting the Holocaust, from the rise of Nazism in 1933 to survivors’ postwar struggles — will travel through Croatia after its stint in Zagreb.
The exhibit’s name “says everything we in Croatia have to be very much aware of, when it comes to our attitude toward history, toward the truth about history,” Mesic said. “Indeed, often one needs courage to remember things past and to admit things that happened. The past can be ugly, and the truth painful.”
The exhibit sparked a small demonstration led by Mladen Schwartz, a Croatian nationalist born to Jewish parents. The motto of the gathering was “Jews out of Croatia.”
Mesic also met with Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, who first approached him two years ago about bringing the exhibit to Croatia.
Zuroff encouraged Mesic to initiate a renewed investigation and prosecution of World War II war criminals from Croatia’s wartime Ustasha fascist regime.
They also discussed proposed legislation that will prohibit the exhibition, sale, and use of Ustasha symbols in Croatia. The bill will be presented to the country’s Parliament in coming weeks.
“President Mesic’s leadership role on these issues has been outstanding, and we hope that he will help sponsor additional educational efforts” together with the Wiesenthal Center, Zuroff said.
Some 75 percent of Croatia’s 40,000 Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, most by Croatian collaborators.
Dinko Sakic, who served as one of the commanders of the Jasenovac concentration camp, was convicted in October 1999 of responsibility for the murder of thousands of inmates and sentenced to 20 years in jail, the maximum sentence under Croatian law.
About 85,000 people, including 18,000 Jews, were murdered at Jasenovac, considered the worst Croatian/Ustasha concentration camp.
I'm still waiting for that missing link you never provided....some shred of credible evidence to your anecdotal claims...
and some explanation/retraction of that fuzzy math of yours in #34
As for his party, it is so miniscule as to never have won an election even on the most local of levels. I doubt it could win an election in Scwartz's own home.
You're making a tempest out of a teapot. His party has never polled even 1%, while Seselj's fascists have polled upwards of 30%.
Freedom of speech? How despicable.
Croatia has only recently decided to join the rest of the civilized world by passing a law that will prohibit such "freedoms" of expression as hate speech and Nazi symbols.
No doubt, this will leave some people very disappointed.
Mladen Schwartz and his fascists organization is indeed a marginal political entity in Croatia, but hate speech is not just limited to political periphery as you seem to imply.
In 1991, Franjo Tudjman, Croatia's president and number one member of one of Croatia's largest (not smallest!)politcial parties (HDZ), was quoted by the Jerusalem Post (December 21) as having said "I am a doubly lucky man; my wife is neither Serbian nor Jewish."
You have yet to explain to me how 125,000/365 comes to 3,000 in your "math," and you still have to provide a credible source to show that Mladen Schwartz was born in Belgrade, and is a "Serbian Jew," and a Yugoslav secret agent openly "hiding" in a Croatian fascist party, as you claim. There are more obvious attempts at dysinformation on your part, but I will leave those for now in reserve.
Let's get one thing clear: this thread is not about Serbs disliking freedom of speech. This is about you continuously and intentionally providing misleading & false information.
Because Pavelic's wife was Jewish, and Tito's was Serbian...meaning he was neither a fascist nor a communist. Everyone knows what he meant, it's just taken out of context.
Don't take my word on Schwartz, that's fine. He's a nobody, unlike Seselj who polls at such high levels.
thank you for for repeating to the entire list the methodology of Croatian Nazi revisionism:Lie always. Childishly, obviously, cunningly, expertly, any way, always lie, lie. Eat up all available time, appeal to those who have no previous knowledge. When cornered with facts, change subject, accuse those who have caught you in lie, obfuscate, all in hope Croatian crime will be forgotten.
Here is some info from Croatian allies:
Increased activity of the bands is chiefly due to atrocities carried out by Ustaša units in Croatia against the Orthodox population. The Ustašas committed their deeds in a bestial manner not only against males of conscript age, but especially against helpless old people, women and children.
The number of the Orthodox that the Croats have massacred and sadistically tortured to death is about three hundred thousand.
Report to Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler from the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo), 17 February 1942
“the leading Ustasha maintain that one million Orthodox Serbs (including babies, children, women and old men) were slaughtered. … on the basis of reports that I received , my estimate of the number of defenceless victims is three quarters of a million.”
Neubacher, Herman*: Sonderauftrag Suedost 1940-1945 Bericht eines fliegendes Diplomaten, 1956 page 31 (German edition)
(*Hitler’s Special Plenipotentiary for Southeast Europe.
Present day Croats are not guilty of crimes commited by their parents and grandparents, but are guilty of Nazi revisionism and the completion of the eight phase of the genocide (denial)
If any German dared say Hitler murdered 600,000 Jews he would face the legal system.
For Croats, saying Ustasha kiled 80,000 Serbs is a thing of national pride, free of any legal consequences.
My father was killed by the Ustashe, and much of my family inprisoned by them. You're just a typical racist.
Uhh. Actually, hate speech is allowed in the US. (Outside of colleges, anyway.) See, there's this little thing called the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.
They're whittling away at it, and hate crime laws are used to punish any acts committed by people who use hate speech more severely than the same acts committed without the speech. But the 1st still stands.
Hooray!
Actually, Franjo Tudjman was both! He was a Tito's communist general (one doesn't get to that rank by being politically incorrect), and then he invited all his Ustasha friends from abroad and at home to help him restore all the fascist symbols of Pavelic's monster child.
You couldn't have said it better DTA. I wish you or someone else would tell JTA this little truth. Maybe they will revise their gullable editorials. At any rate, joan pointed out that Stella Jatras commented to JTA about the same article as I did on this Forum.
There is speech that is protected under the 1st Amendment are speech that is not. If you yell "Fire" in a crowded movie theater, where there was no fire, you have not acted. You just spoke, right? Well, that "speech" is not protected, i.e. allowed because of the intended goal.
First Amendment stands inasmuch as the legal experts agree on its scope. The Amendment itself is very clear -- it places no limit to the freedom of religion or speech, and it gives the Congress no power to abridge them by laws. The crux is the definition of speech...and that can be rather interesting.
If you are willing to read through some of it, here is the link.
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