“Croatia’s Auschwitz”.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that 100,000 people — mostly Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croatians — were killed there. Serbia claims the figure could be as high as 700,000.
Many had their throats cut with specially designed knives. Others were burned alive in furnaces.
As anti-Nazi partisans approached shortly after the escape attempt, the prison guards abandoned the camp, killing remaining inmates and burning down the buildings and torture chambers as they left.
“The horrors of Jasenovac warn us... not to allow discrimination and persecution based on national, religious, ideological or gender differences ever again,” parliamentary speaker Josip Leko said.
Croatia has sought to distance itself from the pro-Nazi Ustasha regime which set up the camp in 1941 and focus on the anti-Nazi partisans.
“There was only one Croatian army during World War II and these were Croatian partisans,” said Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic.
France marked the National Day of Deportation on Sunday, recalling the role the collaborationist French regime played in assisting the Nazi genocide.
Its leaders drew comparisons with current affairs, as concern over anti-Semitism has once again topped the political agenda in the wake of Jihadist attacks in Paris in January, which included an attack on a Jewish supermarket.
“Knowledge of history doesn’t protect us from the worst... anti-Semitism and racism still exist,” said Hollande in Natzwiller, site of the Struthof camp where around 50,000 were imprisoned, including many resistance fighters from across the continent.
Speaking earlier at a memorial in central Paris, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said: “The fight against barbarity has not ended. Without forgetting the past, we must continue the fight of our elders.”
Back in Bergen-Belsen, there is little left of the Nazi camp, torched by British troops shortly after it was liberated on April 15, 1945 to prevent the spread of deadly diseases.
Susanna Christiansen, 82, who survived the camp but whose father died three days after the liberation, told news agency DPA it was overwhelming to return.