The Diana Budisavljević Award is awarded by the Serbian National Council for the first time for commitment to humanism. Long-term work in anti-war campaigns, on building peace, persistent advocacy for the memory of the victims of war, as well as the insistence on confronting all warring parties with the crimes committed, ensured Vesna Teršelic this valuable recognition.
Diana Budisavljević (Innsbruck, January 15, 1891 - Innsbruck, August 20, 1978) was a Croatian humanitarian and independent social activist.
During World War II, from 1941 to 1945, she encouraged and organized rescues from Ustasha concentration camps, participated in the care and kept systematic data on around 12,000, mostly Serbian children and their mothers from the Kordun and Kozara areas.
She was born and educated in Innsbruck, Austria. After finishing high school, she married dr. honey. Julija Budisavljevića and moved to Zagreb with him in 1919. After the establishment of the Faculty of Medicine dr. Budisavljević founded the Department of Surgery and was appointed professor of surgery.
After learning about the suffering of Serbian women and children in the Loborgrad Ustasha camp in the fall of 1941, Diana Budisavljević and a group of collaborators organized the "Diana Budisavljević Action" as she called it.
The action consisted of collecting and sending aid in the form of money, food, clothing and medicine to women and children imprisoned in the Loborgrad, Gornja Rijeka, Stara Gradiška, Jasenovac, Mlaka and Jablanac camps; then extracting and transporting mothers and children from the camps; then, adopting abandoned camp children into families in Zagreb, Jastrebarsko and Sisak, as well as into children's homes and hospitals, and collecting aid for their support. In addition, she kept a systematic and complex file of records of children, which enabled their reunification with mothers and fathers who had been sent to forced labor in Germany. In addition to caring for their bare life and survival, Diana Budisavljević tried to preserve the identity of the children and thus enable their return to their families.
She recorded her testimony about her actions and the horrific Ustasha terror against Serbian women and children in a diary that began on October 23, 1941, and ended on February 7, 1947. The diary testifies to her extraordinary courage, perseverance, humanity, and selflessness. Through the care of Diana's granddaughter, psychologist Dr. Silvija Szabo, the documentation and diary were preserved, on the basis of which the Croatian State Archives published the book "Diary of Diana Budisavljević" in 2003.
Immediately after liberation, in May 1945, and at the request of the Ministry of Social Policy, or the Department for the Protection of the People (OZNA), she had to hand over the files with data on the children and parents of the concentration camp to the authorities.
Associates of Diana Budisavljević: Marko Vidaković, Đuro Vukosavljević, Kamilo Bresler, Ivanka Džakula, Dragica Habazin, Jana Koch, Tatjana Marinić, Vera Černe, Branko Dragišić, Ljubica Becić etc.
