Holocaust survivor
Serbian writer Ivan Ivanji dies
The writer, diplomat and journalist Ivan Ivanji died at the age of 95. photo
© Georg Hochmuth/APA/dpa
On Wednesday, Serbian concentration camp survivor Ivan Ivanji took part in the opening of the Forced Labor Museum in Weimar as a contemporary witness. A few hours later, the 95-year-old writer died in Weimar.
The survivor of the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald and Serbian writer Ivan Ivanji has died at the age of 95. He died on Thursday in Weimar, as the city administration announced on Friday. A few hours earlier he had taken part in the opening of the new forced labor museum in Weimar. Ivanji, born in 1929, was arrested as a Jew from Novi Sad in 1944 and deported via camps in Subotica and Baja to Auschwitz on May 27, 1944, and later to the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar and several of its subcamps.
After World War II, Ivanji worked as an interpreter for the Yugoslav government and long-time Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito. Between 1974 and 1978 he was counselor for culture and press at the Yugoslavian embassy in Bonn. He worked as a journalist, published poems and novels and translated works by German writers such as Günter Grass, Bertolt Brecht, Max Frisch and Heinrich Böll into Serbian. Ivanji, who is considered one of the most important Serbian writers, has lived in Vienna and Belgrade since 1992. In 2020 he became an honorary citizen of the city Weimar.
“It is with deep sadness that I say goodbye to Ivan Ivanji, who left us just a few hours after he opened the “Forced Labor in National Socialism” museum in Weimar in a symbolic act,” wrote Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (Left) on Friday in the short message service
“With him, Weimar is losing an extraordinary personality who was deeply connected to our city and the legacy of Buchenwald,” emphasized Mayor Peter Kleine (independent). There is a book of condolence for Ivanji in the Weimar town hall.