THE SERBIAN WOMAN WHO DEFEATED DEATH: Vesna survived a fall from 10,000 meters—she believed this saved her! (PHOTO, VIDEO)

Such news had never before shocked the world.

“On Wednesday, January 26, at 5:03 PM, a Yugoslav Airlines plane on the Copenhagen–Zagreb–Belgrade route, carrying 22 passengers and six crew members, exploded over Czechoslovakia at an altitude of 10,000 meters, shortly after flying over East Germany. One woman survived the crash. Vesna Vulović. The bodies of the passengers and the wreckage of the plane fell near the village of Srpska Kamenica,” reported Yugopapir.

More than half a century ago, stewardess Vesna Vulović, who was just 22 years old and had been working as a flight attendant for only a year, became the sole survivor among 28 people in the plane, miraculously surviving a fall from 10,160 meters.

“I was chopping wood in the shed when I heard an explosion. I ran outside and saw people flying through the air. By then, people were already running down the road, frantically shouting that a plane had crashed nearby,” recalled forester Bruno Henke.

“I somehow managed to dodge and ran down the road. Suddenly, from the forest on the left, I heard a woman’s voice calling out. I ran even faster, following the sound. Dusk was setting in, snow was falling, and the ground was slippery. I climbed on all fours to the spot where the voice was now clearly audible. Under a piece of the airplane fuselage, like inside a shell, two women’s legs were sticking out. I leaned in and saw a blonde girl—not only alive but strong enough to cry out,” he told reporters.

“With great effort, I freed her from the metal debris, being extremely careful not to move her too much. In the military, I learned how crucial first aid is for the injured and how it can do more harm than good if not administered properly. When the ambulance arrived, we placed the girl on a stretcher and handed her over to the experts. Our job was done,” explained Henke.

“Hey, people. Oh, world, everyone on planet Earth, listen and believe: a girl fell from 10,000 meters, from a plane that exploded, and survived. She landed alive! And she still lives and will live,” wrote Ekspres special correspondent Stevan Šević.

The cause of the crash of the JAT plane on the Stockholm–Belgrade route remains a mystery to this day. One theory is that a bomb was placed on board by Croatian nationalist terrorists. Another suggests that the plane simply broke apart mid-air. A third theory claims that it was mistakenly shot down by the Czechoslovak military.

According to some calculations, Vesna cheated death seven times.

She could have died due to lack of oxygen at 10 kilometers altitude and extreme cold at about -50°C.
She could have perished from sudden decompression, as she was exposed to an extreme pressure change.
When a hole appears in a plane, a massive air vortex forms, sucking everything out—it chooses no victims. Vesna survived that.
She escaped death when falling from such a height, which usually causes blood to pool in the lower body, leading to heart rupture.
She survived the impact with the ground—falling from 10,000 meters should have been fatal.
She could have died on the ground, severely injured and lightly dressed in the freezing snow, had rescuers not found her quickly.
Even when found, Vesna’s survival was a stroke of luck. Had Bruno Henke not been an ex-military man trained in first aid, she might not have made it.

But fate had other plans.

Vesna was inside the tail of the plane as it fell. She was young, exceptionally strong, and healthy. The tail hit a densely forested slope, bounced off like a ricocheting bullet, and only then did Vesna get ejected, slamming into a thick layer of snow at around 100 km/h.

Despite everything, in her agony, she had the will and strength to call for help. And so, on that cold January evening, near the Czechoslovakia–East Germany border, in a small town once inhabited by Lusatian Serbs, fate gave Vesna seven lives.

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Vesna returned to Srpska Kamenica for the first time nine months after the crash, as a guest of the local youth. She became an honorary citizen of Česká Kamenice, where the hospital that brought her back from clinical death was located. She visited several more times.

For a long time after the accident, she could not remember what happened 60 minutes before the crash and for over 20 days after. During the fall, she suffered numerous injuries, breaking her left arm, left leg, three ribs on her right side, two vertebrae in her lower spine, and several fingers on her right hand.

She believed that Saint Sava saved her and never parted from his icon for the rest of her life, celebrating January 27 (Saint Sava’s Day) as her personal salvation day.

Vesna (66), who became known worldwide after surviving the JAT plane crash over Czechoslovakia, died alone in 2016.

The Serbian heroine, who received the Guinness World Record award from Paul McCartney for being the only person to survive a free fall from 10,160 meters without a parachute, struggled to make ends meet in her later years, surviving on a pension of just 30,000 dinars (about 250 euros).

*Mesto pada JAT-ovog aviona / Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives*

And in Srpska Kamenica?

Forester Bruno Henke likely still takes his granddaughter Vesna, a blonde-haired girl born six weeks after the crash, onto his lap and tells her how, in the wreckage of a plane, on the snowy ground, he once found a girl—the one she was named after.

A girl who lives far away, in Yugoslavia.