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Nadir Dedic (L) and Dara Jakovljevic, two survivors of a notorious Croatian World War II concentration camp, known as the country's Auschwitz, attend a ceremony held to commemorate its victims sitting below a flower-shaped sculpture dominating the memorial complex of Jasenovac, Croatia, on April, 20 2008.
Photo: AFP Copyright 2008
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JASENOVAC (AFP)---Croatia on Sunday paid homage to the victims of a notorious concentration camp, known as the country's Auschwitz, which was set up by its pro-Nazi regime during World War II.
"We are here since we do not forget the horrors which were committed here and in other similar camps set up on the territory controlled by the Ustasha regime," President Stipe Mesic said at a ceremony held at the Jasenovac memorial complex.
Some 1,000 people, including the camp survivors, members of the victims' families, top officials and ambassadors of Western and neighbouring countries attended the memorial ceremony.
"Our gathering is dedicated to the victims of more than 60 years ago but also to a wish that with a constant repetition of the truth about what was going on at the time we prevent a possibility that something similar ever happens again," Mesic said.
He stressed the necessity of the "fight against oblivion" and warned that the number of those who had witnessed the atrocities was decreasing.
"In 10 or 20 years it is unlikely that there would be still any. The meaning of gatherings as the today's one will then become clear."
Sunday's ceremony marked the 63rd anniversary of an attempted escape by some 600 inmates of whom only some 90 have survived.
The ceremony at Jasenovac, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Zagreb, is held every year on the Sunday closest to April 22 when the escape took place.
During the ceremony a multi-denominational religious service was held for the camp's victims.
The camp was set up in mid-1941 by Croatia's pro-Nazi Ustasha regime. It was dismantled a few days after the attempted breakout in 1945.
The number of Jasenovac victims -- mostly Serbs, followed by Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croatians -- still remains disputed varying from tens of thousands to 700,000 according to Serbian figures.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that 100,000 people were murdered in Jasenovac, while the Simon Wiesenthal Centre puts the figure at some 600,000.