Esther Gitman - Biography

Dr. Esther Gitman is a American-Jewish historian who is an expert on the Holocaust in Yugoslavia specifically focusing on Independent State of Croatia.

Gitman was born in Sarajevo, which was part of the Independent State of Croatia during World War II. Her family survived the Holocaust through the help of non-Jews. She has lived in the United States of America since 1972. Before that her family lived for a short time in Israel, then moved to Canada and finally in 1972 moved to United States.

Gitman received a bachelor's degree in history and sociology from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and a graduate degree in criminal justice from Long Island University. She earned a Ph.D. from City University in New York in Jewish history.

She began her research into the Croatian-Jewish history in 1999 with her dissertation Rescue of Jews in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941-1945. In 2002 she received a Fulbright scholarship to travel to Croatia to continue her research. In 2008, Gitman participated in a conference on Aloysius Stepinac, the senior member of the Catholic Church among the Croats in the Second World War.

Gitman has compiled databases on Jews who survived from Sarajevo and Zagreb. In 2011 she published a book When Courage Prevailed: The Rescue and Survival of Jews in the Independent State of Croatia 1941-1945 with the subject of rescues and survival of Jews in Independent State of Croatia and also about the role of Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac in these matters.