Zdravko Dizdar was born in Oklaj in 1948. He attended elementary school in Orolik , near Vinkovci (grades 1-4) and in his native Oklaj (grades 5-8), and he attended and completed high school (social studies) in Zemun from 1962. He began studying history (single-subject major) in 1966 at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade , and continued from the second year and completed in April 1970 at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb .

From 1972 to 1980 , he worked as a curator at the Pounja Regional Museum in Bihać. He managed the collections, published contributions, and organized exhibitions on the recent history of Pounja (from 1878 to 1945 ).

At the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, he defended his master’s thesis ” The Workers’ Movement of Pounja 1929-1941″ in 1979 , and his doctoral dissertation Chetnik crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1941 to 1945 He defended his thesis in 2001 (at the same faculty).

From 1980 until his retirement, he worked as a scientist at the Croatian Institute of History.