Off the wire
• Feature: South coast airport plans VIP makeover with Bournemouth's entry into Premiership football  • Roundup: Five dead in shooting incident in northern Switzerland  • Roundup: R051024 AFF Women' s Championship beautified by goals  • Lee Chong Wei makes strong comeback, eyes Rio Olympics  • Thailand crowned at AFF Women's Championship  • Rosberg, Hamilton 1-2 in Barcelona as Mercedes ominance continues in Spainsh GP  • Looted Cambodian ancient statue returns home after over 3 decades in U.S. museum  • Evergrande crushes Shanghai Shenxin 6-1 to climb to second place of CSL  • Portuguese soccer league fixtures  • Syrian army urges rebels to surrender in northern Jisr al-Shughour city  
You are here: 　 Home

Feature: Croatian anti-Fascist fighters recall struggle against Fascism

Xinhua, May 11, 2015 Adjust font size:

Croatian partisan fighters recalled their experience during the Second World War (WWII) to mark the 70th anniversary of the victory of the World Anti-Fascist War.

Juraj Hrzenjak, 98, a veteran partisan and now the honorary president of Croatian Anti-fascist League, told Xinhua recently that as a partisan he fought against Nazi German force and its Croatian puppet regime Ustasa from 1941 till the end of the WWII.

"It was hard, very hard time during the war. People suffered a great. A lot of soldiers and civilians died," he said.

"I remember we lost about 100 comrades during the battle in Udbina, a small village of Croatia. I saw the chariot which carrying the wounded and the death, the blood purring down from it," he added.

He also witnessed a mother carrying her dead child on her back, going to her burned down house, he said with tears in his eyes.

"These are my hardest memories of the war ... This is why I hate war in general," he added.

Ivan Fumic, 85, joined the partisan when he was 11, together with all his family members in his home village, near the eastern Croatia town of Pozega.

His family made a great sacrifice for fighting against fascism. His father, an uncle and two brothers were killed in 1943 and 1944.

For himself, he was captured and stayed in the concentration camp for months. He said that he remembered the day he was arrested by the German army and taken to the concentration camp Banjica, in occupied Serbia.

"The day was Oct. 28, 1942. Being a messenger, I was caught by German soldiers along with some civilians and being sent to camp Banjica where I spent for three months," he said.

After he was transferred back to Pozega, he joined partisans again when he arrived.

As a Anti-Fascist veteran, Fumic published a book on concentration camps to tell younger generations remember the terror of WWII.

Although, at age of 98, Hrzenjak is promoting Anti-Fascist values among Croatian younger, warning against attempts to distort and disdain the wartime history. Endit