Antifascist Struggle Day

Sisaka's coat of armsThe Day of the Antifascist Struggle is celebrated in memory of the events of June 22, 1941, when the First Sisak Partisan Detachment was founded in the forest of Brezovica near Sisak, according to the Croats, the first antifascist organization in then-occupied Europe.

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, launching Operation Barbarossa. This put the Communist Party members in Sisak in danger. They moved to the vicinity of the city: first to the village of Zabno, and then to the forest of Brezovica on the outskirts of Sisaka. There they founded the First Sisaka partisan detachment, which from the first days committed sabotage, primarily on the railway.

At that time there were 77 people in the squad. The commander of the detachment was Vlado Janich-Tsapo, the commissioner was Marian Tsvetkovic. A member of the detachment was the future general of the Croatian army Janko Bobetko. Since most of the troops were Croats, they operated primarily in the Croatian area. By the end of World War II, 30 members of the first detachment survived.

The founding of the Sisaka detachment was the beginning of an organized anti-fascist struggle in Croatia, in which more than half a million Croatian citizens actively participated. 230,000 Croats fought in the ranks of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and 52 brigades, 17 divisions and 5 of the PLA’s 11 corps were established in Croatia.

Antifascist Struggle Day has been celebrated since Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia. In the former SFRY, the Day of the Anti-Fascist Struggle was celebrated on July 27 – the Day of the Uprising – in memory of the first shot in Serbia, although the foundation of the Sisak detachment occurred more than a month earlier.