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Partisan monument in Perušić , featuring the names of twelve volunteers who died in the Spanish Civil War | Vjeran Pavlaković continue to nurture the antifascist values necessary to foster an open and tolerant society in the twentyfirst century .
This is particularly relevant for Rijeka and the Croatian Littoral ( Primorje ), since one of the mottos of Rijeka2020 is the “ Port of Diversity ”. The exhibition listed over one hundred names of volunteers from Rijeka and the surrounding region , a testament to the antifascist sentiment of this part of Croatia that arose due to the experience with Italian fascism in the 1920s and the even greater deprivations of the Second World War . Most of the volunteers fought in the International Brigades , and nearly half lost their lives in distant Spain . Those that survived had to endure internment camps in France and Germany as well as difficult journeys back home , where several hundred of them joined the Partisan movement . The Spanish volunteers from Yugoslavia , known as naši Španci ( Our Spaniards ), were particularly valued because of their military experience and ideological discipline , which was invaluable during the first year of the antifascist
uprising . The exhibition was the result of new research conducted in archives in Croatia , Bosnia- Herzegovina , and Serbia , contributions from scholars participating in a conference held at the University of Rijeka in June 2019 ( including participants from EUROM , the University of Barcelona , and the Pavelló de la República Library ), and local history students . 4 Two panels focused on the contribution of women in the Spanish Civil War , including short biographies of the sixteen women from Yugoslavia who primarily served in the medical corps . A panel on anarchists from Yugoslavia who fought outside the International Brigades highlighted the fact that their participation remains largely under-researched , since many of them were Italian-speakers from the region of Istria and were generally ignored by communist historiography . Another topic which unfortunately was not covered in this exhibition but awaits the efforts of new scholars is the participation
4 Students created a website about the project as part of their research on the Spanish Civil War : https :// kulturasjecanjasgr . wordpress . com . overview
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