The first three Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, were on Friday laid in front of the Municipal Theatre in Karlovac to commemorate David Meisel, Ivo Goldstein and Filip Reiner, among the first Jews to be arrested in that Croatian city on 13 April 1941.

These ethnic Jews were killed during the Holocaust in the Second World War.

Goldstein was a writer, activist and bookshop owner, while Meisel, who arrived in Croatia from Czechia,  was an official of the local synagogue and the conductor of the local choir “Zora”. They lost their lives in the Ustasha-run Jadovno camp in 1941.

Reiner was a lawyer. He was killed in the Banjica camp, in Serbia, in 1943.

Mayor Damir Mandić said at the ceremony that those were evil times and that installing these stumbling stones reminds us that the dignity of a human being should define our activities.

Czech Ambassador Milan Hovorka said, “we will not let such horrors happen again”.

The Stolpersteine project, initiated by the German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, aims to commemorate individuals at exactly the last place of residency – or, sometimes, work – or the place from which victims were deported to death camps.