LITTLE MOSCOW
TOLD BY ZEHRA GOZO

Mostar November 1998

[…]

The Yugoslav People's Army entered the city on 12 May, and the next day they began to inquire about whether there were any Muslims left. They talked to us nicely, even though they knew we were Muslims, and they tried to put us at ease, saying, "Don't you worry. You will have everything: electricity, running water."

Soon they started burning houses.

On 19 May the army summoned Serbs over the radio to prepare to be evacuated to the town of Nevesinje.

Our traditionally good relations with Serbs were what determined our decision to join them. We believed that in that way we would be getting out of hell.

The Montenegrins, who were loading seven Serbs from our street into a truck, let the three of us get on, as well as a married couple who were also Muslims, because they didn't know we weren't Serbs. Our neighbors did not betray us. The Montenegrins drove us to a village next to Nevesinje. Mirko, one of our neighbor's brothers, took us to his summer house where his relatives were also staying. They made us coffee with milk and reassured us, saying that while we were with them nothing bad could happen.

Mirko put us up in a Muslim summer house. He visited us every day, brought us food from his house, until he registered Mother and me with the Red Cross. He took care of us until 17 June.

Then the Serbian army retreated from Mostar and chaos erupted in the village. The Serbian forces that had surrounded us began shooting. The local people fled in their cars, and we were left alone. We lost contact with Mirko. A Serb we didn't know brought us, lost, into his home from the street.

"I'll find a way to get you safely out of here," he told us.

That night Serbian soldiers threw bombs at Muslim houses and plum orchards. Everything was smashed, roofs collapsed, glass shattered ...

In the morning an elderly Serbian man came by and told our host, "What are you waiting for, get out of here and save yourselves!"

We realized that we were a threat to the man's life. He no longer knew what to do to help us. We set off on foot across the fields, detouring the villages of Nevesinje to a village further on where we spent two days, but Serbian forces drove us from there as well.

Local people we didn't know who were both fleeing took us onto their tractor. We stopped by a canal. Along its slopes men had placed posts they had fashioned from felled trees, and had stretched sheets of plastic and tarpaulins under which 700 Muslims were staying who had been expelled from six of the villages around Nevesinje.

Serbs from the nearest village who had been minding herds of livestock on a hilltop came running up on the fourth day and urged us with agitation, "Run, some other forces are on their way, torching villages!"

People scattered in all directions in a panic. No one waited for anyone.

The three of us managed to climb up a hill. Our legs sank knee-deep in mud. My brother and I dragged our mother along no matter what it took. The elderly had less strength and often were left behind where they were later murdered. The stronger and more capable people climbed up the steep hillsides and collected on the hilltops. Some of them proposed we set out toward Mount Velež. Others said, "Shells are falling there!"

"We have no time to quibble," a man with a deep authoritative voice decided. As if following orders, or so it seemed to me, each person set off in a different direction. People went in smallish groups with someone they trusted.

We weren't familiar with the terrain. I had thought it didn't matter that we were splitting up and that the paths all led to a crossroads where we'd be assembling again. About thirty of us went by mistake in the wrong direction. After great effort we reached the other side of Velež Mountain. There they were shelling Muslim villages and people were fleeing. Below us we could hear the whispers of the people fleeing .. .

The people we were traveling with gave us an ultimatum.

"You can continue along with us only if you leave your mother behind. All of us will be murdered because of her. Either you leave her, or you stay with her and the rest of us go on without you."

We decided to stay with our mother, even if it meant we'd be killed. We spent forty-seven days here, totally alone. For twenty-five days we hid in a depression in the ground and slept in the rain. It was the rainiest June I can remember. Mother was sick. Her teeth chattered. My brother found a hut after many days and we hid there. We collected twigs and made a fire to warm up a little. We had no food.

One day we caught sight of cows. At first we thought they were ghosts. They were going out to pasture and we didn't have a chance to milk them because their udders were empty. We hoped we'd have better luck that evening, but they obviously went back by some other route.

The only good thing was a spring of water nearby.

As the days passed I grew weaker, I kept throwing up and could no longer walk. I started to lose my sight, my joints swelled, my legs were black and white, my hair fell out, my fingernails started peeling off. . .

Mother kept trying to bolster our spirits by talking about how nice it would be once we got home, even if we had to live in a basement storage bin.

In moments of weakness my brother suggested we turn ourselves in, but we wouldn't hear of it. His wife and children were on the Dalmatian coast. He kept urging me, "It would be best for us to turn ourselves in. Let them murder me. At least you'll be alive and you'll explain to my children what happened."

"It is better to die than give up," I answered him with my last ounce of strength.

I often heard him crying, "Is this how it's going to end? Will I never see my children again?"

"Look, we've never done anybody harm. I don't believe it is our destiny to suffer like this and die. There must be a way out," I kept repeating with faltering conviction.

We survived for forty-seven days with no food. When we came home I weighed 80, my brother, 106.

On the last day of our ordeal my brother went off to bring back water and firewood.

"Don't carry wood back. If no one finds us we'll die today or tomorrow anyway. Don't burden yourself unnecessarily. Bring only water," I pleaded with him.

"All right, I'll fetch some water," he said barely audibly and crawled off toward the spring.

The hut was out of sight in a sheltered spot but the spring could be seen from above. When he'd climbed up he caught sight of three men. He knew they'd seen him and he figured, "I have nowhere to run. If I try to escape they'll catch up and murder me." He came over to them slowly. He saw they were wearing uniforms with Chetnik insignia, black bandannas and beards. They were quiet. He figured they probably were not alone. "God help you," they greeted him in unison. "God help you, too," he answered, petrified with fear. All three of them showed their shirts and on the inside were the insignia of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Muslim forces. "What is your name?" they asked him harshly. "Muharem."

"How come your name is Muharem?"

"My mother is a Serb and my father a Muslim," he explained, stuttering, while another four came over to join them. He could tell by the look in their eyes that they didn't believe him.

From their conversation he learned that up on Mount Velež Serbian soldiers had murdered the father, mother, sister, the sister's two daughters, an uncle, and an aunt of one of the men.

"Do with him whatever you want. He's yours," they said to the man, who asked, "Are you alone?"

"No, I'm not. I am here with my mother and sister." "Take us to them."

"Don't murder them, please," he moaned.

I saw them as they were coming toward us through the fog. It looked as if there were more of them because I was seeing double. One tree looked like a whole forest to me. I told my mother some soldiers were coming.

"I don't care. Let them come," she answered listlessly.

"What is your name?" they asked me.

"Give me something to eat, I'm starving."

"What is your name?"

"I'm starving."

"I'll give you food, just tell me your name."

"My brother went off to get water. Don't kill him," I pleaded, not seeing him among them.

"Don't worry, your brother will be here in a minute."

Several soldiers came up with my brother, who told me, "Show them our papers."

"You know we haven't got any," I lied, trying to protect him from the strangers.

"Don't make things worse, please, give them our papers," he coaxed, and then he shook them out of my purse.

When they looked them over, they noticed, "You don't look like yourselves at all. Last year lots of Serbs got their hands on three ID cards, one for each nationality. How can we believe that you really are the people in these pictures?"

One of them picked up my job pass and asked, "What's this?"

My brother brought him over my ID card so that they could compare them.

"This looks fine," they decided. We were so relieved.

"Now let's see whether you can walk," one of the soldiers told me and helped me up. I took a step and stumbled.

"You'll recover. We'll be moving on in four days. Wait here for us. We are going into the village. We'll bring you some food tonight."

Completely numb with hunger we had no strength to get excited. My survival instinct made me practice walking. I had no sense of direction. I was nearly blind. My brother led me by the hand, and I held a walking stick in the other.

They did not come back that night. We heard the pounding of a battle going on in the distance. We had no idea what was happening. My brother was desperate, "They'll be killed, and then the enemy will search the area and find us and murder us."

Our saviors did come back the next day around noon. One of them was wounded. They'd brought us fruit salad and juice. They had potatoes as small as walnuts.

"We have a wounded man with us. We have to keep going so his leg won't get infected. Get ready to go with us," they hurried us along.

By evening we had climbed up to the highest peak of Mount Crvanj, Zimomor, which is at an elevation of over 5,700 feet. It was very cold. The fighters hopped from foot to foot, massaged each other, and picked the ice off.

We spent three days traveling. They put Mother on a horse because she couldn't walk. She screamed with pain because there was no saddle.

She kept slipping. They'd push her back up and she'd slip again. They also lifted the wounded man, who had been hit by a cluster bomb in the leg, up onto the horse using an unrolled tent and he groaned with the pain as well.

We would stop so that someone could scout out the area. Then one by one they would take first my mother across, then the wounded man, on the horse. My brother and I would catch up with them on foot, I held his trouser belt and limped along on a shepherd's staff.

We boiled up the potatoes they brought. They had a few cans of sardines. We were careful with food. In the morning we ate a little of the sardines, and in the evening we'd drink a little juice.

They were soldiers of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina who were looking for survivors from their region in order to evacuate them.

On our way we came across a valley where a lot of raspberries and strawberries were growing. People picked them and brought them to me. Images began to come back into focus as my vision improved ...

The fourth day they brought us to a field hospital. The doctor examined us and hooked us up to an intravenous line.

From there they transported us to Konjic where we arrived on 11 August. Here I heard the voices of people saying, "Why did you bring them here? They'll die tomorrow." I heard them say of my brother, who was in his forties, that some old guy had been brought in who was eighty and who was at death's door.

Dragan Andric, the officer of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina who had dispatched soldiers into the hills to save the lives of people who fled the fighting and were wandering, lost, inquired if I had seen any Serbian military or paramilitary troops while I was out there.

I was so exhausted and furious that I replied, "All Serbs are Chetniks as far as I'm concerned!"

"No, they are not. I am a Serb but I'm no Chetnik," said this man, who had saved us, calmly.

After thirteen days of treatment and recovery they returned us to Mostar.

[…]

THESE ARE THE BALKANS
TOLD BY ILIJA COVlC

Konjic 1998

My whole life has been tied to Konjic, a little town halfway between Sarajevo and Mostar, from my memories of childhood, to my youth, marriage, children, and employment in the same city. Since the early 1980s I have been working as a driver for the company Konjic-Trans.
I was thirty-five years old with a wife and six children when we went to war with the Serbian forces. Since it was written in my wartime assignment that I am a truck driver, I spent the entire war behind the wheel, except in periods when I was interned in a camp. I would drive goods from the bolts and screws factory up to Germany, and would bring back humanitarian aid for this region.
I often drove food for the Celebici prison camp where Serbs were held who had been taken prisoner by the Muslims. All my Serbian colleagues were taken to the camp from their homes where they had actually been arrested rather than captured during military action. Their only fault was that they were Serbs. Since I found this unacceptable, while they unloaded my truck I would sneak them cigarettes, a bottle of cognac or brandy, salami, and bread so that the prison guards didn't see because I would have had problems if they'd caught me "abetting the enemy." But they were my friends and fellow workers with whom I'd worked for years and I'd never felt they were my enemies. Today I can sleep peacefully because I know that there is not a single Serb who was held in the Celebici camp who can say that I was ever inhumane to anyone. If there was someone I couldn't help, at least I did him no harm.
[…]
Now I have nine children and we are expecting our tenth. The child's godfather will be Brother Ivo, the best monk in the world, who is loved by Croats, Serbs, and Muslims alike today in Konjic.
The house of my first neighbor, Rasim, is only fifty meters from mine. In June 1993 he shot at me from his balcony once when he was drunk. I was out in front of my house and it never occurred to me that he was trying to murder me until I saw the bullets flying all over the place. I hid behind my tow truck and I was lucky that he was drunk and his aim was bad and that he was firing from a military issue M-48 gun instead of an automatic weapon.
In late July 1993 Muslims who were my neighbors and colleagues took me in for what they said was going to be a conversation. I brought along a blanket just in case and it saved me, because in fact they were taking me to prison at the Musale sports hall because I was a Croat and for no other reason.
My wife was about to have a baby just then. The same neighbor, Rasim, who had tried to murder me, took her to the hospital. After a few days, on 2 August, she had a boy, our seventh child. Robert is the most introverted of all the children, and I often say that that is because he was born at a time when people hated, rather than loved, each other.
While I was at the camp I found my close friend Bora, a Serb, who had been there for months. He had been beaten so badly that he couldn't walk. Three of us had to take him to the bathroom. For five days there'd be no bread for us. They gave us rice in hot water, we slept on the bare concrete and some people were so exhausted they couldn't even move. Many succumbed to the physical maltreatment and hunger. A normal person cannot even begin to imagine such abuse. When representatives of the International Red Cross came, the camp authorities hid some of us so that I still don't have a document proving I was held at the camp at all, though I have at least 500 witnesses who were there with me. The camp authorities hid the people who had been abused the most severely, the ones they singed with red-hot pokers, to conceal the traces of their crimes. There were brave people, however, like Dragutin, who told the Red Cross committee the names of the people who were alive, but hidden. Who knows whether they would have survived had they not been registered then. Because of that Dragutin paid the price for his courage with gruesome beatings as soon as the committee left.
I spent only a month at the camp. During that time I lost twenty-five pounds. With all the hunger, our wives used any avenue they could find to send us food through Muslim acquaintances, sometimes lard and chitlings only because they believed the Muslim guards wouldn't eat them because they were pork. But the fight for survival was stronger than religion. Those guards who had a soul brought us the packages and we'd share our food with them, but the ones who had no soul took our packages home. They never maltreated me.
Neighbors who had influence intervened with the authorities at the camp to release me because I had never served in Croatian forces, and, on the other hand, I had six children at home and a wife who had just borne our seventh.
My boss had no idea I'd been taken prisoner. When he heard, he came to the camp and asked me, horrified, "Why are you here?"
"What kind of a question is that? It looks as if this is a time when it's more normal for me to be in a camp than at home," I replied. He called in all his favors and had me released. Otherwise I would have stayed there for at least another half year, which was the average stay for those who survived.
There was no food in the house when I got home. Whatever had been there while I was incarcerated had been stolen. People I knew had searched my house seven times.
Muhamed secretly supplied my family with food and looked after them. At that point a 200-pound bag of livestock feed cost 1,500 German marks. He didn't come out to the camp but my oldest daughter, who was twelve years old, spent all day standing by the camp fence clutching food for me, in hopes that someone would take mercy on her and let her give it to me.
After I got out of the camp I was stubborn and stayed on living here. Croats during the war criticised me for helping Muslims. Afterward it was Muslims who imprisoned me in the camp. I still feel overt discrimination at work only because I am a Croat. Here maltreatment is a way of life. After the war ended in 1996 they threw three bombs into my yard, and luckily killed only two sows.
[…]

TUZLA, ABOVE THE HATRED
TOLD BY MILINKO PERKlC

Tuzla November 1998

Before the war I used to be a wrestler. As a top-notch competitor I was a member of the Bosna team of Sarajevo. I still have the medals from the Yugoslav Championship displayed in my room. Although I am an engineer by profession, when the war started I was out of work. As of April 1995 I started working at the district jail as chief of security.
What always appealed to me in Tuzla was the prevailing spirit of inter-ethnic tolerance, which I always felt at even the most trying moments.
On the day that had been celebrated, for decades, as Youth Day, 25 May 1995, in Tuzla, shrapnel from a shell fired from the Serbian positions up on Ozren murdered the youth of this town. It was the greatest tragedy ever to hit Tuzla. At nine o'clock in the evening, on the main square where teenagers had gathered, seventy-one smiles were snuffed out forever. Another 124 were wounded. There is no way to describe that moment when 200 of somebody's children were lying on the square in pieces, and the parents, relatives, and friends couldn't tell where their child was . . .
Shells rained down on the town for the next three days. The funeral of these innocent young people was held at 4:30 A.M., using outdoor lamps almost in secret. Tuzla didn't even have a proper chance to bid farewell to its children, for fear that the number of victims might be even greater.
That tragedy left its mark on all of us. People rarely speak of it. The impact of the catastrophe on many fellow citizens was enormous. I think that there was no one in town who didn't have someone of their own among those innocent victims. If it wasn't someone of nearer or more distant kin, then it was the child of a friend, neighbor, acquaintance ... After a month and a half the Tuzla corps of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina captured the Ozren territory where the gun stood that had fired that shell. About 100 Serbian fighters were taken prisoner at precisely the site where that gun stood. All the prisoners were brought to the Tuzla district prison. The whole town knew they were there.
I organized extra security measures for the prisoners, fearful of retaliation from the townspeople. It was reasonable to expect that there might be large demonstrations out in front of the prison, or people trying to avenge the unspeakable tragedy. I feared that the parents whose children had been murdered by that shell, their relatives and neighbors, maybe even the whole grieving town, might come to the door of the prison for vengeance and lynching. If there had been a lynch mob it would have been understandable.
I lived in terror that day and into the night. No one came even to shout, curse, throw a stone, and certainly no one tried to enter the prison.
The men spent six months in the prison before they were exchanged. Even during the exchange no one reacted in any way.
For me this was one more proof that Tuzla had risen above the hatred that was everywhere around us.
The prison staff conducted themselves professionally to the maximum according to all the Geneva conventions, and even more. The prisoners received medical attention. Many at first, probably out of fear, didn't dare speak of their problems. One of the prisoners had earlier been a guard in the Batkovici concentration camp near Brcko. I noticed that the others were urging him with pointed looks to speak to me. At my insistence he finally told me, "I have been losing weight everyday. I can't keep anything down."
I figured this was from an earlier wound. When I asked the medical staff I learned that this was a problem that might be fatal. We informed the corps, which arranged within two days for a special exchange just for him. He went back to his side so that he could receive the proper treatment.
It happened that Muslims from Tuzla inquired about individual prisoners. They brought them cigarettes in response to requests of the prisoners' family members. Although there had been great divisions in Bosnia, the real interactions among people were never stopped. When someone needed to see to something on the other side, for instance to deliver a message, they would always be able to find a Serbian friend to help, just as the Serbs had their friends among the Croats and Muslims.
The prison guards reported almost daily to me that Muslim refugees who had fled Zvornik were bringing cigarettes to one of the prisoners who had also been a guard at the Batkovici camp. They were Muslims who had been held at that camp and remembered him.
"He was good to all of us. He helped us whenever he could, brought us cigarettes and shielded us."
Everyone loved and admired that man. Foreign news agencies learned that he was there and often visited the prison. They wanted to talk to him but he avoided it, fearing the reactions of his fellow countrymen when he went home one day. He left through an exchange.

HELP FOR A WOUNDED "CHETNIK"
TOLD BY DRAGAN SIMlC

The Village of Vranjak near Modrica

I was born in 1966 in the village of Vranjak, near Modrica, in north-ern Bosnia near the border with Croatia. I spent my whole life there. As a member of the Republika Srpska army I was wounded during an offensive led by the Tuzla corps of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 3 March 1994. Shrapnel hit me in the stomach and left hip. The injuries were bad enough that I couldn't move. With my last ounce of strength I managed to crawl a few yards over to the bay window of the house next to which I'd been wounded. My fellow fighters jumped over me, retreating from their positions on the run, and though they saw my pleading eyes they didn't stop nor did anyone try to carry me. The pain was far too awful for me to muster the strength to shout, but I was conscious the whole time. I could clearly see all my comrades withdrawing without a word, abandoning me, wounded. Scenes flickered by as if in a film. It seems as if the next minute I was seeing Muslim fighters charging up out of the woods, crossing through the yard and coming up to the house. I had plenty of time to activate the hand grenade hanging on my belt, but I didn't. In a wince of bitterness at the way my comrades had left me, I gave myself up for lost.
Three of the enemy soldiers came over cautiously, pointing their guns, I lay there motionless and looked straight at them.
"Damn those soldiers for leaving someone like this," the first man said, He kneeled by me and ripped open my uniform to see where I'd been wounded.
"Call in and tell them we have a wounded Chetnik. They should come to get him," the second soldier said to the third, who had a two-way radio.
All the horrible stories I had ever heard about Muslim bestiality when they look a Serbian soldier prisoner flashed through my mind. I had been hearing stories like that all through the two years I'd been fighting. I couldn't believe my eyes. A jeep drove up in a few minutes and transported me to the Tuzla hospital where they accepted me without a word and look me immediately into the operating room. The narcotic was a blessing, because only then was I able to stop thinking about the men who had left me behind.
After all I've experienced I know that there is no force on this earth and no idea that could force me to pick up a gun again.
After the operation they transferred me from the hospital to a jail in Gracanica. I was held there with another man named Branislav, a Serbian fighter, who also had been taken prisoner but not wounded. We spent five months in that jail, held separately from the Muslim prisoners. During that time they did not maltreat us, except when they slapped me on 7 July and called me a Chetnik and tore off my epaulettes. Two Muslims whom I knew, Huso and Bego, happened to visit the prison. When they saw me, they asked, "How are you? Are you convalescing?" I didn't smoke but they always brought Branislav cigarettes.
Five months later the Red Cross visited the prison. They saw me and put me on their list for exchange. A few days later I left Gracanica and went home.