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.
BTW, I have nothing against ANY of the groups above. Just using them as examples.
That's where we disagree: from what I saw, they owe a correction --- much like half a doezen ones publihed by any major newspaper, for a technical inaccuracy.
Now, you assume that this was deliberate disinformation.
See my reply in an eralier post. I have nothing to add.
And the reason why we don't have resident haters on every corner in the U.S. is because we have state prosecutors who don't look the other way...
Holocaust revisonism, hate speech, and so on are left untouched in Croatia because its prosecutors either can't or don't want to do anything about them. Just considering that even Croatia's ex-president, himself a historian, openly indulged in Holocaust revisionism (for which he later publicly apologized to Israel, I am sure not all on his own) puts this in its proper perspective.
Croatian nationalists have apparently been very successful in pulling the wool over some people's eyes, and found some gullable believers from unsuspected editorial boards who prefer to use Croatian figures, which minimize, marginalize and trivialize Holocaust, while paying lip service to its victims.
Thoughts and beliefs cannot be regulated. Speech, writing, publishing, etc. are actually acts, and some are protected, while others are not. There is such a concept as verbal assault that is not followed by other acts that is also not protected by the First Amendment. Defamation and libel are not physical acts, but they are unprotected speech because they constitute illegal acts in themselves. A definition of the word "act" makes it very clear that any speech can be construed as an act.
All I am asking is to have sufficient evidence for that. At the moment, I am lacking it. Are you saying that the JTA knows they have made an error and do not correct it?
Thanks for letting me know.
Happy Hanukkah!
VRN
Many thanks, fielding mellish.
True. However, in this country such sophisms have mostly been used in civil, not criminal, cases.
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.”
Please give me an example of an American being successfully prosecuted for demanding "Jews (or blacks , Mexicans, Canadians, etc.) out of America." Such speech is absolutely protected by the 1st. (Unless he left the gathering and attacked a member of the group.)
It's actually the type of speech the 1st was intended to protect, unlike its modern application to nude dancing, etc. If you disagree with this speech, the appropriate response is not prosecution. Show why the speaker is wrong and convince others to ignore him.
Use your freedom of speech.
Using your definition, almost any speech could be banned as an act rather than speech. Somebody somewhere is likely to be offended by almost anything you might say and take it as an act against him or his group.
Saying that people like Mladen Schwartz are simply exercising their right of free speech (in Croatia) is a bit naive at best, dysinformational at worst.
Likening Croatia's "tolerance" of Mladen Schwartz's racist rally, whose theme was "Jews out of Croatia," to America's First Amendment, when it is in effect a violation of Croatia's Constitution, Article 39 (which prohibits inciting racial or religious hatred, or any form or intolerance), and is therefore illegal, is hiding the fact that Croatia's racist past and present are out of character with modern European standards, is misleading, and represents true and transparent sophism on a much larger scale.
Our 1st Amendment did not give us freedom of speech. It merely recognized a pre-existing and inalienable right that is the birthright of all humans. Even Croats.
I could not care less whether the Croatian Constitution or that of any other European country does not recognize the right to freedom of speech. It exists anyway.
I recognize the power of certain countries to pass laws that punish speech they find offensive or to "prohibit inciting racial or religious hatred, or any form or intolerance." That doesn't mean they have the right to do so.
I am not sophistic in the least. My position is that of a believer in American values, not Croatian or EU ones. I realize his speech was illegal in Croatia. I just believe that the Croatian Constitution is wrong in this case.
I would not support any attempt to change their laws by force. But I also will not stand by and refuse to denounce laws that I believe, in common with the American tradition, are morally invalid.
BTW, I also recognize why, due to Croatian history, such laws are more tempting there than here. But that doesn't change their morality.
Sorry, but the FIRST "commandment" of ALL TIME is INTEGRITY. There is zero respect nor credibility with those rags that spew such venom. Do you agree that ingegrity is the most vital aspect in gaining respect and honor among others?
The only right in nature is power. That holds true for animate as well as inanimate objects. We can surgacoat anything, but without power all the talk about justice and rights is meaningless.
Societies curtail all sorts of freedoms. Our own society deprives convicts even of life -- an inalienable right according to our own Delcaration of Indpenednece. How can we reconicile our conviction that life and liberty are divine human assets, and support a death penalty, is beyond me. Our delcaration of such immutable rights also did not find slavery incompatible with the new Republic either.
Our society curtails speech that contains “fighting words,” various types of “defamation or “libel” etc., but the fact is we do in some ways curtail speech when it is deepend to be likely to lead to violence or in some ways injures or causes to worry (i.e. harrassment) individuals or groups. Again, these are arbitrary decisions based on our value system and priorities.
Croatian constitution is based on the concensus of its legilators that inciting intolerance against religious or ethnic groups is potentially explosive and dangerous and needs to be curtailed. It considers such behavior abusive. This is no more “immoral” than our own exemptions of “unprotected speech.”
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