Greta Weinfeld Ferusic, a survivor of both the Auschwitz death camp and the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s, died in the Bosnian capital, Jewish community representatives said Tuesday (January 25th).
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Members of Sarajevo's Jewish community said the elderly lady died Monday at the age of 97.
Born in 1924 in what is now northern Serbia, Greta Weinfeld Ferusic was deported to Auschwitz, Poland, in 1944 with several members of her family.
She was the only one of her family to come out alive.
"A wonderful person"
At the end of World War II, she studied architecture in Belgrade before moving to Sarajevo.
There, she served as a professor at the University of Architecture, of which she eventually became the dean.
But with the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia, the professor was again caught in the snare of conflict.
During the Bosnian war, from 1992 to 1995, she refused to be evacuated while Serb forces surrounded Sarajevo.
During more than three years of siege, more than 11,000 people had been killed, including 1,600 children and adolescents.
"
During the Second World War, all of Europe had problems and suffered (while during the war in Bosnia), just 100 kilometers away as the crow flies, people lived normally, unaffected by events, not noticing what's going on here
," she said of the siege.
“
A wonderful person has left us.
She's been through a lot of things, good and horrible
," Haris Pasovic, who made a documentary about Greta Ferusic, said on Facebook.
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This work entitled “
Greta
”, produced in 1997, recounts her life and was screened at several international film festivals.
In the film, she explains why she decided to stay in besieged Sarajevo.
“
Already in my life I had been forced to flee my home.
I will never again leave my house of my own free will
.”
Over six million European Jews were exterminated by the Nazis between 1941 and 1945.
