Names of Squares and Streets
A square in the central part of Zagreb had been named the "Square of the victims of fascism" (Trg žrtava fašizma) because during World War II, over sixteen thousand people had been deported via the square to concentration camps. In the early 1990s, this square was renamed to "Square of great Croats" (Trg hrvatskih velikana). This decision was later reverted in December 2000 during Milan Bandić's mayoralty of Zagreb.
In several Croatian cities, streets were renamed after Mile Budak, a prominent Ustaša ideologist, on the basis that he was otherwise a poet. The moves to hail Budak this way, were supported by 120 university professors, scholars, and other public figures. Conversely, the leftist newspaper Feral Tribune regularly satirized the Mile Budak streets, and its journalists explicitly criticized this trend.
The renaming of streets and squares after Budak (and other Ustaša-related people) has mostly been reversed by recent governments. In 2003, Ivo Sanader's government decided to finally deal with the issue which resulted in a decision to rename all the streets bearing Budak's name. In 2004, a plaque commemorating Budak's birth in the village of Sveti Rok was removed by the same authorities. Numerous local authorities however refused to follow up with the renames or delayed them.
Read more about this topic: Far Right In Croatia
Famous quotes containing the words names of, names, squares and/or streets:
“The world is never the same as it was.... And that’s as it should be. Every generation has the obligation to make the preceding generation irrelevant. It happens in little ways: no longer knowing the names of bands or even recognizing their sounds of music; no longer implicitly understanding life’s rules: wearing plaid Bermuda shorts to the grocery and not giving it another thought.”
—Jim Shahin (20th century)
“Shut out that stealing moon,
She wears too much the guise she wore
Before our lutes were strewn
With years-deep dust, and names we read
On a white stone were hewn.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“We had hardly got out of the streets of Bangor before I began to be exhilarated by the sight of the wild fir and spruce tops, and those of other primitive evergreens, peering through the mist in the horizon. It was like the sight and odor of cake to a schoolboy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)