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Foreign residents along the Costa del Sol have been saddened by the news of the death of Carmella Dight, a long-time resident of Alhaurín el Grande, the town she had called home since 1989. She had suffered a severe stroke and was taken to Hospital Clínico in Malaga, where she died on Monday 2 December. She was 85.
Carmella was admired in the province for her dedication to helping others and was responsible for founding the first branch of the U3A on the Costa del Sol in 1997. She held the position of president for many years, although failing health forced her to step down from the role in 2017.
She was also an avid supporter of the Lux Mundi ecumenical centre in Fuengirola for more than 20 years. She also rallied support for the Cudeca hospice and was a longtime friend of the charity’s founder, Joan Hunt.
Lesley Thompson, who had been friends with Carmella for 20 years, said, "She was a very determind and caring person. Without Carmella, the U3A would not exist on the Costa del Sol. She will be very sadly missed by all who came into contact with her."
Carmella published her memoirs, Bombshells and Butterflies, in 2017, a story of great tragedy and sadness, and a story of an extremely determined woman who had known great joy, love and happiness in spite of unspeakable tragedies, one of which was the death of her daughter shortly after she arrived on the coast.
Born into a Jewish family in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), in 1939, she was christened Karola Feld, which was the name she used for her memoirs. As a youngster, she witnessed the atrocities of WWII during the Nazi occupation of Belgrade from 1941 to 1944, which she described as a “heartbreaking time”, seeing as many of her family members, including her father, were executed. Carmella and her mother survived the war by using assumed names, and at the age of ten, she immigrated to the newly established State of Israel with her mother and step-father.
She was fluent in six languages, gaining an education in London, and Northern Ireland, where she studied journalism and Russian language and literature.
She would later live in Germany, a country, which she told SUR in English in 2017, she was “reluctant to go to”, but her husband had been offered a teaching job, so she lived there for several years before arriving in the province of Malaga.
She is survived by her son Johnathan, who lives in the UK.
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