Alojzije Stepinac: Pillar of Human Rights – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Esther Gitman’s Book “Alojzije Stepinac: Pillar of Human Rights” Now at Yad Vashem

August 10, 2019 by inavukic 22 Comments

Dr Esther Gitman (R), President of Israel Reuven Rivlin (C)
President of Republic of Croatia Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic (C-back turned) at Beit HaNassi July 29, 2019
Photo: Private collection

The gift given by President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic on July 29, 2019 at Yad Vashem Centre in Jerusalem to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has gone almost unnoticed in both Croatia and Israel media! True, it rarely happens that the media writes about gifts that the heads of state exchange, but it’s also true that a great deal of attention and effort always stand behind every such gift. On these occasions, gifts are always given as a sign of respect and a reflection of the relationship between the gift-giving state and the state whose president receives the gift, and the gift often becomes more than the mere formality of the act of gift exchange – it also becomes a reminder of what is of particular importance within the alliance between two countries, between the giver and the recipient of the gift.

Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic (Second from L) Reuven Rivlin (C) Esther Gitman (R) at Beit HaNassi July 29 2019
PHOTO: Private Collection

The President of the Republic of Croatia presented in Yad Vashem to the President of Israel a book by the author Dr. Esther Gitman “Alojzije Stepinac: Pillar of Human Rights”! Not only did the President of the Republic of Croatia, in February 2019, decorate Dr. Esther Gitman with the “Order of Prince Branimir with a Necklace” for the special merits deserved through researching, documenting and promoting the truth about 20th-century Croatian history, as well as for deepening of understanding between the Croatian and Jewish people, in July, she gifted Dr. Gitman’s book to the President of Israel which evidences the indisputable truth about the work and efforts of Blessed Alojzije (Aloysius) Stepinac in rescuing Jews in World War II. Bearing in mind that in June 2019, at the University of Split, Dr. Esther Gitman was awarded an Honorary Doctorate for her historical research and writings about Blessed Alojzije Stepinac, then the gift that President Grabar Kitarovic presented to President Rivlin comes as a bright link in the circle of strengthened presentation to the world the goodness which, despite various propagandistic attempts denying the goodness of Alojzije Stepinac, still existed and is a fact, and therefore indisputable.

Dr Esther Gitman and her book:
“Alojzije Stepinac: Pillar of Human Rights”

It is to be hoped that this book by Dr. Esther Gitman on the rescue of Jews in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during World War II by its very presence in Yad Vashem through President Rivlin will usher in rays of illumination of the truth there where it brings great value for both the Croatian and the Jewish people. For, many years have passed in which the alleged truth about Blessed Aloysius Stepinac was not based on facts but on a fabricated and politically coloured spectrum of dark colours and untruths.

In the evening of July 29, 2019, an official dinner was held in Beit HaNassi, the residence of Reuven Rivlin, President of Israel, specifically to welcome Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, President of the Republic of Croatia. Usually, such events are often briefly mentioned in daily news, but this festive dinner in Jerusalem carries something special and precious, not only that the Croatian and Israeli flags were flying in front of Beit HaNassi, but also some very special guests were inside the presidential residence – Dr. Esther Gitman with her husband Dr. Israel Gitman.

Dr Esther Gitman had dinner with the President of the Republic of Croatia, Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, and the President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin.

A week before the visit of the Croatian President to Israel, the Croatian Embassy in Israel informed Dr. Esther Gitman of the President’s arrival and announced that she would be contacted by the office of Israeli President Rivlin. She was invited by President Rivlin to that official and festive dinner as a Croatian guest and her husband Israel as an Israeli guest.

Before her arrival at the dinner, Dr. Gitman photographed the streets around the presidential residence, which were decorated with Croatian and Israeli flags, imagining how much her Croatian friends would like to see the pictures. The cocktails lasted for an hour and dinner for two hours. Dr Gitman was told that Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, on the occasion of her official visit to Yad Vashem earlier that day, had gifted to President Rivlin her book “Alojzije Stepinac: The Pillar of Human Rights”. That would have been the main reason for her being invited to the presidential dinner at the Israeli President’s residence. The work of Blessed Aloysius Stepinac is indeed great in the history of the whole world, because in the terrible times of World War II, only a few people throughout Europe committed themselves so much to fighting against injustice, against human suffering and human rights violations.

Beit HaNassi, Jerusalem, July 29, 2019
Photo: Private collection

According to Dr. Gitman, the President of Israel, Rivlin, welcomed President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic at the festive dinner, emphasising their warm relations and intentions for cooperation. The Croatian president also thanked the Israeli president for emphasising their plans for future co-operation.

“What was really humorous,” Dr. Gitman told me, “was when the presidents stopped while walking out of the hall where the dinner was taking place and talked to the guests, and I introduced my husband, Israel, and he with a smile on my face quickly managed to tell President Grabar Kitarovic ‘you have a beautiful country and I gave that country my most precious possession – my wife’. The Israeli president who stood by my husband Israel’s side at the time said to my husband that the president highly respects his wife.”

“I hope somebody from Yad Vashem reads my book or at least part of it! Croatia was trashed for so many years by Serbia, Croats were portrayed as murderers as anti-Semites that killed not only Jews but also Serbs, Roma and other dissidents. The Israelis are unaware that throughout the war the Serbs had armies. The Chetniks, the Milan Nedic’s army so favoured by Hitler that they received closed trucks to kill in them 50 Jews at the time! The ignorance is embracing, the information was concealed for 70 years, few only know that Belgrade was the first city in Europe free of Jews. And that 90 percent of the Jews perished there. Sorry, but for this ignorance I must blame the Croatian historians who for the past 25 years failed to tell the world what had transpired! Yes, many Ustashe were murderers, they committed heinous crimes, but there were good people who helped. Yes, even this criminal Ustashe regime saved Jewish Physicians and instituted against the Nazi will concepts such as Aryan Rights and Honorary Aryans. Just to save those whom the regime needed and respected. Stepinac rescued those in mixed marriages, orphans, 58 elderly and prevented a major catastrophe when they prevented Bastianini Giuseppe, the governor of the Italian zones, to ship back to the Ustashe all the Jews who managed to escape!” Dr. Gitman said answering my question about what President of the Republic of Croatia gifting her book to the President of Israel in Yad Vashem personally means to her.

“This article of yours is not a place for all these details, but we must spread the truth and not only about Stepinac but the Croatian people and Stepinac in his sermons aimed at instilling in them the duty of saving human lives,” Dr. Gitman commented at the end of our talk. Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Alojzije Stepinac: Pillar of Human Rights, Croatia, Esther Gitman, gift for Israeli president, Israel, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, rescue of Jews in WWII Croatia, Reuven Rivlin, Yad Vashem

Obtain Esther Gitman Book “Alojzije Stepinac: Pillar of Human Rights”

March 1, 2019 by inavukic 10 Comments

The latest book by Dr. Esther Gitman, “Alojzije Stepinac: Pillar of Human Rights” can now be purchased online from the publisher “Kršćanska sadašnjost” / Christian Contemporaneity

at www.ks.hr/alojzije-stepinac-pillar-of-human-rights

“The book Alojzije Stepinac, the Pillar of Human Rights examines how a young priest, in his thirties, from a rural Croatia region rose to become a hero of his people, of the Catholic Church and of many others, throughout the world. Like an Old-Testament Prophet Archbishop Stepinac remained relentlessly true to his Church and the natural laws by being the voice of conscience during three successive and contrasting dictatorial regimes. He defended the teachings of the Church, and in this way he showed how a religious man attuned to the universal laws can comprehend the unity of the world in its differences. In this manner and with authoritative tones he was one of very few men in Europe who zealously and openly defended these religious and civil rights of man. With even greater passion and authority he reiterated the theme: “all nations and all races have the right to lead the life worthy of man and to be treated with the dignity with which one treats man. Whether they belong to the so called race of Gypsies or whether they are from Africa, or considered civilized Europeans, whether they are detested Jews or proud Serb Orthodox all have the same right to say: Our Father, who art in Heaven! And if God has given this right to all, what is the human power that can deny it?” Stepinac set an example of courage that will live for ages within the hearts of all freedom loving people. In my travels around the word I have seen his statutes and words of hope, and in my city of New York a street is dedicated to him!!” Esther Gitman

Blessed Alojzije Stepinac

Alojzije Viktor Stepinac, during his 1946 Trial set by Marshall Tito and his communist regime he declared: “For my convictions I am able to bear not only Ridicule, hatred, and humiliation, but – because my conscience is clear – I am ready to die at any moment”.

Dr. Esther Gitman

Dr. Esther Gitman was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. With her mother she survived World War II in the Italian zones of occupation and later on in Italy proper. In 1945 they returned to Sarajevo. In 1948, with the remnant of her family, they settled in Israel and later moved to Canada. In 1970 Esther earned her B.A. in History and Sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. In 1975 she earned an M.P.S. (master of professional studies) in criminal justice from Long Island University, C.W. Post. From 1978 to 1998 her energies were dedicated to her growing a business in NYC. In 1999 Esther enrolled into the Ph.D. program in the Department of History of the Graduate Center of the City University of NY. The ultimate objective was to understand the circumstances of the rescue and survival of Jews, including her own, in the Nazi occupied Yugoslavia. In 2001–03 Esther received a one year Fulbright fellowship to Zagreb, Croatia, where she researched the social and political environment on the conditions of rescuing Jews during the World War II, and in 2005, she earned her Ph.D. In 2007-08 she received a fellowship for her postdoctoral studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. She has written several scientific monographs, studies and research papers.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Alojzije Stepinac, Alojzije Stepinac: Pillar of Human Rights, Esther Gitman

Dr. Esther Gitman And Us: Great Day For History of Croatian History

February 23, 2019 by inavukic 15 Comments

Dr. Esther Gitman and the front cover of her new book:
“Alojzije Stepinac: Pillar of human rights”

By Matko Marusic, Prof. Emer.

(First published in www.narod.hr, 20 February 2019)

(Translated from Croatian by Ina Vukic)

On February 13, 2019, Dr. Esther Gitman launched her book “Alojzije Stepinac: Pillar of Human Rights” at the Croatian Catholic University in Zagreb. That day is the turning point of the history of Croatian history – because in it Croatian history has ceased to be a lie and became the truth, on an international level! A perfectly neutral person, an American Jew, presented the indisputable truths about Blessed Alojzije Stepinac. The facts about him had been distorted, terrible fabrications inserted, virtues, achievements and victories suppressed – a lie upon lie, a system of lies, a system of exterminating and shaming of Croats! And the truth was in fact the opposite: he was a pillar of human rights.

All Croatian history should be re-written, from the possible Iran about which we cannot speak even to this day, through Goldstein’s denial of King Tomislav’s crowning on the Duvanj Field, the concealment of the magnificent gathering of the Croatian people around the Croatian Peasant Party and its destruction by the communists, the terrible exaggeration of Ustashe crimes and about the partisan regime “anti-fascism”, all the way to the UDBa (communist Yugoslavia secret service) which is active even today and the “civil” associations, which are communist lodges.

The Croatian media have relayed the launch of Dr. Gitman’s book (more than 500 people at the launch) correctly, both the content and importance of her second book about Stepinac, so I will not repeat it here. However, I must point out two very important things I learned from this event.

Prof. dr. sc. Matko Marusic

1. The great dignitary of the Croatian Church is an international pillar of human rights

Dr. Gitman, in the title of her book, has called Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac – a pillar, which when translated from the English language into Croatian means “main bearer, column, supporter, anchor, tower, chief supporter”. Through scientific research Dr. Gitman has proved that the Croatian cardinal, condemned by communists and spat upon by innumerable wretches – was not an Ustasha, a criminal, a traitor, a narrow-minded cleric or a collaborator, but a main bearer, a column, a supporter, an anchor, a tower, chief supporter, a pillar – of human rights! The book should be read to the last detail because, in it, there are countless data of which we have never heard before (we have lived in a lie!) and of which we must be proud.

Dr. Gitman said that the whole world admires the Croatians because of Stepinac, but not just because of him but also because of the goodness of the Croatian people in those terrible days: she said that there were few thousands signatures of Croatian people who sought from the NDH (Independent State of Croatia) regime to release the arrested Jews – their neighbours and acquaintances, good and innocent people. Croats signed it at the cost of threat to their lives, some even signed it by thumbprint because they were illiterate!

Admit that you did not know this. (I myself didn’t know this and now I, from sheer joy and pride, I don’t know what to do with myself!) Is there a single country in the world, and a single nation, that can show signatures of few thousands of people who, at the cost of their own survival, in World War II, under Nazi occupation, openly pledged their own safety to save the Jews? No! Let Yad Vashem say if there is? Let us be proud of that now and forever, Croatian brothers and sisters! I heard another detail at the book launch that fascinated me and I want to share it with you. There were Jewish men and women in the Croatian Catholic Church before the Second World War who converted to Catholic religion and who were then ordained as priests and nuns. The NDH regime ordered that they do not have to wear the Jewish yellow star like all other Jews in public even though they were Jews. And then their leader, Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, asked them to wear the yellow star all until other Jews had to wear it!

Is there in the history of battles for human rights a more beautiful and a more noble gesture than this? There isn’t! Croatian brothers and sisters, we who have this in our history, let’s not permit people who hate us and who want our state to disappear to dish out to us lessons on human rights!

Here, I ask Minister Divjak: is this very important fact of history going to appear in the new history curriculum???

2. Croatian history must be re-written Croatian history must be re-written!

That with which Dr. Gitman came out with regards to Cardinal Stepinac is big enough and unquestionable to point out to the need to also come out with other Croatian truths, against lies that were and are taught to us, against prohibitions, distortions and suppressions that still prevail. The lies about Stepinac were terribly big, negative and horrible, and after the findings of the neutral, educated and honest Jewish Dr. Gitman it turns out that not only what was said was not the truth but that the truth is actually on the opposite side! That is why from that day onwards, in the public domain, with trumpets and drums, the works, arguments and evidence, by B. Matković, S. Lozo, V. Horvat, N. Banić, R. Leljak, M. Koić, S. Pilić, I. Vukić, S. Razum, J. Jurčević, M. Ivezić and other Croatian historians who have exposed all the main falsifications by Croatian enemies – must come out.

Those who distort Croatian history, such as S. Koren, I. Goldstein, H. Klasić, T. Jakovina and others similar to them, should face these Croatian historians with scientific arguments, in public, so that we can all se who is in the right! Dr. Gitman has called upon E. Zuroff and G. Greif, the Jewish slanderers of Croatian people, for a debate, and Croatian historians have called upon those who cling to the old lies for a public debate (e.g. Igor Vukić). And this must occur! The Croatian public must not stop calling for the slanderers of Croatian people from Croatia (they are mentioned above) to faee up at a public debate with the Croatian historians, who have exposed their lies, the lies of their teachers and their Serbo-communist commanders! Mounting one argument against the other could be presented in all the media and in every form, from HTV to HAZU. Without insults and labelling! With Dr. Esther Gitman’s books, the age of labelling and insulting (judging, destroying) those who prove different has well and truly passed!

We want a truthful Croatian history! We want the truth in historical science, in public, in institutions, in the judiciary, in schools and in textbooks. Dear readers, you must never forget this and you must never relent from your national and human rights! Besides, through your Cardinal Blessed Alojzije Stepinac and your ancestors, who, although at the cost of their own lives, massively defended and guarded their Jewish co-citizens under the World War Two Nazi occupation, you too are a main bearer, a column, a supporter, an anchor, a tower, a chief supporter and a pillar of human rights! Who then can take away, deny or diminish your human rights? Nobody! A new time has come; Croatians are now righteous among nations. Our history is noble and bright and we need to realise that and openly talk about it to all and everywhere.

Matko Marušić, professor emeritus

Split (Croatia)