Exhibition Highlights Deportation of Croatian Jews in WWII

An exhibition entitled 'If I Forget You… The Holocaust in Croatia 1941-1945/Final Destination Auschwitz' opened in Zagreb on Wednesday, highlighting the persecution of Croatia's Jews with a special emphasis on the fate of those deported to the Nazi-run Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

The exhibition, organised by Croatian History Museum on the initiative of the Ministry of Culture, is on show at the French Pavilion of the University of Zagreb Student Centre, where Jews from Zagreb and other places in Croatia were assembled during WWII to be deported in railway wagons to Auschwitz.

The opening of the exhibition was attended by members of Zagreb's Jewish community, Holocaust survivors and senior officials led by Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic.

The exhibition explores what happened to those who were killed, and includes testimonies from survivors, several original objects from the camp, and photographs and documents from various Croatian and international museums and archives.

The title of the exhibition comes from Psalm 137 of the Bible and "symbolically refers to the consequences of the undemocratic, intolerant and racist Ustasa regime [in Croatia during WWII], which should not be forgotten", the organisers said.

In the Ustasa-led Independent State of Croatia - which included the majority of present-day Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of Serbia - some 31,000 out of approximately 40,000 Jews were killed or sent to Nazi German death camps between 1941 and 1945.

The opening of the exhibition 'If I Forget You… The Holocaust in Croatia 1941-1945/Final Destination Auschwitz'. Photo: BIRN.

Photo: BIRN.

Photo: BIRN.

Photo: BIRN.

Photo: BIRN.

Photo: BIRN.

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