This year's anniversary marking the WWII escape of prisoners from the Jasenovac concentration camp in central Croatia will be marked by separate groups in separate ceremonies again, as the Jewish community still refuses to join the official state-sponsored ceremony over government's refusal to take a firmer stance against the far-right glorification of the Nazi-allied wartime Ustasha regime. Pročitaj više

Instead, they announced their own commemoration ceremony, organized separately from the official event, as a form of protest against the government’s refusal to take a more decisive stance against far-right groups and individuals who publicly glorify the Croatian WWII Ustasha regime and downplay its crimes.

The coordinating body of Jewish communities said they decided that they would pay their tribute separately. In their press release, the said they were “dissatisfied with the fact that the ruling coalition did not outlaw public displays of Ustasha insignia.” They announced they would commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day in Jasenovac on 28 April – six days later than the breakout anniversary.

Whether associations of antifascists, Jews, and Roma join the official state-sponsored event or not has become a contentious detail of Croatian politics in recent years. The conservative HDZ-led government and prominent party members often flirt with far-right ideas and views on World War II and the Nazi-allied Ustasha regime which controlled much of present-day Croatia as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war.

Another group which traditionally marks the event, the Antifascist Alliance, which consists largely of anti-fascist veterans of WWII – said they would join the official state-sponsored ceremony on Friday, 22 April. The Serb National Council – the main association of ethnic Serbs in Croatia – said they would wait to announce their decision on Thursday.

The Jasenovac concentration camp was a death camp operated by the Ustasha regime during World War II where prisoners – mostly ethnic Serbs, Jews, Roma, as well as anti-fascist Croats – were regularly hanged, slaughtered with knives and axes, bludgeoned, or shot to death.

Killings were carried out within the Jasenovac complex and in smaller camps around it, as well as in nearby villages. The Jasenovac Memorial Centre, built close to the site in the 1960s, has documented the names and details of more than 83,000 confirmed deaths at Jasenovac. This figure includes more than 47,000 ethnic Serbs, around 16,000 ethnic Roma, and some 13,000 Jews.

On 22 April 1945 some 600 prisoners attempted a mass breakout from the camp, with only 100 successfully surviving the escape.