Thanks for that info.
"Lisa Lisa" <mandotar@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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>
> July 2, 2007
> Zagreb Journal
> Fascist Overtones From Blithely Oblivious Rock Fans
> By NICHOLAS WOOD
> ZAGREB, Croatia, June 30 - On a hot Sunday evening in June, thousands
> of fans in a packed stadium here in the Croatian capital gave a Nazi
> salute as the rock star Marko Perkovic shouted a well-known slogan
> from World War II.
>
> Some of the fans were wearing the black caps of Croatia's infamous
> Nazi puppet Ustashe government, which was responsible for sending tens
> of thousands of Serbs, Gypsies and Jews to their deaths in
> concentration camps.
>
> The exchange with the audience is a routine part of Mr. Perkovic's
> act, and the gesture seemed to lack any conscious political overtones.
> The audience - most of whom appeared to be in their teens and early
> 20s - just seemed to be having a good time. But Mr. Perkovic's recent
> success among a new generation - many of them apparently oblivious to
> the history of the Holocaust - has prompted concern and condemnation
> from Jewish groups abroad and minority groups in Croatia.
>
> [Despite those objections, the concert - his biggest ever, with an
> estimated 40,000 fans in the soccer stadium - was shown in prime time
> on Sunday night on state-owned television, prompting further protests
> from Jewish and Serbian groups.]
>
> "We don't want to pay for something that strikes fear into my
> children, or distances them from their friends or neighbors," said
> Milorad Pupovac, leader of the largest Serbian political party in
> Croatia, referring to the plan for the broadcast.
>
> What has shocked those groups more, though, is that in the ensuing
> debate, many senior politicians and journalists have said that they
> see no problem with the imagery or salutes.
>
> "They just don't seem to get it," said Efraim Zuroff, the Jerusalem
> director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who has urged President Stipe
> Mesic to ban future concerts and help outlaw the use of extremist
> symbols and slogans.
>
> The Croatian government has been trying to improve its image so it can
> join the European Union, and it did issue a statement after the
> concert criticizing the open display of Ustashe memorabilia and
> slogans. But much of Croatia's political establishment cannot
> understand what all the fuss is about.
>
> "You can't see any anti-Semitism here," Dragan Primorac, Croatia's
> education minister, said in an interview. He said he had planned to
> attend the concert, before rain caused it to be postponed by a day.
> Others who did get there, though, included a former foreign minister
> and two Croatian basketball stars.
>
> "At most, you could blame four to five people," Dr. Primorac said, for
> wearing Ustashe regalia, or giving the Nazi salute during the concert.
> He emphasized, too, that Croatia was a good friend of Israel and
> pointed to a photograph on his mantelpiece of himself with the Israeli
> elder statesman ****mon Peres as evidence.
>
> Over the last three years the conservative prime minister, Ivo
> Sanader, has to some extent managed to shed the country's image as a
> nationalist state that once harbored war criminals. The effort has
> been successful enough that Croatia is a favorite to join the European
> Union. What was seen for much of 1990s as a war-torn nation is now
> widely perceived as a prime tourist destination, with 10 million
> tourists a year and visitors flocking to its Adriatic coast.
>
> Photographs and memorabilia from the Ustashe period are no longer sold
> openly in Zagreb's city center. Restaurants no longer display
> photographs of Ustashe units on their wall. But souvenir shops do
> still sell key rings and baseball caps with the Ustashe U, as well as
> the slogan used in Mr. Perkovic's concerts, "Za Dom: Spremni!" or,
> "For the Homeland: Ready!"
>
> And many Croats still display an insensitivity to Holocaust issues.
> Mr. Perkovic's public affairs manager, Albino Ursic, has a large
> poster that he designed in 1994 on the wall of his office with the
> words "final solution." The poster shows a package of cigarettes
> marked with a large Swastika and labeled "Adolf Filters," poking out
> of a black leather jacket. "It's an antismoking picture," he said.
>
> "It won an award in Lisbon," he added, emphasizing that he viewed
> himself as left of center. As for Mr. Perkovic's performance, Mr.
> Ursic said, the fascist salute is made by soccer hooligans across
> Europe who have little understanding of it. "It is just teenage
> rebellion," he said.
>
> Mr. Perkovic's patriotic - and sometimes violently nationalistic -
> songs first became popular here during the Balkan wars, when he fought
> in the Croatian Army. Most Croats know him better by his stage name,
> Thompson, given to him during the war, when he carried the British-
> made submachine gun of the same name. He, too, has recently sought to
> distance himself from the Ustashe association. In an interview, the
> soft-spoken singer said he had never raised his own arm to make a
> fascist salute. Nor, he said, did he encourage people to wear Ustashe
> uniforms. As for the Ustashe slogan he uses, he claims it is a
> traditional Croatian salute that predates World War II.
>
> Others are unapologetic. Vedran Rudan, a columnist with the Croatian
> center-right daily Nacional, accused Mr. Zuroff of "extreme arrogance"
> for writing a letter to the president of Croatia asking the government
> to bar future Thompson concerts.
>
> She also accused him of branding Croatian youths fascists while
> ignoring the activities of a well-known ultranationalist member of
> Parliament, who has close ties with Israel.
>
> "Why do Jews forgive him everything, and the beardless youth and
> Thompson do not have right to mercy?" Ms. Rudan wrote.
>
> But rights groups here say there is a fundamental problem. While
> Croatia is now seeking to move away from the nationalist period of the
> 1990s, the current generation of young people has largely been
> schooled to believe that the Ustashe government's actions were no
> worse than those of Communist leaders in Yugoslavia during the same
> period.
>
> "They want to put them on an equal footing," said Danijel Ivin, the
> president of the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights. "The
> education about the recent history of Croatia is not adequate."
>
> Dr. Primorac said that was slowly beginning to change and pointed out
> that since 2004, Croatian schools had dedicated a day each year to
> studying the Holocaust.
>
> Others do not think it is changing quickly enough. "It is an issue,"
> said Tomislav Jakic, an adviser to President Mesic. "It is far from
> Ustashe nostalgia that was 15 years ago, when the ghost was first let
> out of the bottle. But the ghost is still here and it will be for
> years to come."
>
>
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