Elza Polak

Elza Polak (1910 to 1995) was a Yugoslav horticulturist and gardener who is considered one of the pioneers of modern horticulture in Croatia. Born in Ogulin, she studied agronomy at the University of Zagreb, drawn by a love of flowers and nature, and after graduating in 1933 she worked as a teacher and engineer at the School of Gardening in Božjakovina, the only such institution in Yugoslavia, instructing several generations of gardeners in plant production and garden design. In 1940 she was appointed gardening referee by the government of the Banovina of Croatia in Zagreb. Being a Jew, she was dismissed and shunned after the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, and in 1943 she led her students out of the occupied territory to the land held by the Partisans, where she was employed as an agronomist producing food for the military.