Ceremonies Mark Holocaust Remembrance Day Across Balkans

Events were held in countries across the Balkans on Wednesday to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates the victims of the Nazi genocide during World War II on the day on which Soviet troops entered the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland in 1945.

Kosovo's Acting President Vjosa Osmani and Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti laid wreaths by a memorial honouring Jewish victims of the Holocaust in front of the government building in Pristina.

Osmani said that the genocide of the Jews was "the greatest barbarity that human history has known so far" and that commemorating the Holocaust is a "reaffirmation of the truth".

Croatian President Zoran Milanovic, along with government officials and leaders of groups representing Croatian Jews, Roma and Serbs, laid a wreath in the Jewish section of Zagreb's Mirogoj Cemetery.

Meanwhile, Croatia's Anti-Fascist League, which includes members of the country's Serb, Jewish and Roma communities, held a gathering on Wednesday at Zagreb's Victims of Fascism Square and urged the Croatian authorities to face up to the country's own role in WWII atrocities. The WWII-era Independent State of Croatia was an ally of the Nazis, introduced racist laws against Serbs, Jews and Roma people and operated concentration camps.

In Slovenia, a wreath was laid on behalf of Prime Minister Janez Jansa at the Jewish Cemetery in the capital on Tuesday, while President Borut Pahor visited the Jewish cemetery in the village of Dolga Vas in the north-east of the country.

Holocaust Remembrance Day in Serbia was marked by the laying of wreaths at the Monument to the Victims of Genocide in the Second World War at Staro Sajmiste in Belgrade, which was the site of a WWII concentration camp controlled...