Croatia has enacted legislation to protect 52 Jewish cemeteries around the country.
The move by the Culture and Media Ministry was announced in late September at a news conference held at the Jewish community building in Zagreb. The government said that including that number of individual places in one decision represented “the first collective entry in the register of memorial heritage.”
Around 70 Jewish cemeteries are believed to exist in Croatia. Most date from the mid-19th to early 20th century. Some are well maintained, but others – probably the majority — are neglected and overgrown. Some 15 Jewish cemeteries are already protected as independent cultural sites, and several are Jewish sections of municipal cemeteries.
“We wanted to include the protection of cemeteries that could not be protected as separate cultural assets, and that under collective protection, under the category of memorial heritage, we wanted to make the general public aware that there are a large number of cemeteries that need care, that are neglected and abandoned because the Jewish community in Croatia and Europe experienced crimes and the Holocaust,” Culture and Media Minister Nina Obuljen-Koržinek said in a statement reported on the government’s web site.
She added, “In order to jointly register cemeteries, because not all of them have monumental value, in 2012 we amended the Act on the Protection of Cultural Properties by introducing memorial properties, and this is the first collective entry into our register of memorial heritage.” The state of cemeteries, she said, “directly and indirectly testifies to the terrible suffering that the Jews went through.”
The renovation of the cemeteries will be financed with the funds of the Ministry of Culture and Media and with the help of the local community, she said.
According to the statement on the Ministry web site, the Ministry has also amended the Law on Archives and declassifying data and digitizing available databases in order to enable “the start of systematic research into the origins of art in order to create prerequisites for the correct attribution and labeling of art confiscated from Jewish families.”