ZAGREB, 23 August, 2022 - The Documenta - Centre for Dealing with the Past NGO called on the government to protect the islands of Goli Otok and Sveti Grgur and presented a virtual guide through the history of prison camps on the occasion of Europe-Wide Day of Remembrance for the Victims of All Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes.
It is concerning that after the decision on the preventive protection of the island of Goli Otok in 2019, further devastation of the remaining buildings continues. We have again called on the Ministry of Culture and Media to allocate funds for the creation of a conservation study and protection, Documenta said on Tuesday.
Documenta wonders where the educational programmes will take place if the ruins of the prison camp become dangerous for visitors.
Also, ahead of Remembrance Day, Documenta, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Dialogue SOE office in Sarajevo, and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Zagreb office for Croatia and Slovenia on Monday presented the new, expanded edition of the virtual guide to the history of the Goli Otok prison camp.
The director of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung regional office in Sarajevo, Ralf Melzer, at the presentation underscored the importance of critically dealing with the past based on scientific research.
Deputy Head of Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany in Croatia, Harald Seibel, visited Goli Otok for the first time and said more should be done to preserve the memory.
This island is available to everyone, but visitors can find very little information on what happened here, Seibel said.
Left-wing politics must sweep its own front porch first
The director of the Zagreb office, Sonja Schirmbeck, said she considered critically facing the topic of Goli Otok very important for two reasons.
Firstly, we as the political left must sweep our own front porch first and critically deal with the crimes of the left-wing politics, she said.
Secondly, she added, this topic is important because the discourse on the period of Tito's reign is much more ambivalent in the domain of memory politics than the discourse in the 1940s or 1990s.
