dr Zvonko MARIĆ 

Dr. ZVONIMIR ZVONKO Marić, son of IVO, born on November 19, 1910, in Mostar. He was a physician at Ban’s Hospital, a pre-war member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ), a prominent activist, and a collaborator of the National Liberation Movement. He was one of the lecturers in health courses for nurses, where many future nurses in the detachment were trained. He procured medical supplies, instruments, and medications, which he provided to the illegal fighters in the Battalion, and treated the illegal fighters at their homes, taking on great personal risk. Here are a few recorded examples: in July 1941, he performed surgery on the wounded fighter Esad Fejić. “Dr. Marić performed the surgery, applied a cast, but we still had to transfer the wounded to the hospital for treatment, using a false name.” In March 1942, partisan Šćepo Pavlović was “accommodated in Laza Radišić’s house, where he was treated by Dr. Marić for a month until his next mission in early April.” When courier Gojko Botić from the Nevesinje Detachment was injured in the leg during a shootout, “he took refuge in Sava Zupac’s house, where they later brought Dr. Marić.” He also helped the captured youth Enver Ćemalović escape from the hospital where he was held: (Dr. Zvonko Marić and Dr. Han Arpad) “constantly reported higher body temperatures than we actually had and convinced the police that we were seriously ill, giving us time to organize our escape.”

He was arrested as a hostage on May 11, 1942, a few days after Laca and Ćimba set fire to a huge tobacco factory warehouse in Mostar during a sabotage operation. He was interned with five other civilians in a concentration camp on the Prevlaka Peninsula, and later transferred to a cell in the fortress on Mamula Island. He was tortured and executed by the Italians, along with Tripo Uljarević and two others, beneath the walls of the ruined fortress “Španjola” in Herceg Novi. He was the father of two children. According to one testimony, “When his wife was expecting their first child, the Italians arrested Dr. Marić and imprisoned him in Ćelovina, where he learned about the birth of his daughter. It happened that the Carabinieri commander allowed Dr. Marić, accompanied by a crowd of soldiers, to kiss his wife in the hospital room for the last time and meet his child for the first time.”