Zun Uros

Žun, Uroš In late 1940, Recha Freier, the woman who founded Youth Aliyah in Germany, arranged for a group of German Jewish youngsters to reach Yugoslavia, from where they would to immigrate to Eretz Israel. They were taken in small groups, from different places in Germany and Austria. One group, consisting of 16 girls, arrived in Maribor, on the Yugoslav border with Austria in January 1941. When they arrived, they had to wait for the smugglers who were to take them to Zagreb. The guides, upon hearing shouting in Slovenian, fled the area leaving the girls stranded. Yugoslav border guards took them to the police station in Maribor, where Uroš Žun, the commissioner of the border police, understood the difficult situation these Jews were in. Žun called the local Jewish community, which arranged for the girls to stay in a local hotel. Žun had received specific orders from the government in Belgrade not to allow any Jewish refugees to cross the border, but he knew that to send the girls back to Germany was tantamount to sentencing them to death. A compassionate Žun decided to allow the girls to stay. Žun then announced that he had disobeyed the orders in an attempt to shake up the local population, which largely stood on the side of the authorities on the issue of helping Jewish refugees. His idea was to try to affect their standpoint. This action, at a time when Yugoslavia had a semi-fascist regime, was bold and extraordinary and indeed, Žun’s determination and persistence over a period of two weeks helped persuade the government in Belgrade. After these two weeks, during which time the Jewish girls were lodged in the hotel, Žun announced to them that they could go to the Krško refugee camp, where they stayed and then joined another group of youngsters in Zagreb. This larger group escaped to the Italian zone and resided in Lesno Brdo, near Lubljana for a year. Later the group was moved to Nonantola, Italy, where they resided in a villa, Villa Emma. In October 1943the group had to escape again, this time to Switzerland, where they remained until the end of the war. They left for Palestine in June 1945. When the Germans and their Axis allies invaded Yugoslavia, in April 1941, Žun fled with his family to Zagreb because the Gestapo was searching for him. He later joined the partisans and survived the war. For many years after the war, the girls helped by Žun regarded him as the person that had saved their lives. They included: Tilla Nagler (Offenberger), Gisela Wiesner, Fanni Senft (Zwick), Paula Teitelbaum (Munves), Lilly Lewin (Neumann), Ruth Drucker (Mashiach), Blume Zwick (Irit Rosenberg), Betty Endzweig (Sochschevsky), Sonja Borus (Harari), Lola Schindelheim (Feilchenfeld), Gerda Tuchner (Ben Baruch), Frieda Stern (Endzweig), Hilda Steinhardt (Miron), Berta Reich, and Eva Reich (Froehlich). On July 7, 1986, Yad Vashem recognized Uroš Žun as Righteous Among the Nations.