Anton Zdešar

In memoriam

Lazaristi, žrtve vojne in komunistične revolucije, duhovniki, bogoslovci, bratje (Vincentians, victims of war and the communist revolution, priests, seminarians, members of the order)

Cenotaph; killed and buried at Jastrebarsko, Croatia. Brother of Marjana Zdešar Bastič . Anton Zdešar was born on January 11th, 1871 at Ljubgojna near Horjul, to Tomaž and Mina Zdešar. He was the oldest son in a family of ten children. He requested to be admitted to the Vincentian order in 1891; he studied theology in Ljubljana and Graz, and was ordained on July 19th, 1906. He went on to earn a doctorate in theology and taught in Graz. He was appointed the first head of the mission house at Miren Castle (Mirenski grad) near Gorizia on December 17th, 1913. Just before the outbreak of the First Word War he attended a Vincentian congress in France and was imprisoned in Marseilles because he was unable to return home in time. After the war, the Gorizia area was awarded to Italy and Fascist pressure forced him to leave the area. He worked in Belgrade from 1933 to 1935, then lived in Groblje, and then served as a student spiritual adviser at the Saint Stanislaus Institute in Šentvid, Ljubljana. He was working in Radeče when the Second World War broke out, and was expelled to Croatia by the German authorities. Zagreb Archbishop Stepinac sent him to Jastrebarsko, where he served as a priest at the orphanage and reform school; the facility also served as a children's rehabilitation center during the war, but was characterized after the war as a children's concentration camp. Anton Zdešar was killed in the same bombardment that killed his nephew Štefan Bastič on April 18th, 1945, and he is buried in the cemetery at Jastrebarsko. Source: http://www.brezmadezna.com/md/mucenci.htm

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