DIARY OF WOMAN WHO RESCUED CHILDREN IN WW 2 PUBLISHED IN ZAGREB

ZAGREB, Dec 14 (Hina) - The Croatian State Archives institution has recently published a diary, kept by Diana Budisavljevic from 1941 to 1945. Mrs. Budisavljevic, the wife of Mr. Julije Budisavljevic, a professor at the Zagreb medical school at the time, worked together with Zagreb Archbishop, Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, to rescue thousands of children of the Serb origin (namely kids form Serb Orthodox families) during the Fascist regime in the then Independent State of Croatia. #L# Credit goes to Mrs. Budisavljevic, who was an Austrian, for keeping files about 12,000 children and helping them to come back to their families after they had been separated from their parents. The Archives also presented Diana Budisavljevic's activities in the book entitled 'Actions of Diana Budisavljevic' (unofficial translation). "In Zagreb there was no concerted action to help members of the Orthodox believers. My proposal to some ladies from Orthodox circles to organise the help met with no response," Mrs. Budisavljevic wrote in the introduction to her diary. She helped mothers and children, expelled from villages in the area of Kordun and transported to camps in Lobor-grad, Gradiska and Jasenovac and to children whose parents were transported to Germany for forced labour. "I started from the position that my life was no more valuable than lives of the innocent who were persecuted," she put down in her diary. She wrote about her meetings with Archbishop Stepinac when they discussed possibilities of helping the needy. Budisavljevic's granddaughter Silvija Szabo translated the diary from German into Croatian. (hina) ms