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14 Av,
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International

Photo by: Associated
Press

Peres
slams Ahmadinejad at death camp
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

07/25/2010
14:56

President calls
Croatia concentration camp "sheer sadism."

President Shimon Peres toured the site of Croatia's World War II
concentration camp Sunday, saying it was a demonstration of "sheer sadism," and
challenged Iran's Ahmadinejad, a holocaust denier, to visit.

Peres and
Croatian President Ivo Josipovic toured the camp, Jasenovac, where a memorial
honors about 85,000 of Jews, Serbs, Gypsies and anti-fascist Croats who died
here in 1941-45 at the hands of Croatia's pro-Nazi regime. Thousands of people
also were deported from Croatia to Nazi-run camps where they died.

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Peres used the opportunity to refer to
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denials of the Holocaust. "I wish I would see him here," Peres
said.

"And I'm asking myself why does he deny [it]?" the Israeli leader
said. "To permit the legitimacy of continuity to kill."

Jasenovac, the
worst of about 40 camps in Croatia at the time, didn't have a gas chamber.
Inmates, including the elderly and children, were killed with guns, knives and
hammers. Many were tortured or starved to death. About 30,000 Jews died in
Croatia during the war, most of the Jewish community's prewar
population.

Peres said Croatian pro-Nazi guards "were not as elaborate
and organized as Germans and that he believed the Nazis forced Croats to be
brutal. "I think they wanted them to have a demonstration of sheer sadism," he
said.

On Sunday, Peres was concluding his three-day visit to Croatia —
another sign of warming relations between Israel and Croatia.

Israel
shunned Croatia in the 1990s and held off on recognizing its 1991 independence
until 1997 because Croatia's government at the time was sympathetic to the World
War II regime and its late president, Franjo Tudjman, who had downplayed the
fascists' crimes.

Since 2000, Croatia's pro-Western governments have
openly denounced fascism, and ex-President Stipe Mesic apologized for Croatians'
crimes while visiting Israel in 2001.

Peres's predecessor, Moshe Katsav,
traveled to Jasenovac in 2003, the first Israeli head of state to officially
visit the country.

On Sunday, President Josipovic thanked Peres for
"joining us to bow to the victims and to help us to face our past."

Peres
told him he was "proud that the two of us are trying to raise the civilization
of humanity, respect and human rights."

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