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| By: Associated Press |
| Published: January 19, 2006 |
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Massive glass walls bearing the names of more than 70,000 people killed during World War II in Croatia's Jasenovac concentration camp dominate a reconstructed memorial center at the site.
The new memorial, presented Wednesday but to be formally opened in the spring, focuses on individual victims and will include lectures on the Holocaust, said Natasa Jovicic, head of the memorial center.
Israel's ambassador to Croatia, Shmuel Meirom, who attended the ceremony in the village of Jasenovac, 150 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of Zagreb, said Croatia has proved that it was now "willing to face the dark sides of its past."
An estimated 85,000 Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and anti-fascist Croats were herded together and killed between 1941-1945 at the Jasenovac camp, the worst of about 40 run by Croatia's pro-Nazi regime at the time. Thousands also were deported to Nazi-run camps.
A memorial center was built at the site in the 1960s.
The government of the late President Franjo Tudjman was often accused of trying to diminish the atrocities committed by Croatia's pro-Nazi regime during the war. Some in Croatia still tend to deny that mass killings occurred here, but the pro-Western governments that took power after Tudjman's death in 1999 have clearly condemned Nazism and fascism.
The new reconstruction, which began last year, was financed by Croatia's government, but also supported by Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and the Holocaust Museum in Washington.
A new concept "puts emphasis on each individual victim of Jasenovac, so they won't be just numbers anymore," Jovicic said.
The memorial will also display victims' personal belongings and video testimonies of the survivors.
The center also will organize lectures on the Holocaust, Nazism, fascism and other totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century, Jovicic said. |
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