ZAGREB, May 9, 2019 – About a hundred people participated in the Immortal Partisan Detachment march that was held for the second consecutive year in Zagreb on Wednesday to mark Liberation of Zagreb Day, Victory Over Fascism Day and Europe Day.
Speaking on behalf of the organisers, the head of the Alliance of Antifascist Fighters and Antifascists (SABA), Franjo Habulin, said that the events being commemorated on Wednesday and Thursday were interrelated. “Had there been no victory over fascism, there would have been no Europe Day,” he said.
He recalled that on 8 May 1945 Partisan units of the Yugoslav army had liberated Zagreb, ending the four-year rule of the Nazi-allied Ustasha regime.
“Today there are those who say that with the entry of the Partisans into Zagreb, Zagreb was occupied by the Yugoslav army. They say that Croatian citizens were not allowed to speak Croatian and that we were not allowed to play the Croatian anthem. That is a blatant lie!” Habulin said.
He said that only Ustasha sympathisers could say that Zagreb had been occupied on 8 May, adding that historical revisionists were deceiving the citizens with their lies, especially young people.
The organisers said that a similar initiative, called the Immortal Regiment, had first been launched in the Russian city of Tomsk on 9 May 2012 and has since spread to 91 countries across the globe.
The Zagreb march was attended by Russian Ambassador Anvar Azimov, who said he was proud that Victory Day was celebrated together. “Today’s event has important political significance. It is a remembrance day for those to whom we owe a debt, and our debt is to remember the soldiers of the countries that opposed fascism and liberated Europe,” the ambassador told those gathered.
Azimov said that the Yugoslav Partisans had the support of the Red Army, adding that over 10,000 Soviet soldiers had been killed on Croatian soil and 28 million in the world.
He, too, said that recent years had seen falsification of history. “The role of the Partisans and the Soviet Union in the victory is being downplayed, while at the same time there is a trend towards guerrillaisation of fascism,” the Russian ambassador said.
More news about the Second World War in Croatia can be found in the Politics section.
