The exhibition is a joint project of the Russian embassy in Croatia, Rossotrudnichestvo Representative Office in Croatia, the Alexander Pechersky Foundation, the Academy of Fine Arts at the University of Zagreb, Shira Gallery and the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress.
The memorial was funded by the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress headed by Israeli-Georgian businessman and philanthropist Mikhail Mirilashvili, as well as Jewish Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg. The Jewish National Fund, the United United Israel Appeal, and the Russian Jewish Congress also supported the project.
“It is up to us to uphold the truth and preserve the memory of the terrible war so that the tragedy of our peoples never repeats,” said EAJC President Mirilashvili.
The Euro-Asian Jewish Congress backed the initiative of former Knesset member, Leonid Litinetsky, the Council of World War II Veterans and the Association of the Victims of the Leningrad Siege in Israel to establish the monument.
The inauguration took place in the opening ceremony of the 7th annual “Mahar” Conference supported by the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress led by its President Mikhail Mirilashvili who is extremely devoted to the development of Jewish life in the Balkan.
The Croatian government is trying “to rewrite history and clear the Ustasa regime of any responsibility for its collaboration in the mass killings,” Mikhail Mirilashvili, president of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress said Wednesday. “We strongly condemn this kind of distorted view of history.”
