Local authorities in Zagreb are proposing to rename four streets currently named after high-ranking officials linked to the Nazi-backed Ustasha regime in another move away from the historical revisionism prominent in the 1990s.
The proposal to rename the streets came from the Pescenica district in Zagreb and was unanimously approved by its councillors, meaning the city’s committee for street names must now give the greenlight, after which it must be voted on by City Councillors.
The four wartime officials include a businessman known for financing and supplying the military of the quisling Independent State of Croatia (NDH) run by the Ustasha in 1941-45, two publishers instrumental in disseminating the regime’s propaganda, and an archbishop who published odes praising the party and its leader, Ante Pavelic.
The regime’s most infamous wartime atrocity is the Jasenovac concentration camp in central Croatia, today the site of a yearly remembrance event held in memory of more than 80,000 identified people who perished there during NDH rule.
The initiative, also supported by some local historians, is part of an ongoing battle pitching human rights organisations against far-right groups promoting historical revisionism which commonly downplays the war crimes and human rights abuses from the NDH era and even portrays figures from the period as patriots and heroes.
