April 10, 2021- The Documenta Centre for Dealing with the Past on Saturday organized a tour of Zagreb locations linked to suffering in WWII, starting outside the building of the USKOK anti-fraud office to prompt USKOK to put up an information plaque on the building from which, it said, "the Holocaust and the NDH started."
On 10 April 1941, Slavko Kvaternik proclaimed the NDH (Independent State of Croatia) in that building which then housed Radio Zagreb.
"The NDH was responsible for the Holocaust against Jews, the genocide against Serbs and Roma. We think it's essential that new generations in particular, as well as all those passing this building, know what happened inside," Documenta head Vesna Teršelič said before this, the second memorial walk.
Documenta expects USKOK to put up the plaque and the City of Zagreb to mark the locations of suffering and resistance so that new generations can learn what a criminal regime the NDH was, that the Nazis and fascists appointed its head Ante Pavelić and that it was a regime of terror, Teršelič said.
"That was a regime of which we are ashamed today, and this shame should be an important part of our identity because the condemnation of those crimes should be the starting point of our thinking and discussions," she said.
It is very important that all generations resolutely condemn the Ustasha crimes and the criminal NDH, which includes banning the "For the homeland ready" salute and Ustasha insignia, she added.
Teršelič said the ruling majority's will was necessary to ban the salute and that the ruling majority should do so this year.
Puhovski: Who is ashamed of our history is a moral idiot
Žarko Puhovski, a political analyst, said Pavelić was one of the most significant Croats in history and that "who doesn't understand that doesn't understand Croatian history, and who isn't ashamed of that is a moral idiot."
Puhovski, whose initiative for USKOK to put up the plaque on its building, said there were still many people who were not ashamed, adding that one could not take from history only what one liked.
He said Croatia's present-day stand on the NDH "is neutral as much as possible and negative when it must be."
A legal ban of the Ustasha salute is pointless as long as "we have the Ustasha kuna," he said, referring to the name of the national currency, the kuna.
The building housing USKOK is linked to another historic day, 8 May 1945, when the Partisan army entered Zagreb and sent its forces to Radio Zagreb to announce that "the glorious units of the Yugoslav army" had entered the capital, Documenta said, adding that the third memorial walk would be held on 8 May.
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