The head of the Beth Israel community, Ivo Goldstein, recalled that the Auschwitz concentration camp, the site of the worst genocide in the 20th century, was liberated 66 years ago today.

He said the Holocaust was not invented by Hitler, as it had taken placed in World War one as well, adding that the Jewish community in Croatia and the world today fought with the message 'never again'.

Speaking of World War II and his time in Tito's Partisan resistance movement, Goldstein said that a lot of the Jewish community in Croatia had survived the war thanks to the Partisans and the benevolence of the people of the Banija, Kordun, Lika and Slavonia regions who had accepted Jewish people.

"We are grateful to the Partisan movement for saving 5,000 people, which is a unique case in Europe," Goldstein said.

The Israeli Ambassador in Croatia, Yosef Amrani, wondered how the international community could have allowed the massacre of millions of people and if we learned the lesson after the Holocaust.

He said that young people should learn from history how to build a better world, and that both governments and individuals had a moral responsibility to be better, to build a better world, and not to turn away from problems.

President Ivo Josipovic's envoy Zrinka Vrabec Mojzes stressed the importance of Holocaust remembrance, highlighting Josipovic's anti-fascism. She said the Holocaust was the darkest part of human history and should be a part of collective memory. She also stressed the importance of teaching children about the Holocaust, and said that Croatia should confront the dark side of its history and the crimes committed by the Nazi-style Ustasha regime that ruled Croatia during WWII.