HORRIFIED BY USTASHA CRIMES, HE CONVERTED TO ORTHODOXY: A Croat saved Serbs as a Ravna Gora hero, the Germans executed him because “he confessed nothing”!

It took 73 years for the heroic conduct of the Yugoslav patriot Dr. Kristo Grbin (43) before the Gestapo to be revealed, who executed him for being an organizer of Draza Mihailovic’s movement.

In 1942, horrified by Ustasha crimes, Kristo Grbin changed his faith and converted to Orthodoxy. Grbin was born on Korcula in Croatia, into a Catholic family whose members identified as Yugoslavs. On that Croatian island today, there is a monument to the victims of the Nazis, which includes Grbin’s name.

At the same time, in Serbia, where this doctor of legal sciences and lawyer was arrested by the Gestapo, brutally tortured, and executed in Jajinci on January 25, 1943, along with 24 other Ravna Gora members, there is no record of him, not even in books.

Insulted Pavelic

However, researcher Ratko Lekovic discovered documents about Grbin in the Gestapo archives, which were taken over by Ozna. The documentation shows that at the beginning of the war, Dr. Grbin lived with his family in Stara Pazova, which belonged to the NDH, and recorded the crimes of the Ustasha. “Ustasha Djura Beker slaughtered eight Serbs… Ustasha Franjo Grbac killed the Serb Tovroljanovic…”, Grbin noted.

After publicly calling Ante Pavelic derogatory names, on October 10, 1941, he fled to Belgrade, where he became one of the leading Ravna Gora underground members. The Gestapo received information that “main conferences of D.M. members (Draza Mihailovic’s movement, editor’s note) are held, which Grbin regularly attends” at 14 Kumanovska Street.

They discovered that Grbin organized the extraction of internees from the concentration camp at Sajmiste and directed them to Ravna Gora units, and that he organized Ravna Gora detachments in eastern Serbia. He was arrested on December 12, 1942, in Belgrade and taken to the Ratnicki Dom (Army House), the Gestapo center for Serbia.

Tortured by the Gestapo

He was interrogated and tortured in the “Anti D.M. section,” headed by Captain Heinz Heinrich Brandt, who signed documents from Grbin’s file several times. He is one of many Ravna Gora members who passed through that torture chamber, with an electric chair and Nazi thugs with whips. Not only did he reveal nothing, but he also gave cynical answers. Regarding a seized list of Ustasha, he said “those are my debtors.” The Nazi investigator concluded that he made the notes to take revenge on the Ustasha later. He was transferred to the Banjica camp as prisoner number 9311. The head of the Gestapo for Serbia, Bruno Sattler, also joined the investigation into Grbin, eventually writing by hand that Grbin was “for reprisal.”

Heroic conduct

Sandra Grbin Udovicic and Ivan Grbin, grandchildren of Kristo Grbin, told Blic that their aunt, late grandmother, and father spoke to them about their grandfather, but they did not know about his heroic conduct during the Gestapo interrogation. “At the same time he was being tortured, his brother and sister were with the Partisans on Korcula. They survived the war. We are proud that our family fought against Nazism in two resistance movements. Our father often took us to Jajinci and told us about our grandfather. He tried to obtain the documents. He died without seeing them,” says Ivan.

Sandra states that the Ustasha authorities demanded that their grandmother Jozefina divorce their grandfather and threatened to send her and the children to Jasenovac. “Her brothers gave a statement that she is a devoted Catholic and that divorce is out of the question. Our grandmother, who was a witness to the Sarajevo Assassination in 1914, left Sarajevo in the nineties. She died after the NATO bombing of Belgrade, at the age of 101,” says Sandra.

Gestapo: He confessed nothing

The final Gestapo report from January 4, 1943, states: “Grbin, despite intensified interrogation, confessed nothing. He gives the impression of a very bitter enemy of the Germans. It is completely certain that he held a leading role in the DM organization and that he was very active. Therefore, he is proposed for execution.” On the same day, Brandt signed and underlined twice: “Kristo Grbin should be shot.”