Zdravko Grebo: The Man We Loved and Respected

By Sead Omeragić

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Professor dr. Zdravko Grebo passed away this morning in Sarajevo at the age of 71. He was a professor emeritus at the Faculty of Law of the University of Sarajevo.
He was born in 1947 in Mostar. He died on January 29, 2019, on the same day as his friend prof. dr. Nijaz Duraković, leader and founder of SDP BiH, a great name in the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nijaz died in 2012, exactly seven years ago. Fate decreed that two great Herzegovinians should depart on the same day.

Zdravko Grebo was a full professor at the Faculty of Law in Sarajevo, teaching Theory of Law. He was the founder of the city radio ZID and the publishing house ZID, which operated even during the bloody siege of Sarajevo. He was the director of the International Postgraduate Center for European Studies at the Faculty of Law in Sarajevo. Founder of the Open Society of BiH, the Helsinki Parliament of Citizens of BiH, he is the recipient of the European Club Award for Peace and Against Racism and Xenophobia, the Roosevelt Medal, and the French Legion of Honour.

Zdravko Grebo was someone for whom ordinary people always had a kind word. A man you had to respect.

The day after he left this world, his address to the citizens was released, in which he quotes the text inscribed on the monolith of the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston: "First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew... When they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me."

It was in his style, a quote that perhaps best explained the arrival, or rather the return, of fascism, already seen in these regions.

He was considered a loyal "'68er" from the time of the student revolutions.

But, more than anything, he was a wonderful and noble man, governed by immense simplicity and sincerity. One who loved his Herzegovina and the football club Velež, that distant, dear spark that ignites a fire in the hearts of Mostar residents throughout their lives. That name that symbolizes Herzegovina and much more than football.

The final farewell to Professor Zdravko Grebo will be on Friday, with a memorial service at the Faculty of Law in Sarajevo and burial at the Bare cemetery.