The Croatian firehouse is in a temporary structure in the center, the Croat part of town. Equipment is sparse. Mr. Krizanac, the flooring installer, who was getting his fire extinguisher inspected there, expressed strong feelings about his neighbors in Vitez.

One of the worst offenses, he said, is when Muslims use religious greetings such as “salaam aleikum” instead of “good day” in public institutions like city hall. To Croats, such postwar habits smack of Muslim triumphalism. “I get angry and I curse at them,” he said.

Asked how he would feel about calling the Muslim fire department to put out a fire in his house, Mr. Krizanac was unequivocal: “I’d let it burn.”

The Hotel Vitez was the former base of the Jokers, a unit of the Croatian Defense Council whose commander, Anto Furundzija, was sentenced in 2000 to 10 years imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague.

Recently renovated in cheerful colors, its spacious hallways are mostly empty.

“It’s a myth that the past is forgotten,” said a receptionist, Ivan Krizanovic, 26. Mulims and Croats are friends, he said, “only when it’s a business lunch.” He said the hatred emerges only after alcohol and most often during holidays: from Croats celebrating Christmas or Muslims during the Islamic Bayram.

At the municipal building in town, Deputy Mayor Marija Grabovac said that the problems of the school have been exaggerated by a Bosnian Muslim political party to score points. She said that Muslim parents send their children to the divided school, even if they have a better school closer by, “just to be able to say: ‘This school is so crowded, look at the bad conditions.”’

Muslims make similar accusations: that the Croatian political parties pressure parents to send children to the school from far away so that Muslims won’t fill the empty classroom spaces and eventually “take over.”