Uglješić Zlatan & Milica

Uglješić, Zlatan Uglješić, Milica Following the German attack on Yugoslavia in April 1941, a collaborator state was established in Croatia, ruled by the Ustaša Fascist movement. In December 1941, a camp for 2,000 Jewish women and children was established in an old mill in Djakovo, near Osijek. In February 1942, another 1,200 women and children were brought from the Stara Gradiska (Gradiška) camp to Djakovo, until the camp was liquidated and its inmates were sent to Jasenovac. Among those sent to Djakovo from Stara Gradiska was Vera Papo (b. 1932). In her testimony to Yad Vashem, Vera described the night when the Ustaša broke into her home. It was the last time she saw her father, who was taken directly to Jasenovac and murdered. The Osijek Jewish community tried to alleviate the suffering of the new inmates by providing them food, blankets and medical care. They also endeavored to smuggle the children out of the camp and find hiding places for them, and thus were able to save a number of boys and girls. "Among these children were my sister, Sara, and me," said Vera. "It was a painful and difficult parting from our mother. We wanted to stay, but our mother comforted us and said it would be better for us to leave, that we would have food and a warm place to stay, and that soon we would all be together again. It was the last time I ever saw her." Vera was separated from her sister. She was first taken in by a Jewish family, but when the deportation of the Osijek Jews began in the summer of 1942, she was transferred to the home of a non-Jewish forester, Zlatan Uglješić. “The man told me not to be afraid, that under no circumstances would he return me to the camp, and that instead he would take me to his family in a village," Vera recalled. Soon after Vera reached the Uglješić home in Podgorje, the liquidation of the Osijek Jewish community began. Vera’s mother and her family, as well as her sister Sara and the Jewish family that had taken her in, were all murdered. Zlatan Uglješić was a member of the resistance, which enhanced the risk of his hiding a Jewish girl. Nevertheless he and his wife Milica took good care of Vera. When the Ustaša raided the village looking for resistance fighters or other persecuted persons, they hid her or went with her into the forests. Vera remembered that the Uglješić home was searched three times. After liberation, Vera had nowhere to go. She stayed with the Uglješić family, and after Milica passed away in 1950, she married Zlatan Uglješić. Zlatan died in 1987, subsequently Vera moved with their two children, Milan and Dubravka, to Sarajevo. In 1992, during the civil war in Yugoslavia, she fled with the children and immigrated to Israel. On October 23, 2012, Yad Vashem recognized Zlatan and Milica Uglješić as Righteous Among the Nations.