Steven Joseph Fenves, a civil engineering researcher and educator who helped introduce computers into structural engineering and later became a survivor-volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, died on Dec. 23. He was 94.
Fenves moved to the Washington area after retiring in 1999 from Carnegie Mellon University, where he served as head of the civil engineering department and later as a university professor. He remained active in Holocaust education through public programs and institutional engagement in Washington.
“He wanted to stay intellectually engaged,” his son Gregory Fenves said. “He wasn’t finished working.”
Steven Fenves was born on June 6, 1931, in Subotica, then part of Yugoslavia and now in Serbia, into a Jewish Hungarian family. His father, Lajos (Louis) Fenves, was editor-in-chief of a Hungarian-language newspaper serving the province. His mother, Klara (Gereb) Fenves, was a graphic artist and illustrator.
Between 1941 and 1945, Fenves survived two military occupations, two ghettos, three deportations in sealed boxcars, three concentration camps — including Auschwitz-Birkenau — and a forced death march of roughly 100 kilometers to Buchenwald. He was liberated there on April 11, 1945, by U.S. Army soldiers. His mother was murdered at Auschwitz.
“He was 13 years old,” Gregory Fenves said. “The Nazis never intended for him to live past the age of 14.”
After liberation, Fenves recovered in a U.S. Army field hospital before choosing to return home rather than register as a displaced person. He hoped to learn whether any family members had survived. He was reunited later in 1945 with his older sister, Eszti, who had been liberated from Bergen-Belsen, and with his father, who had survived forced labor in a coal mine in Silesia.
“My grandfather came back physically and emotionally broken,” Gregory Fenves said. “He died within months.”
As Yugoslavia became increasingly hostile to Jewish life under the Tito regime, Fenves and his sister escaped the country in 1947. They lived in Paris for three years as refugees, where Fenves completed his high school baccalaureate.
“He finished high school in French,” Gregory Fenves said. “After everything he had already survived.”
In 1950, the siblings immigrated to the United States, settling in Chicago. Fenves lived in boarding houses and supported himself through technical drafting work while planning further education. Two years later, he was drafted into the Army and sent to West Germany as part of the American occupation forces, returning to the country where he had been imprisoned only a few years earlier.
“He used to say the Army taught him how to become American,” Gregory Fenves said.
Fenves became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1954. Using the GI Bill, he enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, earning a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1957. He completed his master’s and doctoral degrees there and joined the faculty, beginning a long academic career.
“He thrived there,” Gregory Fenves said. “That’s where his academic career really took shape.”
During a 1962–63 sabbatical at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Fenves helped develop STRESS, an early computer program for structural analysis that contributed to the introduction of computing into civil engineering. The work placed him among the early researchers exploring how emerging computer systems could be applied to engineering problems.
In 1971, Fenves joined Carnegie Mellon University, first leading the civil engineering department and later serving as a university professor. His work over the following decades focused on computer-supported engineering design and the evolving relationship between engineering practice and computer science.
He valued clarity, accuracy and restraint, qualities that colleagues consistently associated with his work.
“He was always looking ahead,” his son Peter Fenves said. “He was thinking about how engineers would work in the future.”
After retiring from Carnegie Mellon, Fenves spent a decade as a guest researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg. The role allowed him to remain involved in research while collaborating with former students and colleagues who had entered federal scientific and engineering service.
“He wanted to keep doing meaningful work,” Peter Fenves said. “Retirement didn’t mean stopping.”
Beginning in the 1970s, Fenves spoke publicly about his Holocaust experiences. After fully retiring, he devoted substantial time to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial, speaking with visitors, students and educators and answering questions about his experiences.
“He didn’t lecture people,” Peter Fenves said. “He told his story and answered questions.”
By his own count, Fenves gave more than 140 talks at schools, universities and public institutions throughout the country. He also participated for decades in Yom HaShoah commemorations at the U.S. Capitol, events he regarded as civic obligations as well as acts of remembrance.
Within his family, Fenves was known for his measured manner and careful thinking. His children sometimes referred to him as “the family Google before there was a Google,” said his daughter Carol Fenves, a reflection of how often they turned to him for information and perspective.
“If you had a question, you asked Dad,” Gregory Fenves said. “He usually knew the answer.”
Looking back on his father’s life, Gregory Fenves returned to a quality he said never changed.
“He lived with integrity,” he said. “And he remembered.”
Ellen Braunstein is a freelance writer.
