She Rescued 15,336 Kids from the Holocaust but Died Unknown and Broken-Hearted
Schindler rescued 1,200 souls during the Holocaust. Diana Budisavljević (1891–1978) saved 12 times more from Nazi death camps. Still, she died practically unknown. Married to a respectable Clinical Professor of Medicine, Diana could have stayed away from history. Instead, our rich girl took the greatest humanitarian action in a concentration camp in World War II.She was born in 1891 in Innsbruck (Austria) into the well-known merchant family Obexer. Like many girls of her time, she trained to be a nurse during World War I. At the Innsbruck hospital, she met handsome Julije Budisavljević, an assistant at the surgical clinic. Julije was an ethnic Serb from another well-known family. His father was Croatian politician Budislav Budisavljević, and his further relatives were scientist Nikola Tesla and Jovanka Broz (the wife of Yugoslav president Tito).
Amid hospital beds and syringes, the ambitious doctor and the beautiful nurse fell in love. They got married in 1917. After World War I ended (1918), Julije didn’t want to receive Austrian citizenship, so the couple moved from Innsbruck to Zagreb (today’s Croatia). There Julije took a job as a Professor of Medicine in 1919. At first, everything was going well for the family. In 1921 Julije founded the surgical clinic in Zagreb and worked as an abdominal surgeon. The couple had two daughters Ilse and Jelka, and a nice life in the bourgeoisie until World War II started.
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