When Carpathia came to Titanic’s assistance, 76 Croatian crewmembers were part of the ship's complement. Among them was Josip Car who assisted Titanic survivors in getting out of the boats and onboard. He took good care of them by keeping them warm in blankets and ensuring that they were as comfortable as possible. Once aboard the Carpathia, with the rare exception, Titanic’s survivors discarded their lifebelts which lay abandoned on deck. Car took one to keep as a memento and brought it back to Croatia with him. In 1938 he donated his lifebelt to the Rijeka Museum where it was kept in storage and eventually forgotten. Two decades ago, in the year 2000, Slobodan Novakovic and his Swiss colleague Günter Bäbler extensively studied Titanic’s history and located Rijeka’s lost lifebelt[1]. It was sadly found in a very poor condition. It has since been fully cleaned and extensively  repaired and put on display in the Museum. It is the only known Titanic lifebelt to be in Eastern Europe.

[1] https://inavukic.com/tag/josip-car/