Yesterday (28.1.2022.) in the presence of representatives of the Chair of the Chakavian Parliament for the History of Istria, donors of the company Kamen from Pazin, the State Archives in Pazin and the Pajc family, on their renovated family house, located at the top of the Pazin old town of Buraj, a plaque was reinstalled to the Croatian journalist and publicist Otokar Keršovani, killed in 1941 by the Ustasha authorities in Zagreb's Dotrščina.
In a short presentation, the President of the Executive Board, Professor Josip Šiklić, noted the importance of Otokar Keršovani, whose name was also borne by the Pazin high school until the early 1990s. In a short presentation Šiklić noted that Keršovani was born in Trieste in 1902, so the return of this tablet coincides with the 120th anniversary of his birth. He lived in Pazin during the First World War from 1912 to 1918, where he finished elementary school and six classes of Croatian high school. After the First World War, following the fate of many Istrians, the family went to live in Karlovac, where Keršovani passed the maturity test in 1921, the same year when the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was placed outside the law of the so-called Obznan. In high school, Keršovani publishes the magazine Timor, according to the initials of his foreign exchange Sad Istria must be liberated by work. He enrolls in the Faculty of Forestry in Zagreb, but leaves it, dedicates himself to journalism and writes for the Zagreb News and Free Tribune.
In 1925 he moved to Belgrade and until 1930 was the most intense period of his journalistic-publicist activity. He joined the Communist movement in 1927 and was sentenced to one year in prison the following year. On his return from his assignment in Vienna, he was arrested on 14 February 1930 and sentenced to ten years in prison in Belgrade. He continued to work and write politically in the Mitrovac Penitentiary, especially on current political and historical issues. He was released from prison on February 17, 1940. of the year. After demonstrations against the Tripartite Pact, a large group of intellectuals, leaders, communists were arrested in Zagreb at night from 30 to 31 March 1941. Among them was Keršovani, who was handed over to the Kerestinec camp, where he continued his lectures and writings. He rejected several suggestions to be freed by the Ustashas, and when they last came to pick him up, he only asked to complete a sentence on the thesis for Croatian history. He was shot on 9 July 1941 in Dotrščina as the "spiritual initiator" of the resistance, as the Ustashas announced in an advertisement.
Keršovani published socio-economic analyses, literary reviews and studies on Croatian writers (Šenoa, Kovačić, Cesarac, etc.). In prison, he wrote a summary. History of Croats (published in 1971) while the selection is from his work Cultural and historical topics Published in Edition Istria through the centuries (1979).
The importance of Keršovani is also evidenced by the fact that the Croatian Journalists' Association established a lifetime achievement award in journalism, which has been awarded since 1965, which was received by the famous Croatian golden pen Zlatar, Inoslav Bešker, Zvonimir Milčec, Giga Gračan, Igor Mandić, Drago Hedl, Jasna Babić, Sanja Modrić and others.
About the installation of the board, which was placed on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the high school in Pazin in 1969. In the year, in honor of Kersovani, Galiano Labinjan, President of the Assembly of the Chair, and long-time director of the gymnasium, spoke in Buraj. (Text: Anton Finderle, photos: Jacob Kmet)
