Tomislav Dretar

Tomislav Dretar (born 2 March 1945) is a Croatian, Bosnian, French and Belgian poet, writer, critic, and translator, as well as an academic, journalist, editor, political leader and president of Bihać's HVO. He is also known by the French alias Thomas Dretart. Dretar was born in Nova Gradiška, Croatia, as the son of Ružica Rivić from Ljubija Rudnik in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Vladimir Dretar from Cernik in Nova Gradiška. His mother was a clerk with a finished civil School for Catholic Girls. His father, after completing the Higher Secondary School in Nova Gradiška enrolled the study of forestry at the Forestry Faculty at the University of Zagreb, but in 1941 he left for military education in Stockerau where he received the title of noncommissioned officer. He served as a noncommissioned officer in the Blue SS division from which he deserted because of the humiliating treatment of Croatians by the German commanders. In his absence, a military court sentenced him to death. Dretar's father became an Ustasha volunteer, rising to the rank of second lieutenant. From there he deserted because of the inhumane behavior of the Ustashas and their commanders and, again, was sentenced to death in his absence. He settled down in the Croatian Home Guard as a lieutenant, he was station commander in Vrba. After the fall of Nova Gradiška, Dretar's father retreated with the rest of the Croatian Armed Forces and disappeared during the Yugoslav death march of Nazi collaborators. Tomislav finished the Pedagogic Faculty at the University of Rijeka, and postgraduate studies of humanities at the University of Sarajevo. Writer and literary critic, author of around ten collections of poems and over three hundred scientific, expert and critical texts from the areas of literature, sociology of culture, philosophy, fine arts and political science. In the very beginning of democratic changes in the former Social Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), although being a Marxist educated intellectual he relinquishes his association with the Yugoslav Communist Alliance (KPJ) because of its betrayal of the people.