Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic stated on Thursday that during the marking of Anti-Fascist Struggle Day on 22 June, the Croatians remember an important date in its national history, when the first anti-Fascist unit was formed in the then occupied Europe.

“We pay tribute to Croatia’s anti-Fascist fighters who stood up against Nazism and Fascism,” Plenkovic tweeted on his account.

The First Sisak Partisan Detachment was formed on 22 June 1941 as the first anti-Hitler unit in Nazi-occupied Europe and it marked the beginning of the armed struggle for national liberation in Croatia. It was established on the day Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union and initially had 77 fighters.

Croatia started observing Anti-Fascist Struggle Day on June 22, after it gained independence in the early 1990s.

‘The recurrence of evil’

The parliament speaker Gordan Jandrokovic said in his message that the First Sisak Partisan Detachment gave an impetus to the anti-Fascist movement that spread steadily across Croatia’s territory and contributed to the European and global victory against the terrors of Nazism and Fascism in the World War II.

Jandrokovic added that we live in the times when “we again witness to the recurrence of the evil”.

“It is especially agonising to see that in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, which was launched under the pretext of the so-called denazification of Ukraine,” he said.

However, it is evident that Russia’s ostensible fight against Nazism and Fascism is becoming exactly what it claims to fight against, he said, adding that Russia’s claims resemble the narrative to which Croatia was exposed during the 1991-1995 War.

Therefore, this day is an occasion to remember all who gave their lives to the freedom of Croatia in different historial periods, Jandrokovic said, calling for vigilance and preparation for concrete actions against pernicious phenomena that can undermine the democratic values that stemmed from the European victory against totalitarian regimes.