Eduard Miloslavić

Eduard Miloslavić (1884-1952) was a professor of pathology, a descendant of Yugoslavian emigrants to the United States, born in Oakland, California. His father Luko moved from Župa Dubrovačka (10 km from Dubrovnik) to Dubrovnik in 1878. In same year he married Vica Milkovic. A few years later the couple emigrated to the United States. The entire family—Luko, Vica, Eduard and his brothers and sisters—returned to Dubrovnik in 1889.

Miloslavić studied medicine in Vienna, where he became a professor of pathology. In 1920, an invitation came from Marquette University in Wisconsin, to take the chair of pathology, bacteriology and forensic medicine.

In subsequent years "Doc Milo", as colleagues called him, inaugurated criminal pathology in the United States. As an outstanding specialist he was involved in investigations of crimes perpetrated by the Al Capone gang. He was one of the founders of the International Academy for Forensic Medicine, member of many American and European scientific societies and academies, and vice president of the Croatian Fraternal Union (CFU) in the United States.

In 1932, he moved to Zagreb, where he was a full professor in the faculty of medicine. He also lectured in pastoral medicine in the faculty of theology in Zagreb and was known as an ardent adversary of abortion and euthanasia. In 1940, he was elected a member of the prestigious "Medico-Legal Society" in London. In 1941, he was made a full member of the Tzarist Leopoldine Carolingue Academy of Natural Sciences in Germany, and was awarded doctor "honoris causa" by the University of Vienna, where he had started his scientific career. He again moved to the United States in 1944.

After his initiative in 1941 the Faculty of Medicine in Sarajevo was founded in 1944 during the NDH regime.

During his time in Zagreb, in 1943, Miloslavić was among those invited by the International Committee of the Red Cross to take part in an investigation into the massacre of 12,000 Polish officers at Katyn Forest in 1940. This investigation concluded that the Soviet Union had been responsible for the massacre. According to an article published in Vjesnik, December 27, 1992, Miloslavic was sentenced to death in absentia by the Yugoslavian government for his testimony in this investigation.

Eduard Miloslavić