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Croatia holds 70th anniversary commemoration of breakout from Jasenovac camp

Xinhua, April 26, 2015 Adjust font size:

Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said on Sunday that anti-fascism was in the foundations of Croatian statehood, as it is written in the Constitution.

"There were only one truly Croatian army during Second World War -- Croatian partisans," Milanovic said at a memorial ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the break-out of inmates from Jasenovac camp, run by the Nazi Germany puppet regime Ustasha.

Top Croatian officials, including Parliament Speaker Josip Leko, First Deputy Prime Minister Vesna Pusic, several ministers, as well as foreign ambassadors in Croatia and survivors former inmates attended the ceremony.

Chinese ambassador to Croatia Deng Ying also attended the ceremony and laid wreaths to the monument "Stone Flower".

Franjo Habulin, president of Croatian Anifascist fighters and Antifascists union, said the achievements and values of the anti-fascist struggle are current even today.

"I am addressing to you as A-3317, the number I wore two years in Auschwitz. I was in breaktrough like this one we commemorate, but it doesn't matter. It is important that my whole family was taken to Jasenovac where my grandfather was killed. People easily cross over these events after 70 years. I make movies for people to remember the horror like this," said Branko Lustig, the special envoy of Croatian president Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic and the producer of movie "Schindler's list" and survivor of Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.

Natasa Matausic, president of memorial centre of Jasenovac, said "Every inch of this meadow where you stand today was bathed by blood of inmates, every inch of this sunny grass screams: Never again!"

Jasenovac, the largest camp in Croatia during WWII, was founded in 1941 and consisted of several camps set up in short intervals. Some 600 inmates of Jasenovac started a breakthrough, in April 22, 1945, most of them were killed and only 90 survived.

According to data of memorial centre of Jasenovac, more than 83,000 people were killed in Jasenovac, mostly Serbs, followed by Jews, Roma and Croats. Endit