Efraim Zuroff, head of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center, says that exhibition was 'big disappointment'
AFP
The head of the Holocaust memorial group the Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized
Croatia over a newly opened museum at the site of a fascist
World War II concentration camp, in written comments.
"I saw an exhibition
which was a big disappointment," Efraim Zuroff wrote in an article published in the weekly Globus.
"To my disbelief, there
was not a single photograph of the commanders of Jasenovac," he said of the camp at which his organization estimates some 600,000 mostly
Serbs and Jews were killed during World War II.
Zuroff said that any young visitors
to the museum would "leave probably more confused then they were before" they visited an education center on atrocities committed at the camp by the "Ustasha" regime.
"In a museum dealing
with nameless Ustasha (members), no individual can be made
responsible," said Zuroff.
"More importantly,
it lacks materials or explanations about the development
of the Ustasha ideology before the war - hatred against
Serbs and anti-Semitism, which helped the spread of genocidal
policy," he added.
New center
The education center was opened
Monday along with a new permanent layout of the Jasenovac
museum in an official ceremony attended by Croatian President
Stipe Mesic and Prime Minister Ivo Sanader.
The memorial museum exhibits the
names of about 70,000 people killed at the camp.
But the number of people murdered
at Jasenovac - mainly Serbs, followed by Jews, Roma and
anti-fascist Croatians - is still disputed, with estimates
ranging between 100,000 by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum
and 700,000 by Belgrade.
During his visit Zuroff met with
Croatian state attorney Mladen Bajic and urged him to intensify
efforts to prosecute Ustasha police chief Milovoj Asner,
now living in Klagenfurt, Austria.
Vienna rejected a request by Croatia
in September 2005 for Asner's extradition on the basis
that he has an Austrian passport, but said it would consider
trying the man itself.
Asner, 93, is accused by the Wiesenthal Centre of having
participated in the persecution and deportation of hundreds
of people killed in Ustasha concentration camps.
"Time is rapidly running
out in this case and therefore a concentrated effort must
be made by all involved parties to finally convince the
Austrian authorities that there is absolutely no basis
for their refusal to turn over the former police chief," Zuroff said in a statement.
Zuroff also pressed Croatia to
investigate former Ustasha commander Ivo Rojnica who is
living in Argentina.
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