Zanković Petar

Zanković, Petar Milan and Adele Richter, and their three children, Stanka, Marjan and Ivan, moved from Zagreb to Belgrade on the eve of the arrival of World War II to Yugoslavia. When the Germans and their Axis allies occupied Yugoslavia, Milan took his son Marjan and they fled the city, heading for the home of Petar Zanković in the city of Sutomore, Montenegro. Milan served with Zanković’s father in WWI and the families had remained friends. A while later the rest of the family joined Milan and Marjan in Sutomore, which was under Italian occupation at the time. The Richters did not want to endanger their hosts and therefore moved to a hotel in nearby Bar, where other Jews who had fled Belgrade were also staying. During a partisan offensive, Milan Richter was arrested and sent to the Klos concentration camp in Albania. Petar Zanković turned to the Montenegrin Bishop Dobričić for help in having Milan released. After his release the Richters went to stay with the Zanković family. They remained there until September 1943, when Germany occupied all the territories previously under Italian rule, and Petar Zanković moved them to a monastery in Bar, and from there to the city of Livari. In February 1944, the Germans discovered their hiding address and the family was sent to Bergen Belsen, but fortunately they survived. After the war when Adele Richter visited the Zanković family to thank them for saving her family, she discovered that they had also given shelter to two other Jewish families, for which “offense” Zanković family members had been arrested and severely punished. On December 25, 2006, Yad Vashem recognized Petar Zanković as Righteous Among the Nations.