rescue of Jews in WWII Croatia – Croatia, the War, and the Future

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

Dr Esther Gitman (L) Bishop Vlado Kosic (C) Ina Vukic (R)

On Friday 14 June 2019, and upon written submission, including one by Ina Vukic, Vice-President of the Croatian academy of sciences and arts in diaspora and homeland/HAZUDD, the University of Split, Croatia, has awarded Dr. Esther Gitman an Honorary Doctorate for her long standing research and work into the rescue of Jews and members of other ethnic groups during WWII in Croatia led by Blessed Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, Archbishop of Zagreb during WWII. This, without doubt, brings into focus the exceptional dedication to scientific research into the truth and into the pure good that did prevail, through extraordinary human courage, in historically difficult and challenging times. This Honorary Doctorate bears all the hallmarks of recognising and rewarding scientific research achievements that shine a light upon the very goodness in a soul of a nation, often purposefully obscured by orchestrated falsehoods planted into written history.

Archbishop Marin Barisic (R) Esther Gitman (C) Dragan Ljutic, Rector of University of Split (L)

The field of scientific research of history to which Dr. Esther Gitman has dedicated her professional pursuits was, according to Dr Gitman’s statements, driven by a determination to research the WWII circumstances in which she as a small child was rescued from Nazi occupied Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The research into WWII history she engaged in from 2002, with its results belongs to those rare, exceptional scientific pursuits whose uniqueness and exceptionality influence the world reputation and interests of the entire Croatian people and nation. It rarely happens in the history of scientific research that such research and its findings actually impact upon and break down the negative stereotypical reputation of a nation, such as the one Croatia and her people have suffered after the Second World War due to intentional suppression of historical details of the truth and forgeries of historical facts, such as the ones Yugoslav communists had concocted against Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac. Dr. Esther Gitman, her scientific research and related works regarding the rescue of Jews, Serbs and Roma during WWII Independent State of Croatia/NDH have achieved that rare and uplifting impact.

Dr. Esther Gitman is a USA based world-renowned scientist who has devoted herself to scientific research on the rescue of Jews within the Independent State of Croatia of the Second World War, especially on the role of Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac in rescuing Jews, Serbs, Roma and all others whose lives because of their ethnicity were, due to political circumstances, in mortal danger during that time. Given that Holocaust research has evolved around the world after the Second World War as one of the most important areas of research for the past and the future of humanity, Dr. Esther Gitman’s scientific work has been raised to a particularly high level precisely because it was innovative. Innovative because her research explored the rescue of Jews and not their extermination as other Holocaust researchers had been doing. By putting the rescue of Jews, not extermination, Gitman’s central theme, at the same time, delivers much of the good truth about WWII Croatia/NDH and many of her people into the righteous light that they deserve. Namely, the negative stereotype imposed upon NDH and its people by those who have written and often falsified history or underrepresented the truth, by those who had persecuted Alojzije Stepinac and branded him as Nazi collaborator and condemned him (1946) to death by life house-imprisonment on the basis of such repugnant falsehoods – can no longer stand! The results of Gitman’s scientific work confirm that during the Second World War within the NDH and Bosnia and Herzegovina thousands of Jews and members of other ethnic groups were saved from the death and suffering by Alojzije Stepinac and many like him.

Dr Esther Gitman
Delivering speech at the Honorary Doctorate award
ceremony held in Croatian National Opera Hall/HNK
in Split Croatia, 14 June 2019

Blessed Alojzije Stepinac was indeed and as Esther Gitman’s newest book on her research finding says: A Pillar of Human Rights (Title of Gitman’s new book).

Her research on archival material in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina is very significant, and she has studied over 10,000 archive documents. Her research also includes verbal witness testimonies by several Holocaust survivors from the former Yugoslavia, who at the time of verbal accounts’ recordings lived in various countries, eg Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Israel, Canada and the United States America.

The contribution of Dr. Esther Gitman’s scientific research papers is enormous and remarkable, both for the Croatian society and for the whole world. It reaches the depths of truth and human rights struggles in almost impossible but definitely terrible circumstances. The results and illustrations as well as interpretation of her scientific papers do not remain just a letter on paper, they have taken on the effectiveness of shaping true and factual history and the testimony of humanity that characterises a nation.

By historical science’s criteria, Dr. Esther Gitman’s research and related works are of a very high standard and reach to all layers of both Croatian and world society. Through her scientific research Dr. Esther Gitman demonstrates a perfect ability to convey a multitude of individual historical facts revealed in archival material and oral testimonies into a homogeneous whole of human courage in times of violent violations of human rights. And this human courage as laced through Dr Gitman’s work focuses and shines a light on a Croatian man – Blessed Alojzije Stepinac.

Dr. Esther Gitman undertook her scientific work at the time of NDH history’s socially entrenched moral edges and which edges did not have room for any positive moral values that could be attributed to NDH/WWII Independent State Of Croatia anywhere in the world. For example, when Dr Gitman approached the Fulbright Fellowship Foundation for support with her research plan to delve into the rescue of Jews in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, their reaction was initially one of shock and amazement, and the person interviewing her for the Fulbright Fellowship (which she was subsequently successful in receiving) told her, “Why would you, for goodness sake, want to explore such a topic when the whole world knows what the Ustasha Croats did to Jews and others?”

Dr Esther Gitman
at Blessed Alojzije Stepinac tomb
in the Cathedral at Zagreb, June 2019

Dr. Gitman replied: “Yes, many Jews were killed in Ustasha concentration camps, but my mother and I have survived and so did all the other Jews I knew in my childhood, our survival should be attributed to the help we received from Croatian friends, neighbours, clergy and various humanitarian organisations.”

The reaction to that response from Dr. Gitman was as follows: “An incredible story, I’ve never heard of such a story! Please write a strong submission, ask your professors to review it, then give it to me for a final evaluation.”

On this edge of the overriding general morality attributed to Croats at the time, in early 2000’s, Dr Esther Gitman embarked on her scientific research of factual history.

Looking at the frameworks of the written history of the Second World War and the impact on the prejudices that have evolved over the past decades, Dr. Esther Gitman’s scientific work is remarkable, significant and invaluable for the whole world and for the Croatian society. Ina Vukic