Greta Ferušić, the only person to survive the Holocaust and the Siege of Sarajevo, sadly passed away last week at the age of 98.

The former Dean of the University of Sarajevo’s architecture faculty, Ferušić was involved in a number of infrastructure projects in the Bosnian capital.

Ferušić was born in the Serbian city of Novi Sad in 1924. Twenty years later in 1944, she was sent to Auschwitz with her family, and was the only member of her family to survive the camp.

Once the camp was liberated by Russia’s Red Army in 1945, Ferušić returned to Serbia, and studied an architecture degree in Belgrade. She met her future husband and colleague, Seid during this period, and relocated to Sarajevo in 1952, where she began working as an assistant at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Sarajevo.

Ferušić spent time in Paris in the 1960s before returning to Sarajevo. She was elected Vice-Dean of the university in 1970, and served as the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture from 1972-1975.

During the siege of Sarajevo, which lasted from 1992-1995, Ferušić refused to leave her home, despite Serbian soldiers surrounding the city.

“Already in my life I had been forced to leave my home. I will never leave my home willingly again,” she says in the documentary directed by Haris Pašović titled Greta. The 1997 documentary tells of the architect’s life story, and was shown at film festivals across the world following its release.

In 2004, Ferušić was named a recipient of the Polish Auschwitz Cross, which seeks to honour survivors of Nazi concentration camps.

She is also recognised as the last person to receive the medal.

Ferušić died on 24 January 2022, at the age of 97. Her legacy as a design luminary in the city of Sarajevo and as a survivor of conflict is unmatched.

Image: Wikipedia

Jarrod Reedie

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