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| - Croatia's Jews, Serbs and Roma joined an official commemoration for the victims of a World War II death camp for the first time in five years Wednesday, after having long boycotted the event to protest a resurgence of pro-Nazi sentiments. Known as Croatia's Auschwitz, the Jasenovac camp was run by the Nazi-allied Ustasha regime, which persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croatians. On Wednesday, the 75th anniversary of the camp's closure, representatives of those persecuted groups accompanied top officials to honour of the dead at the striking flower-shaped monument that stands on the former camp. The groups, who laid flowers at the memorial, said they decided to attend to show solidarity during the coronavirus crisis and to start a conversation with authorities about lingering intolerance. "Things have not changed but taking into account the difficult situation caused by the virus... we decided to join the ceremony," said Ognjen Kraus, head of an umbrella association of Jewish groups. "We also extend our hand (to the government) to start talking about the burning issue... and remove the stain on Croatia due to historical revisionism," he told AFP. "We want deeds, not words." Croatia's conservative government has come under criticism in recent years for failing to condemn the use of Ustasha slogans and historical revisionism among the far-right. After laying a wreath for the victims, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said his government was "working on (increasing) understanding and tolerance in society" and "nurturing a culture of recollection". Croatia's newly elected centre-left President Zoran Milanovic also attended the ceremony, which his conservative predecessor Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic had not done. The Council of Europe's human rights commissioner Dunja Mijatovic welcomed the joint ceremony as an "encouraging" step towards ensuring "truth and recognition of the victims prevails over denial and relativization of the crimes". The victims' groups, who have been holding their own separate commemorations over the past few years, were particularly outraged when a plaque with an Ustasha slogan was placed near the Jasenovac memorial in November 2016. The plaque, laid by former paramilitaries, was removed from the camp's immediate vicinity nearly a year later -- only to be displayed at another location 10 kilometres (six miles) away. Jasenovac was the largest and most brutal of Croatia's concentration camps. Many inmates were killed with hammers, knives and stones. The total number of people murdered remains a matter of dispute, and has been politicised notably since relations between Serbia and Croatia soured during Yugoslavia's bloody collapse in the 1990s. Estimates of the number of deaths, the majority of whom were Serbs, vary widely, though the US Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates some 100,000 people were killed. ljv/ssm/jxb
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