Israeli Ambassador to Croatia, Ilan Mor, said on Monday it was time to adopt a complete ban on the use of the controversial salute "For the Homeland Ready" used by the World War II Croatian fascists the Ustasha.

He was reacting to recent vandalism of a memorial to Holocaust victims in the northern Croatian town of Varazdin, which was defaced with a spray-painted swastika and an Ustasha symbol.

Mor said in a press release on Monday that he was certain that the authorities in Croatia would continue to do everything to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice as soon as possible.

This is also an opportune time to initiate a complete ban on any use of the notorious “For the Homeland Ready” salute, he added.

Mor said he “was deeply shocked and saddened to read the bad news” from Varazdin about the vandalising of the newly erected monument honouring the memory of the Holocaust victims, located opposite the Varazdin synagogue. The monument itself had been built from bricks taken from Jasneovac, a World War II death camp run by the Ustasha in central Croatia.

Mor said he thought the new positive spirit of reconciliation in Croatia, which must be commended, would stop those extreme elements in society who continue to deny the Holocaust and downplay the horrors of the Ustasha regime against Jews and Serbs, Roma, as well as the anti-fascists, which had occurred in the infamous Jasenovac camp.

He said the latest act of vandalism clearly showed that there were still people in Croatia who had not learned anything from history and the biggest tragedy in humankind, which the Nazis and their collaborators brought on the Jewish people in Europe and in Croatia.

Local police said they did not know if the monument was desecrated by one or more perpetrators. They only said that the monument was defaced some time between November 20 and 22.