Greta Ferušić

Greta Ferušić is a Bosnian architect and academic who survived both the Auschwitz concentration camp and the siege of Sarajevo. He was born on June 26, 1924, in Novi Sad, with the surname Weinfeld, as the only child of a wealthy Jewish family. He died in Sarajevo on January 23, 2022, at the age of 97.

Auschwitz

In the spring of 1944, Nazi Germany rounded up the remaining Jews in Novi Sad and sent them to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Greta, then 19 years old, was separated from her family as soon as she arrived at the camp; He never saw his parents, aunts and uncles again. He was extremely weak and the only survivor of his family when the Red Army entered the camp in January 1945.

Architecture and siege

Less than a year after his liberation, he was enrolled at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Belgrade. She married Bosnian architect Seid Ferušić, whom she met here, in 1948 and settled in Sarajevo. He started teaching at the architecture school of the University of Sarajevo, and after a long academic life, he rose to the position of dean of the school. He managed architectural projects in various parts of Yugoslavia.

When the siege of Sarajevo began in April 1992, he refused to leave the city; While he ensured that his son and his family left the city with a Jewish evacuation convoy, he stayed with his wife and spent nearly four years of bombardment in the city. Having experienced both of these experiences brought his story to the world press. Her life was the subject of director Haris Pasović's 1997 film Greta.