"Croatia should look up to Germany as a good example of how to face the past in which the Nazis and their collaborators carried out the Holocaust," Israel's ambassador to Croatia, Ilan Mor, said on Friday, in reference to the WWII-era Ustasha salute "For the Homeland, Ready" used by far-right groups.

Mor was speaking to reporters at the Jasenovac Memorial Centre where he had arrived to pay tribute to the victims of the Ustasha-run concentration camp, together with parliament and government delegations and victims’ families.

He announced that he would visit Jasenovac next week to join the Jewish community’s separate ceremony marking the Yom HaShoah, also known as the Holocaust Remembrance Day. “Next week, we will also visit the northern town of Ludbreg to present the Charter of the Righteous among the Nations to descendants of a very brave non-Jewish family who had risked their lives to save a Jewish boy who now lives in Israel,” Mor said.

As for the Ustasha salute, Mor said that this is “a constant political issue in Croatia”, but that he does not discuss this with Prime Minister Plenkovic because “that is not necessary.”

“I think everyone knows our position,” he added. “There are countries such as Germany, where the Nazi salute “Heil Hitler” is banned by law and subject to sanctions, and there are countries that follow Germany’s example in facing their past without fear and hesitation,” he said.

“European countries where the Nazis and their collaborators carried out the Holocaust should look up to Germany as a good example and follow it,” Mor added.

Former president Stjepan Mesic also attended the commemoration. Speaking to the press, he said that the association of the Croatian Defence Force (HOS), an armed wing of the right-wing Croatian Party of Rights during the 1991-95 war, was registered illegally because its documents for registration in the 1990s ended with the salute “For the Homeland, Ready!”.

“The government can react now and request that the registration be revoked, and if they want to re-register, they can, but without using this salute,” Mesic said, calling for an end to the spreading of Ustasha ideology and for a law to ban it.