The collection of military history has largely inherited the holdings of the former Museum of the Revolution, and due to the Homeland War in the 1990s, it also collects, preserves and processes objects from that period of Croatian history.
Objects from the Second World War regularly arrive at the Museum, usually as part of the family legacy of war participants as partisan fighters or camp inmates, as well as various post-war medals and awards. Among them are those that belonged to the Franelić brothers, Mirko and Stanislav. In 2007, Stanislav’s wife Adela donated to the Museum her husband’s drawings and a blanket from the Italian camp Fraschette di Alatri, as well as a memorial plaque and the Tuhobić 1941 charter to Mirko Franelić. Jadranka Kaloper Bakrač, niece of Mauricijo Magašić, PhD (Rijeka, 1813 – Zagreb, 2009), a participant in the National Liberation War and a council member of ZAVNOH, donated 48 of his social recognitions and medals in 2008, including the Commemorative Medal of the Partisans of 1941 and medal of the Order of the Croatian Interlace (2003).
The shocking diary of the young woman from Sušak, Milojka Mezorana, written during the Second World War, was donated to the Museum in 2009 by Mihael Sobolevski, PhD. Milojka Mezorana, Ana Frank (M. Sobolevski) of Sušak, a 16-year-old high school student during the Italian occupation of Sušak, had written her first diary from 1941 to the end of 1942 which she destroyed. She kept a second diary during the German occupation from 26th September to 24th December, 1943, when she joined the anti-fascist resistance, and her apartment in Sušak became a repository of the partisan press. In mid-August 1944, she was arrested and taken first to Auschwitz, then to the Chemnitz camp and some other German camps. Having survived, she returned home on 26th July 1945 and found her hidden diary in the apartment, to fill its pages with her terrible experience from the time until her return to Sušak.
Collection manager: Kristina Pavec