ZAGREB, April 20, 2018 – President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović on Friday visited the Jasenovac Memorial Centre to pay tribute to victims of the Ustasha-run concentration camp on the occasion of the 73rd anniversary since the camp’s liberation at the end of the Second World War.
Signing a book of impressions, the president wrote that Croatia without any reservation deplores the atrocities committed in that camp and shows full respect and reverence for the victims.
From August 1941 to 22 April 1945, Jasenovac operated as a death camp where men, women and children were killed because of their religion, ethnicity or ideology. The list of victims contains the names and other information on 83,145 people – 39,570 men, 23,474 women and 20,101 children under the age of 14. The most numerous victims of the camp were Serbs, Roma, Jews and Croats.
The visit to the Jasenovac Memorial Centre always invokes a feeling of deep regret at the crimes committed there and inspires a deep sense of reverence for all innocent victims, according to a press release issued by the Office of the President.
No political objective or system can justify the crimes committed in their name. The Republic of Croatia, being a democracy founded on the positive values of the struggle of the Croatian people for freedom, including anti-fascism, condemns without any reservations the crimes committed in this camp, Grabar-Kitarović wrote. Being fully committed to respect for human rights of all its citizens, as a guarantee for progress and peace, Croatia keeps the permanent memory of all the victims of the Jasenovac camp, she added.
The president was accompanied by the head of the Croatian Helsinki Committee (HHO) Ivan Zvonimir Čičak, who will also join state delegations for an official commemoration scheduled for Sunday, 22 April, at Jasenovac. Representatives of Jews, Serbs and antifascists will organise a separate commemoration.
