ZAGREB, March 19, 2019 - The head of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Communities in Croatia, Ognjen Kraus, said on Tuesday he would not attend together with the government this year's commemoration for the victims of the WWII Jasenovac concentration camp, while the head of the SABA alliance of antifascist fighters, Franjo Habulin, said SABA would decide on Thursday whether to attend a joint commemoration.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenković last week invited representatives of SABA, the Jewish community, Serbs and Roma to take part in a joint commemoration. Kraus said the Jewish community would not accept.

"Nothing has changed over the past year. Nothing new has happened," he told the press, citing historical revisionism and the government's stance on the Ustasha salute "For the homeland, ready".

"There is a wish to be together as well as arguments against it," Habulin said, adding that a joint commemoration would be useful.

"It would be a sort of coming closer to opening the possibility for talks and for resolving through talks the problems concerning historical revisionism and the negativism which has accumulated over 20 years and more in Croatia, which isn't good," he said.

An argument against a joint commemoration would be the fact that nothing has been done over the past year and SABA members believe the situation is worse than last year, added Habulin.

More news about the Jasenovac concentration camp site can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, January 31, 2019 - The World Jewish Congress (WJC) has praised the Catholic Church in Croatia for having held the commemoration last Thursday in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and underscored that "is emboldened by the strong address delivered by Cardinal Josip Bozanić."

"The World Jewish Congress deeply welcomes the powerful commemoration held by the Catholic Church of Croatia last week in honour of the victims of the Holocaust and is emboldened by the strong address delivered by Cardinal Josip Bozanić, Archbishop of Zagreb, in which he declared it unacceptable to permit the re-emergence of antisemitism,” WJC CEO and Executive Vice President Robert Singerwas quoted as saying on the organisation's website.

"In the 74 years since the end of the Holocaust, the Jewish world has been duly concerned by the Catholic Church of Croatia’s glorification of Ustasha nationalists and the horrific crimes that they carried out in collaboration with the Nazis, and by its repeated tendencies to whitewash the tragedy endured by the Jewish community and other minorities during World War II," Singer was quoted as saying.

“In the current climate of rising antisemitism and Holocaust revisionism in Europe, it is essential that the Catholic Church of Croatia lead the way in coming to terms with the crimes of its countrymen and ensure that its perpetrators are not rehabilitated in anyway. It is also imperative that the Church work together with the government, hand-in-hand with the Jewish community, to stop the obfuscation of history and the glorification of Nazi collaborators."

"The official commemoration held on 24 January at the Cathedral of Zagreb is without a doubt an encouraging and almost miraculous step forward by the Church in addressing the darkest moments of its history, something that the Jewish community of Croatia has been waiting for more than seven decades," Singer added.

At the commemoration, Cardinal Bozanić paid tribute to victims of inhumane conduct in the past and condemned attempts aimed at annihilating the Jewish people, while representatives of the local Jewish community welcomed the cardinal's move as a historic event.

The dignitary said that the ideology of racism was directed against God and the human beings and was "created on the untruth about the man and about the Jewish people."

During the prayer, a 60-metre-long and 5-metre-wide banner was displayed on the cathedral's walls with the text from Biblical verses written by Isaiah about the remembrance of victims saying "I will give them – within the walls of my house – a memorial and a name far greater than sons and daughters could give. For the name I give them is an everlasting one. It will never disappear!".

"We thank the Catholic Church of Croatia for this unprecedented move, and hope that it is the start to a new era for Holocaust memory and the fight against antisemitism in the country," Singer added.

 More news on the Jewish issues in Croatia can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, January 24, 2019 - Croatian Parliament will join in the marking of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed on January 27.

At the start of a parliamentary session on Thursday, Speaker Gordan Jandroković called on MPs to attend a ceremony of laying wreaths at the Jewish section of the Zagreb's central Mirogoj cemetery at 0845 hours Friday.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorated the tragedy of the Holocaust that occurred during the Second World War. It commemorates the genocide that resulted in the death of an estimated 6 million Jewish people, 5 million Slavs, 3 million ethnic Poles, 200,000 Romani people, 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, and 9,000 homosexual men by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

It was designated by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 60/7 on 1 November 2005. The resolution came after a special session was held earlier that year on 24 January 2005 during which the United Nations General Assembly marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the end of the Holocaust.

More news on the Croatian history can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, December 3, 2018 - A ceremony of menorah lighting in Zagreb Main Square on Sunday evening was held to celebrate this year's eight-day Hanukkah holiday in Croatia, with the president of the Jewish organisation "Menora", Rabbi Pinhas Zaklos, and Mayor Milan Bandić kindling together the eight lights.

The Hanukkah lights on a nine-branched menorah, or 'Hannukah candelabrum', are kindled every night of Hanukkah (Chanukah).

Earlier on Sunday, Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković and Prime Minister Andrej Plenković extended their best wishes to the Jewish faithful on the occasion of Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights.

Hanukkah is observed for eight nights, starting on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar, and may occur from late November to late December according to the Gregorian calendar.

Jewish families around the world will gather Sunday evening to celebrate Hanukkah and light the first candles on their menorahs. The holiday celebrates the rededication of the second temple in Jerusalem following a massacre ordered by the Greek-Syrian King Antiochus IV that initially pushed Jews from the city.

The celebrations begin December 2 and last through December 10.

The 10th Israeli Film Week also started on Sunday in Zagreb's Kaptol Boutique cinema and will run through December 6, featuring ten recent feature films and two documentaries.

The films talk about everyday lives, loves, growing up, faith, conflict, all topics which occupy Israelis and are close to people around the world, Mirjana Slaj-Froelich, cultural attaché of the Israeli Embassy, which organises the event, said on Friday.

Israeli cinema is relatively young, films began to be made shortly after the establishment of the State of Israel, and the first film lab was founded by enthusiasts in an abandoned wood shed in 1949, she said.

Since then, many films have been made, achieving more or less success at home and abroad, and Israeli cinema began to blossom at the turn of the millennium, she added.

Entry to all screenings is free.

For more on the relations between Croatia and Israel, click here.

ZAGREB, December 2, 2018 - Croatian Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković and Prime Minister Andrej Plenković extended on Sunday their best wishes for Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights, to the Jewish faithful .

Hanukkah is observed for eight nights, starting on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar, and may occur from late November to late December according to the Gregorian calendar.

Jewish families around the world will gather Sunday evening to celebrate Hanukkah and light the first candles on their menorahs. The holiday celebrates the rededication of the second temple in Jerusalem following a massacre ordered by the Greek-Syrian King Antiochus IV that initially pushed Jews from the city.

The celebrations begin December 2 and last through December 10.

For more on the Jewish religion in Croatia and its relations with the state authorities, click here.

ZAGREB, November 10, 2018 - The Croatian Antifascist League and the Jewish Community of Zagreb observed on Friday the 80th anniversary of the pogrom against German Jews, known as Kristallnacht, calling for not equating Ustashism and anti-fascism and warning about xenophobia and nationalism.

On the night between 9 and 10 November 1938, the Nazis organised a pogrom against Jews throughout Germany and Austria. Hundreds of Jews were killed, 30,000 were arrested and sent to death camps, 177 synagogues were burnt, Jewish cemeteries were desecrated and more than 7,000 Jewish-owned shops were destroyed.

That was the beginning of the darkest period in human history, the Holocaust, said Ognjen Kraus, president of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Communities in Croatia. He called for putting an end to the making up of a new history of Croatia and WWII.

"In Germany, Austria and every West European country, it's not possible to downplay or negate the existence of the concentration death camps, to equate the victims of Nazism and anti-fascism, the Axis Powers and the Allied Powers. One must not downplay what Nazi Germany was, the victims of Nazism, what happened in the death camps. In Croatia, that's possible," said Kraus.

He called for not equating the antifascist and Ustasha movements, "the throat-cutters and the victims," and warned about the danger nationalism and xenophobia. He asked the interior and justice ministers, the chief state prosecutor, the prime minister, the parliament speaker and the president if they had read the constitution and if they were familiar with the penal code. "How much longer will you sell the honour of this country which, after the Ustasha movement, did itself proud with the antifascist movement?"

"We observe the Kristallnacht anniversary not just because it's a significant historic event but also because it's a significant warning on the path of every society. In Croatia, it's a warning about where systematically incited intolerance can lead to," said Zoran Pusić, president of the Croatian Antifascist League. "No matter how shallow the lies on which that intolerance is built, little by little they shape public opinion," he added.

The speakers noted that Croatian director Jakov Sedlar's film "100 years of Serbian terror in Croatia" premiered tonight, with Pusić saying that similar films, aimed at fomenting intolerance towards one minority, used to come out of Goebbels's Nazi propaganda ministry too, and Kraus adding, "That's how Kristallnacht happened."

They said it was a disgrace that no senior state official had attended the commemoration.

Israeli director Nitza Gonen's documentary "The Forgotten Ones", about the Holocaust against Jews in the former Yugoslavia, was shown as part of the commemoration.

For more news on Jews in Croatia, click here.

ZAGREB, October 25, 2018 - The leaders of four religious communities in Croatia concluded at a round table discussion that religious and other prejudices as potential sources of hatred could be eliminated with the kind of dialogue that does not constitute only an exchange of information but is a real attempt to get to know one another.

ZAGREB, September 14, 2018 - The late Antun and Katarina Šragalj of Vrbovsko, who saved Jewish girl Lea Gostl in World War II, were named on Friday as Righteous Among the Nations, the highest honorific bestowed by the State of Israel on non-Jews who during WWII saved Jews, risking their own lives.

ZAGREB, June 12, 2018 - A bronze memorial plaque was unveiled in Split's main square, Pjaca, on Tuesday to commemorate 12 June 1942, when the Jewish Synagogue in this southern coastal city was devastated.

ZAGREB, May 15, 2018 – Former Croatian Culture Minister Zlatko Hasanbegović, who is a member of the Croatian parliament and who has been declared persona non-grata by the Jewish community in Bosnia and Herzegovina because of his stance toward the Ustasha regime, has had an invitation to attend the award ceremony in Sarajevo awarding posthumously his grandfather Sabrija Prohić rescinded.