Literally, we left our school desks to join the army. I was 16 when I joined the Medical Corps. The fact is that being women in the army, we had to prove ourselves. There, we were surrounded by friends from before the war. Unfortunately, with time, some of those friendships disappeared along with our friends. Katerina Kaltak joined the Bosnian Army Medical Corps at 16 with her older sister, Kristina. They enlisted after their younger sister, who was eleven at […]
You’ve lived in peace, you’ve grown up in peace, you just couldn’t believe that something like that could ever happen. It was terrible and I wouldn’t wish war upon anyone. Andelka Knezevic, 61 years old. A Bosnian Serb, she came from a family with a number of mixed marriages. She lost her husband of 18 years to the war on April 21, 1992, and afterward fled to Serbia with her children, where she served as a cook in the Serbian […]
We used to live in poverty, but people were happier. You should never forget it, but you have to live on. Alija Džananović is a Bosnian Muslim from Srebrenica and one of the first people to return home following the massacre of Bosnian Muslim men that took place in there in July 1995.
This year will be the twenty-first year since my brother and father went missing. I am still trying to find them, But I really hate that word — missing. These men had hearts. Hearts that were pounding. They had families. They had love inside them. I believe that the use of the word missing is inappropriate; these persons had all; now there is nothing left. I am not allowed to say the name of my father or to speak of […]
Categories: Bosnia
We need to understand that the most important things are cohabitation, love, peace and tolerance. Vesna Erić 36 years old, was born and raised in Sarajevo. She married at 16 years old during wartime and sheltered her family for years, living as refugees. Vesna and her family now live in Kravice.
I don’t talk with my mother so much about these things, I don’t know why. I think it’s really hard for us to talk freely about it. The kids of Bosnia should never forget what has happened because if they forget, it might happen again. Yet now, the way our generation remembers the war is just not enough. S, 17 years old, wished to remain anonymous. The daughter of a Bosnian Muslim woman from Srebrenica who married at 14 and […]
Categories: Bosnia, Testimonies
Women here believe more in men than they do in other women. They will pick a man as a leader more readily than they will pick a woman. If I were a man and have done what I did with my life, I would be the richest. Yet I am not. Arijana Saračević is an internationally renowned journalist. During the war, Saračević filed over 2,000 reports from the front line about the plight of the Bosnian people.
When the war started, I hoped all time that it wasn’t real, that the passions would settle down and everything would go back to normal. However, as it continued, I felt that it was going to last forever. But now, the hard memories from the war are gone. As soon as you realize that you have to proceed with your life, then you learn how to deal with these hard memories. Dževada Trešnjo born in 1964 in Foca. Served in […]
Categories: Bosnia, Combatants, Testimonies
I’m not a closed type of person. What I mean, I say. I have shared everything with my family, but it is hard to share the truth – the real suffering that I went through, that’s hard share even with my own siblings. I want to tell them some details, because I don’t want this to happen again and I want them to be very well aware and prepared for something that might happen again in the future. There are […]
Categories: Bosnia, Combatants, Testimonies
A mother of five, Abla Farok Ahmed, age 36, was never active in politics. But when her son, who had gone to a protest to search for his younger brother who was participating in the demonstrations, was arrested on false grounds, the fight quickly became personal. She enlarged pictures of her son and his friend, who had been arrested with him, and went to protests to see if she could find any information on their whereabouts. After months of searching, […]
Categories: Combatants, Egypt, Organizers
