Yugoslav Partisans

Ivo Tomasevic, secretary-general of the Bishops' Conference, the permanent assembly of Catholic bishops in Bosnia and Herzegovina, told BIRN on Friday that a mass to commemorate the killings of Croatian Nazi-allied troops and civilians by the Yugoslav Partisans at the end of World War II will not be cancelled despite condemnation from politicians, anti-fascist activists and many public figures.

On that day in 1945, anti-fascist Partisan forces reclaimed the city from Nazi-allied administration of the Independent State of Croatia, NDH, a puppet state established in 1941 and run by the fascist Ustasa movement with the support of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, which passed harsh racial laws against Serbs, Jews and Roma people.

The annual gathering in Bleiburg in Austria, which commemorates tens of thousands of Croatian Nazi-allied Ustasa troops and civilians who were killed by the Yugoslav Partisans in 1945, will not be held this year as planned on May 16, media reported on Tuesday.

"The overall economic and legitimacy crisis after Tito's death in the 1980s created a favourable atmosphere for criticising the Partisan myth and creating positive images about their [the Partisans'] enemies [the Chetniks]," Djureinovic, who has a PhD in history from Justus Liebig University in Giessen and works with the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre, told BIRN in an interview.

In June 1947, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oswiecim, Poland opened on the grounds of the former death camp. In 1960, the museum allocated space for 'national exhibitions,' which focused on the countries from which citizens were deported to the camp.

The exhibition entitled 'Refreshing Memory/When Monuments Come to Life', which features artworks that examine Croatia's anti-fascist heritage at a point when historical revision is on the rise in the country, is on show until the end of October in Zagreb.

Thousands of anti-fascists from former Yugoslav countries gathered on Sunday at the Sutjeska memorial in Tjentiste in Bosnia and Herzegovina to pay tribute to the soldiers killed during the crucial battle during World War II.

The Bosnian capital of Sarajevo has voted to honour the memory of a World War II woman resistance fighter by naming a park after her.

City Park, in the heart of Sarajevo, will be named after Jelena Vitas, the city council decided on Thursday, following a local referendum held in April.

Anti-fascist demonstrators will stage protests on Saturday against the annual gathering in Bleiburg, which commemorates the tens of thousands of Nazi-allied Croatian troops and civilians killed by Yugoslav Partisans in 1945.

Forty-seven years after Hajrudin Siba Krvavac's cult movie about the Partisan struggle in wartime Yugoslavia was filmed, a museum dedicated to it has opened in Bosnia's capital.