ZAGREB, June 22, 2020 - President Zoran Milanovic said in his congratulatory note on Monday on the occasion of the national Antifascist Struggle Day that present-day Croatia would not have existed without the WWII anti-fascist resistance movement in the country.
Croatia marks Antifascist Struggle Day on June 22 in memory of 22 June 1941 when the first antifascist unit was formed in the Brezovica forest near Sisak in the then occupied Europe.
The Croatian president writes in his message posted on his Facebook account that "Antifascist Struggle Day revives memories of "the unique uprising in 1941, the uprising of our people, who were ready to say 'no', before all others in the then Europe occupied and destroyed by Fascists and Nazis."
He underscored that the participants in the first unit, set up in Brezovica Forest, enabled their followers in the months and years to come, to grow into the Croatian people's antifascist army.
"It was an army that fought for freedom, an army that ended the war on the right side, that is on the victorious side, which was important for the survival of the Croatian state," Milanovic writes.
"The good defeated the evil then, we chose a difficult path, but, let me repeat, we chose the right side as we did many times before and after that," the president said in his message.
This is our Croatian history about which our children should know. We can discuss that, but we cannot negate or deny that he added.
Present-day Croatia is a democracy and the country of the Croatian nation that respects all its citizens regardless of which minority they belong to, this is a state defended during the Homeland War, he added.
