LITTLETON, Colo. – Jake Steigerwald, 91, who taught languages at Winona State University, died in retirement in Littleton. His life was a long path from his native Serbia. He was Danube Swabian whose people were disenfranchised under the Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito. In 1945, Steigerwald was put into a forced labor camp. There was no choice but to farm for their own sustenance. The internees slept on hard floors in the confiscated empty home of indigenous Germans. Not expecting to survive winter without warm clothes he defected to neighboring Romania. At age 15, he managed his way to Austria as one of millions of refugees. It too was a desperate place. In 1951 he arrived in the United States, in Chicago. After few years as a house painter, he joined the U.S .Army, then studied under the GI bill. In 1975 he earned a doctorate in German languages and literature from the University of Cincinnati. He chronicled his experience is the book Banat Biographies.
Details: Chapel Hill Funeral Home
1931-2022