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Remembrance day
Since 2004, the Republic of Croatia has annually observed on the 27th of January the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and the Prevention of Crimes Against Humanity.
On 2nd August, a commemoration ceremony is held at the Roma cemetery in the village of Uštica, where Roma victims from the Jasenovac Concentration Camp are buried.
The Republic of Croatia recognises that, together with Jews and Serbs, the Roma have suffered the most in the Second World War in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). In the first few days after the establishment of the NDH - 10th April 1941 - the Ustasha regime introduced a number of laws which have led to the destruction of particular ethnic groups, racial and religious groups as well as those with different ideologies.
In the “Law on Racial Affiliation” (30th April 1941) and the “Law on the Protection of Aryan Blood and Honour of the Croatian People” (30th April 1941), which were actually copies of Nazi racial laws, the so-called “pure Aryans” were specified and it was precisely defined which persons are Jews or Roma. According to the “Law on Citizenship” from 30th April 1941, a citizen of the NDH could have only been a person of Aryan descent, which implied that the Ustasha regime would use violence against citizens whose background or religion is “non-Aryan”. After publishing the Guidebook for Drafting a Statement on Racial Affiliation, on 3rd July 1941, the NDH adopted the Decision on the Obligatory Listing of the Roma, and at the same time the issue of their colonisation became relevant, for which purpose the Institute of Colonisation was established with the aim of achieving “internal colonisation” (Croatian State Archives, documents from the Independent State of Croatia, no. 26841).
In the baseline study document submitted by the Republic of Croatia to the ITF (Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research) in 2005, the Roma Genocide was explicitly mentioned. The document was a prerequisite for achieving the full membership in the Task Force, which took place in November 2005.
2nd August is officially recognised as International Roma Holocaust Remembrance Day, as of 12th December 2014.