President Milanović Pays Tribute to the Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Crimes in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum

The President of the Republic of Croatia Zoran Milanović paid tribute today to the victims of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes in Auschwitz by laying a wreath at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial State Museum in Poland, the site of one of the most terrible crimes in the history of humankind. President Milanović visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum for the first time in his capacity as President of the Republic of Croatia.

“This Museum permanently preserves the memory of Holocaust victims, the most monstrous crime in human history, a pogrom directed at Jews and Judaism as a faith. It was a time of civilization’s twilight, during which unimaginable atrocities were committed, resulting in the deaths of millions, including many children. Visiting this Museum deeply moved me”, the Croatian President wrote, inter alia, in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial State Museum’s guestbookf.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial State Museum includes the former Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, where more than 1.l1 million people, of whom 960,000 were Jews, were exterminated. Today, this is a memorial site, a museum complex and a research centre, whose goal is to perpetuate the memory of the victims of Nazi crimes. Since 1979, Auschwitz-Birkenau is inscribed on the World Heritage list of UNESCO as a lasting testimony to the Holocaust and genocide.

During the visit, President Milanović also toured Block 17, one of the pavilions in the scope of the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, which is dedicated to the commemoration of victims from the former Yugoslavia. Due to its very poor state, the pavilion was closed in 2009, and since then, renovation works are being carried out in order to establish a new permanent exhibit.

The agreement on the financing of this important project, signed at UNESCO at the beginning of this year, also includes the Republic of Croatia, which undertook the obligation to jointly finance part of the works in the amount of 23%. This project has special significance for Croatia because it will honour in a dignified way the victims from Croatia and neighbouring countries who lost their lives in this camp.

President Milanović arrived today for a working visit to the Republic of Poland where he will participate on Thursday and Friday in a meeting of heads of state of the Arriolos Group which will be held in Kraków.

PHOTO: Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia / Dario Andrišek