Hospitalizing a Healthy Man to Save Him from the Holocaust

The Fellowship  |  September 21, 2016

Dr. Jozo Jagodic

Life: 1897-1973

Why you should know him: Jozo Jagodic was a Croatian doctor who saved the life of a Jewish man by inventing false maladies to keep him hospitalized, while also hiding other Jewish patients to save them from deportation to death camps.

While the Nazis and their evil allies were murdering millions of Jews and others across Europe, there were those who stood for good and the Jewish people, saving many with their selfless actions. One of these was a Croatian doctor named Jozo Jagodic.

A Croatian Jew named Gustav Erenfrajnd took steps to save himself when the Nazis invaded his country in 1941 – converting to Christianity and changing his name. These measures, however, didn’t help him.

On the day that Croatian Jews were to be deported to death camps, a friend of Gustav told him to pretend to be ill. Under Nazi guard, the Jewish man was taken handcuffed to the hospital. There, Dr. Jozo Jagodic diagnosed Gustav with appendicitis, ordering him to undergo immediate surgery. The surgeon informed Dr. Jagodic that the patient was fine, so the kindly doctor began to invent further illnesses.

By creating fake complications, Dr. Jagodic was able to keep Gustav in the hospital from August 1942 until January 1943. During that time, Gustav – who was hidden in the hospital basement and even in doctors’ homes – noticed a group of Jewish women also being sheltered from the Nazis.

After five months, Gustav was able to join a partisan group that fought the Nazis. But it would not have been possible without the heroic actions of Dr. Jozo Jagodic, who was posthumously named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 2002.