The following text is not a historical study. It is a retelling of the witness’s life story based on the memories recorded in the interview. The story was processed by external collaborators of the Memory of Nations. In some cases, the short biography draws on documents made available by the Security Forces Archives, State District Archives, National Archives, or other institutions. These are used merely to complement the witness’s testimony. The referenced pages of such files are saved in the Documents section.
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... because we lost a generation, which is today’s middle generation. These are people between 25 and 45 years old, who know absolutely nothing about history
was born on October 4, 1945. in Zagreb
attended the Classical High School
graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Zagreb
specialized in urology
is the president of the Jewish Municipality of Zagreb
is the president of the Coordination of Jewish Municipalities of Croatia
is the initiator of separate annual commemorations in Jasenovac
is the initiator of the initiative to ban Ustasha signs and Ustasha greeting „For the homeland ready“
Ognjen Kraus was born on October 4, 1945 in Zagreb in a Jewish family. He also completed his medical studies in Zagreb, specialized in urology and worked in that job all his life. His father was also born in Zagreb in 1912 and before the Second World War he graduated from law school. His mother was born in Slovenia, in a place then called Strnišće, and when World War II began, she studied medicine in Ljubljana. He points out that the mother was left-wing orientated and was arrested and taken to Italy right at the beginning of the war. His father was Jewish, who had a premonition of what might happen to them, and very soon after the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia, in the summer of 1941, he fled the country with his mother. First, they came to the Italian part of Rijeka via Sušak, and from there they fled to Italy. There, they both spent the entire war in a labor camp, in the northwest of Italy, near the border with France. When Italy capitulated in September 1943, he fled to Switzerland, where he saw the end of the war. After her arrest in Ljubljana, her mother ended up in various prisons in Italy, but she also managed to escape to Switzerland after the capitulation in 1943. His parents met and got married there. Immediately after the end of the war, they decided to move to Zagreb, his father’s hometown. His mother was already seven months pregnant at the time and they wanted the children to be born in Zagreb. That’s how the twins Ognjen and Živa were born in October 1945 in Zagreb. There they finished elementary school and Classical High School. Ognjen graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Zagreb and specialized in urology. He spent his entire working life as a urologist in various hospitals in Zagreb. He is the president of the Jewish Municipality of Zagreb and the Coordination of Jewish Municipalities of Croatia. From these positions, he advocates for numerous issues that are important for the Jewish communities of Zagreb and Croatia. Thus, due to disagreements with the Government and some other state bodies, he initiated separate commemorations in the Jasenovac concentration camp. Also, Ognjen Kraus is the initiator of the request to ban the Ustasha greeting “For the homeland ready” and the Ustasha insignia. He advocates for the return of property to Jewish families whose property was confiscated during World War II and later nationalized. He believes that since the independence of Croatia, history is constantly being changed and rewritten, that the number of Jews who perished in the war is decreasing, and that crimes are being denied or attempted to be covered up. Because of this, he also believes that an entire generation of people, those between the ages of 25 and 45, are lost, that they know nothing about history because everything they were taught was false history. Nevertheless, he hopes that the situation can be improved in the future and everything he does, he does with that goal in mind.
Witness story in project Stories of the 20th century (Milena Žarković, Tena Banjeglav)