A four-day seminar on the Holocaust in Yugoslavia was held last week at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Centre, co-organized by the University of Bar-Ilan from Tel Aviv. Among the many speakers and participants were distinguished professors from European, US and Israeli universities and other research institutions addressing the Holocaust theme. Professors from Serbia Milan Ristović from the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, Milan Koljanin from the Institute of Contemporary History, and former Serbian Ambassador to Israel Krinka Vidakovic-Petrov also participated in the seminar.
In the opening remarks, the organizers noted that this seminar had been prepared carefully and for a long time, since the topic had not received enough attention. In this regard, it was agreed that it was necessary to fill the "gaps" in the education system in schools in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, but before that to provide a sufficient number of publications and research materials, which would be presented and elaborated on in these forums, based on which the school and other educational materials would be drawn up. Every former Yugoslav republic should engage itself in the institutional adoption of well-grounded facts about the situation on its territory during WWII.
Although the seminar was a semi-closed event, the opening ceremony was attended by the Ambassador and representative of Serbia, Macedonia's Ambassador and the Ambassador of Croatia, on the basis of which it was noted that there was serious intention among these states to define the past and view the role of each of them individually.