FBU-2013-05-16
Interviewer
Ben Moore
Date of Interview
5-16-2013
Interview Location
St. Louis, MO
Length of Interview
128:59
Date of Birth
1976
Gender
Female
Religion and/or Ethnicity
Muslim
Description
Born in Zvornik to Muslin, but areligious, parents. She describes a carefree childhood before the war, and she maintained friendships with members of all ethnic groups. Her father passed away suddenly in 1984. She and her older brother were raised mainly by her grandmother. She started to notice shifts following Slovenia declaring independence. She remembers coming home from Beograd and being stopped by soldiers at the border crossing at Karakaj, checking ids. This was the beginning of 1991. You could start seeing propaganda on the news depending on the channel. Print media was the worst offender, especially the newspaper Politika. She noticed that all Serbs would leave Zvornik on the weekend for about a month before the war in preparation. She never thought the war would happen in Zvornik because the relationships were so good. She spent, what she thought would be, one night in Mali Zvornik, but they never went home. They were most worried about her brother, who was 20 and of military age, and he had stayed in Zvornik. She was shot at while trying to walk across the bridge from Mali Zvornik back to Zvornik. She witnessed all the ethnic cleansing from across the river in Mali Zvornik. Buildings were evacuated, and people were taken to Karakaj, where the men were separated. Everyone was being killed. She mentions a video of paramilitary soldiers calling for a local man in his home and taking him. Her brother was able to make it out on a convoy with the help of some Serb friends. They then made the journey to Nuremberg, Germany, where they had a family. There, she went back to school and began college. She left Germany in 1997 for the United States because she did not want her mother to go back to live in Bosnia. She never has and has no desire to ever return to Zvornik. She still visits Bosnia but does not go to her hometown. Her father's death helped her process the war, and she found it easy to assimilate wherever she went. Believes that the war was preventable and a gross failure by the international community. She still considers herself Jugoslav and never feels permanently settled.
Keywords
Zvornik, Mali Zvornik, Pancevo, Loznica, Nuremburg, Karakaj, Ethnic cleansing, Propaganda
Document Type
Oral History
Collection
Fontbonne University
Digital Format
MP3, MP4
Digital Publisher
Center for Bosnian Studies
City
St. Louis, MO
Copyright Note
These oral histories are made available by the Center for Bosnian Studies for research, educational, scholarly, and/or creative purposes only. All uses should adhere to the principle of fair use established under Section 107 of Title 17 the 1976 Copyright Act. More on fair use is available here: https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/.
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