Months after Israel honored a Bosnian family with the 'Righteous Among the Nations' award for saving an 11 months-old Jewish baby from Nazi collaborators, the now 76 years-old Nada Kolman and her adoptive brother told their story to N1.

The award represents the highest recognition the State of Israel gives to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from extermination during the WWII Holocaust.

Avdo, Esma, Sabrija and Safeta Prohic, originally from the Bosnian northern town of Gracanica, were awarded in May for taking in Nada as a toddler after the Germans killed her father in 1943 and after her mother died soon after.

Avdo Prohic and his wife Esma first cared for Nada in their home in Gracanica. But when it became too dangerous for her there, they sent the girl to Zagreb to live with their relative Sabrija Prohic until the end of the war.

This is where Nada’s relatives found her and took her with them to Israel.

Kolman, who now lives in Australia under the name Avive Fox, came to Sarajevo in May to attend the award ceremony and that is when she learned the whole story about her saviors.

“Had it not been for them, I would not be sitting here today,” Kolman told N1’s Ika Ferrer Gotic as she sat in the studio with the descendants of the family that saved her.

Her adoptive brother, Egon Sonnenschein, helped persuade Israel to award the Prohic family.

Sonnenschein was older when the war started and remembers how he had to flee with his family.

“As a child, I saw some terrible atrocities at the time. They tried to kill me because I am a Jew,”” Sonnenschein said. “We left and changed our names.”

Egon Sonnenschein became Simon Meklic and while the family was trying to reach Italy, they were caught several times.

“The Ustasha’s (Croatian Nazi collaborators) would hold us up. They would take our things and our money,” he said. “We were hungry and thirsty, but we survived.”

But soon it became dangerous in Italy as well and the family headed for the Swiss mountains.

“The locals there rose up and did not let them chase us away. They even threatened to burn down the police station. That is how we managed to stay,” he said.

When the family returned to Bosnia after the war to see if any other members of their family survived, they found that everyone was dead except for little 3-year-old Nada in Zagreb.

“She was found at home of Sabrija Prohic. They (the Prohic family) tried to save my aunt Helena, but couldn’t,” Sonnenschein remembered.

His parents found little Nada, adopted her and she became his sister.

“Since then, we are very close,” he said.

Together with Nada, the family left for Israel when the borders opened. Egon and Nada went on to live in South Africa where she studied Hebrew.

Israel’s ambassador to Bosnia, Boaz Rodkin, pointed out how important Nada’s story is.

“For us, it is an important story because we must always remember the horrors of the Holocaust. In the darkest days of Europe, there were rays of light. Maybe not often, but they were there, as the story of family Prohic shows,” he said.

“They saved Jews, risked their own lives, as everyone who provided a safe haven for Jews risked their life, as the Nazis could have killed them. This is why this is an important story and we are honoured to be able to award the Prohic family with the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’,” he said.