Croats learn how better to teach Holocaust

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Stories of Anne Frank, Oscar Schindler and Croats who saved Jews during World War II were retold Thursday at a Holocaust seminar for Croatian teachers to help them present the era effectively to their pupils. "We teach the history of the Holocaust, A to Z, in depth," said Stanlee Stahl, executive vice president of the New York-based Jewish Foundation of the Righteous, which participated in the three-day seminar. "Only with programs like this will the teachers learn how to be more effective." The initiative is another sign that Croatia has become ready to face its World War II past, when it was a Nazi puppet state that persecuted hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and anti-fascist Croats. In the early 1990's, when Croatia was run by nationalist President Franjo Tudjman, authorities often tried to justify crimes committed by its pro-Nazis and school textbooks often omitted or distorted some wartime events.