Erika Fürst, the last Jewish Holocaust survivor from Prekmurje, died on 19 October, aged 93, according to the Maribor Synagogue.

Fürst was deported to Auschwitz at the age of 13 along with her mother and older sister. All three survived, but most of the other members of her broader family perished.

She returned to Murska Sobota and lived there until her death as one of the few remaining members of a once thriving Jewish population in Prekmurje, the region forming the northeastern-most part of Slovenia.

For many years Fürst had been a driving force of the preservation of the memory of Prekmurje Jews and was awarded the Golden Order of Service in 2012 for her contribution to Slovenian and European Holocaust awareness.

Fürst was a precious source for Slovenian historians, who had failed to systematically collect first-person testimonies when many Holocaust survivors from Prekmurje were still alive, said Boris Hajdinjak, the director of the Maribor Synagogue, a centre of Jewish culture and history.

"It was only through the memories of Erika, a Murska Sobota native who was deported to Auschwitz at the age of 13, that the names, faces and events of many pre-war Jews from Prekmurje were preserved - late, but not too late," he said.

Hajdinjak met with her many times over the years to receive a lot of reliable information about the events of the time, and he says he was "always surprised by her willingness to share her memories and by her positive outlook on life."