There would be no Croatia as it is today without the State Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Croatia (ZAVNOH) in Topusko and without partisans of Croatian and other nationalities who were committed to the common goal of fighting for their homeland, said Franjo Habulin at the Ceremonial Academy held on the occasion of the Day of the Liberation of Zagreb and Victory in Europe Day
BY: N. Jovanović / Novosti
On May 8, the Ceremonial Academy held in the Small Hall at the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall marked the Victory in Europe Day and the Day of the Liberation of Zagreb. The assembly was organized by the Alliance of Anti-fascist Fighters and Anti-fascists of the Republic of Croatia (SABA RH).
– We don’t want the ever so thicker fogs of historical revisionism to hide the truth. As long as lies are pushed onto our society, I do not intend to stop talking about this – said Franjo Habulin, the President of SABA, quoting his speech from six years ago, in which he stated that, “the disappearance of the Ustasha terror government is an undisputable fact.” “We must not leave the slightest doubt in our commitment to the society of freedom for which thousands of anti-fascist fighters gave their lives. We need to know what our roots are and where our future should be. Unfortunately, today in Croatian society there are more and more people who reject the only possible answer to questions, persistently drag us into the past, lie and falsify, poison young people, and thus put the future of Croatia into question. Croatia was built on the foundations of World War II, it was defended in the Homeland War, and it is focused on the future in which it will be a prosperous state of equal citizens.” I said that six years ago and unfortunately I have to repeat it today – said Habulin.
– For almost eight decades now in Europe, we have been forced to fight for the truth over who won, who were the winners, and who were the losers, who were the liberators, and who were the servants of the occupiers and the worst traitors of their own people – the president of SABA said and reminded everyone of the recently unveiled monument to the victims of the Holocaust and the Ustasha regime. Someone tried to, by just mentioning the Holocaust, avoid mentioning the victims of the Ustashas. Now both is written, although it would have been historically correct to write only “a monument to the victims of the Ustasha regime” – Serbs, Roma, Jews, and anti-fascist Croats.
– It is sad that the war in Ukraine will help many people, and not only the ones in Croatia, to complete what they started 30 years ago, and that is the systematic reduction of the great contribution of the Red Army, which was, as the USSR army, the victor over Nazism and fascism. Nothing that is happening today can change what happened 77 years ago, and no sins of the victors must diminish the significance of that victory and the liberation of Yugoslavia then, and independent countries now. What is happening today must not be used for falsifying events from 80 years ago, and therefore even today we should be reminded of the 3,000 monuments to anti-fascism that were destroyed and of the envoy of the Ministry of Croatian Veterans who dared to say in Split, “had it not been for April 10, 1941, there would be no today’s Croatia.”
– There would be no today’s Croatia had it not been for partisans of Croatian and other nationalities who were committed to the common goal and fought for the homeland. There would be no today’s Croatia had it not been for ZAVNOH in Topusko. Those who fought in the Homeland War, including me, defended Croatia, but Croatia was created by partisans. Some will say that there has been enough talk about Ustashas and partisans. I’ve also had enough, but I will not stop until everything falls into place. Those who do not know their past will not be able to seek their future, and our homeland needs a future that will be better than the present. Some are loudly celebrating Europe Day, as if we forgot Victory Day and as if they do not know that without Victory Day there would be no Europe Day – said Habulin and on behalf of anti-fascists asked that Zagreb should once again get a street named after May 8.
– The Day of the Liberation of Zagreb is the day of the victory of anti-fascist citizens, as well as the day of remembrance of the end of armed struggle in which more than 26,000 citizens were killed and lost their lives in four years. Every year we pay tribute to the victims of the fascist and Ustasha terror and remember the victims of the prisons on Savska cesta, in Rakov Potok, and Dotrščina, where several thousand Zagreb citizens were executed, among whom were many writers, professors, journalists… – said Mayor Tomislav Tomašević, adding that he had paid tribute to the victims at Dotrščina, as well as Mirogoj before the Ceremonial Academy.
– We will rectify this historical injustice and return to Dotrščina the memorial plaque that was removed in the 90s, and we will make sure to do so before the Day of Antifascist Struggle on June 22. In addition to the unveiled monument at the Central Train Station, there will be other interventions to clarify who were the victims of the Ustasha regime, what was the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), and who were the victims who were executed just because they loved freedom and stood up against the regime, fighting for a better and fairer society, city, and country – said the mayor.
He thanked all the citizens and associations who kept the memory of Dotrščina and anti-fascist resistance at all times, even when such a thing was anything but easy. It is crucial for generations to come to know the historical facts, to know that anti-fascism is a value that is woven not only into the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia, but also into all EU documents. That is why the fight against the fog of revisionism is more necessary than ever, the mayor concluded.
Stjepan Mesić, the former President of Croatia, reminded everyone that young generations are not learning in schools what anti-fascism is and what freedom-loving people fought against in the war, which is precisely why it then happens that someone at the stadium will shout things like, “Kill the Serb!”
– Our government is paying counterfeiters who write about Jasenovac and lie that it remained active even after the war, but they cannot find anyone who was in the camp that the Ustashas thoroughly destroyed in April 1945 after the breakthrough, and killed all the remaining camp prisoners, while captured Germans were then brought in every day to clean up the rubble and building materials. There are hundreds of examples where children are dumbed down, which hinders the development of a country created on anti-fascism, and this is not the case only here. A monument to a Russian soldier has recently been demolished in Ukraine. He was not a Russian, but a Soviet soldier, and without the sacrifices and the victims of the USSR, today’s Europe would not exist – Mesić concluded.
President Milanović’s envoy Luka Džanko emphasized that we do not have to agree on some things regarding World War II, but that one fact remains unquestionable – when Nazi Germany signed the capitulation, the Yugoslav partisans, and among them the Croatian partisans, were on the victorious side and they did not find themselves there by chance, but they sided with them in 1941, fighting against the occupiers and domestic traitors.
– This was the strongest and best organized resistance movement in Europe, which had the support of all parts of Croatia and in which thousands of citizens of Zagreb participated. Partisans led by Tito were the real and only Croatian army in World War II. Unlike Croats, other European nations remember the victory over fascism with undisguised pride. That is why we must show the pride that we earned, not only on Victory in Europe Day, but on all days of the year – concluded the retired general and president of the anti-fascist association VeDRa (Association of Homeland War Veterans and Anti-fascists), which brings together fighters and anti-fascists from the last two wars.
Jure Martinović, the envoy of the Prime Minister, and Davorko Vidović, the envoy of the Speaker of the Croatian Parliament, also addressed the gathered crowd respectively. Apart from the screening of the film “The Liberation of Zagreb” (“Oslobađanje Zagreba”), there was a musical performance by tenor Filip Kozjak, accompanied by Marjan Krajina on the harmonica, while the choir Praksa from Pula performed a series of partisan and anti-fascist songs, such as “Bella Ciao” and “Padaj silo i nepravdo” (lit. “Fall, oh, Force and Injustice”), “Ay Carmela” and “Katyusha,” performed in Croatian, Russian, and Italian.
The assembly was attended by the leaders of the City of Zagreb, members of the Croatian Parliament, including Milorad Pupovac, the diplomatic corps, former Croatian presidents Stjepan Mesić and Ivo Josipović, numerous anti-fascists, and public figures. It is important to notice that present at the assembly was the delegation of the Section of the First Proletarian Brigade of the NOVJ (National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia) from Belgrade, which operates under the SUBNOR (Alliance of War Veterans of the National Liberation War) and which the day before paid tribute to the 176 fighters killed in the liberation of Vrbovec on May 6 and 7, 1945.