Sljeme (company)

In 1921, Samuel Gati established Sljeme with the first shop at 12 Medulićeva Street in Zagreb. Gati was an Austro-Hungarian trunk maker master with over two decades of experience. In Zagreb, he began production of top quality high-fashion trunks, car trunks, bags, gloves, and accessories under name Sljeme. Company soon became famous for its excellent craftsmanship. They started exporting throughout Europe and took part in numerous exhibitions like the 1937 Paris Exhibition, eventually a store was opened at 26 Ilica Street, Zagreb's busiest street. Expansion continued and a store opened in Belgrade at 2 Poenkarova Street, in the heart of the city. It soon grabbed the attention of the royal family with Princess Olga of Greece and Denmark becoming a regular customer. In 1931 Sljeme became a Royal Warrant Holder of the Yugoslav court. At the beginning of World War II, a new store was opened in Zagreb main square, 1, Ban Jelačić Square.

After World War II communists came to power in Croatia. Private companies were nationalized, including Sljeme. Because the company manufactured "bourgeois" luxury goods and supplied to the royal family purveyor it was considered to be "politically incorrect." Name was forcefully changed into Partizansko Sljeme to celebrate Yugoslav Partisans. By the end of the 1960, Sljeme was merged with another leather goods manufacturer in Zagreb and was discontinued as brand. Sljeme was reborn in 2012.

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  Sljeme ad

Samuel Gati, the founder of Sljeme was an Austro-Hungarian Jew born in 1887 in Szigetvár. After his apprenticeship to become a malletier in Budapest, he moved to Pécs in 1915 and founded a trunk-making company. He got married with Elisabeth Sečan from Nagykanizsa and their daughter Magdalena Gati was born in 1917. After World War I, and maybe because of the White Terror (Hungary), the family moved in 1920 to Zagreb. The following year Samuel Gati continued his trunk-making business with his newly founded company, Sljeme. When World War II started and after the Independent State of Croatia was formed, Jews were persecuted by anti-Semitic legislation (The Holocaust in Croatia). Samuel Gati was not exception. He was arrested and detained first at Crikvenica and then Kraljevica, later he was moved to the Rab concentration camp, all under Fascist Italy rule. Later, after the surrender of Italy, Gati was transferred to Birkenau concentration camp under Nazi Germany control where he was murdered in the camp's gas chamber in 1944.

• Catalogue exhibition "Art Déco i umjetnost u Hrvatskoj između dva rata", chapter "Moda i stil života!" by Djurdja Bartlett, MUO, Zagreb, 2011
• Letters of Samuel Gati to Yugoslav Royal Palace, Maršalat Dvora, 11 Jan 1929, State Archives of the FPRY
• Report #711-II-Pov-1931, Ministry of Interior Affairs, 31 Jan 1931, State Archives of the FPRY
• Letter of Yugoslav Royal Palace, Maršalat Dvora, to Ministry of Interior Affairs, 29 Nov 1931, State Archives of the FPRY
• Mira Schick, Page of Testimony #2049005, Comité Français pour Yad Vashem, Paris, 1991