It was more than fifteen years ago that Marla Ruzicka perished in Iraq. You may not know who she was. To put it simply: she was a heroine. There is no other way to describe her. She did something almost none of us do: she traveled to extremely dangerous, war-ravaged parts of the world that were totally unknown to her, to assist people in need. She did this on her own initiative and without any formal training. And she paid for it with her life. She should not be forgotten, especially since the organisation she started single-handedly lives on and has grown bigger than she maybe would have thought possible. That is why I decided to re-publish a story I wrote years ago about her. It is in fact an interview with her successor, Sarah Holewinski. There are countless lobby-organisations, but only one of them works for people caught in the midst of war: the ' Center for civilians in conflict ', formerly known as CIVIC. Its founder paid with her life for her ideals: Marl