NINA LENCEK

LENCEK--Nina A.,

(nee Lovrencic), died two months short of her 91st birthday, at dawn on November 25, in the arms of her daughters Bibi and Lena Lencek. Born prematurely on January 18, 1924 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Nina Antonia Hedvika was the fourth of five children of Antonietta Manzoni and the poet/writer Joza Lovrencic, and the grandniece of Italian novelist Alessandro Manzoni. Gifted with beauty, a philosophical cast of mind, mischievous humor, a vast talent for languages, music, and art, Nina had boundless energy, courage, good judgment, and a fierce intelligence that helped her survive the trauma of World War II, the rigors of post-war displacement to Italy, and eventual resettlement in the United States. Adaptable and inventive, she excelled in every profession in which she worked: as interpreter/secretary for the British Red Cross and the Allied Military Government for Occupied Forces in the aftermath of WW II; radio broadcaster in Trieste; EKG technician in Chicago; in various areas of library science at the libraries of Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology; University of Illinois; and, until her retirement in 1989, as Slavic and East European Bibliographer, Columbia University. She had studied Slavic philology at the University of Ljubljana, where she met her future husband, Dr. Rado L. Lencek (1921-2005), Professor Emeritus of Slavic Languages and Cultures, Columbia University. They married in Gorizia, Italy, in May 1946. Her account of the Allies' forced repatriation of thousands of captured anti-Communist Yugoslavs and Russians in the spring 1945 -among them members of her own family - was included in the historian Nikolai Tolstoy's expose of the ensuing atrocities and in the BBC documentary "A British Betrayal." Moving easily among six languages, she peppered her speech with citations from Greek and Latin writers; was a discriminating reader; and, in the last years of her life, relished drawing the Tuscan countryside. An inspired cook, she was celebrated for producing the Platonic ideal of apple strudel. Her memory is lovingly honored by her daughters Bibi and Lena; grandchildren Bianca Lencek Bosker (Nguyen), Misko and Katrina Lencek-Inagaki, relatives, friends, and colleagues. She lived the motto: "Quidquid agis, prudenter agas et respice finem!" and exhorted us to love as fully and as well as we can. She will be buried in Ljubljana in May 2015. A celebration of her life is scheduled for January 22, 2015 in Butler Library, Columbia University.