My Best Childhood Friend
There were many restrictions right after the war because we returned in August 96. So it was still really fresh and everything was demolished and nothing was reconstructed yet etcetera, right? And there were so many restrictions such as the curfew and then the minefields. As children, you were not allowed to run around anywhere right at first. So there was no, just like playing around, wherever. First the parents and everybody else had to check what the situation was like, if there were any mines or any remnants of the war, anything that was left there. It was a very confusing time for kids.
But on the other hand, it was our playground. I mean, it was what you had as a child, right? And children, we love to play still so we still had that sense of you know, to play around and to enjoy ourselves. So you know, you would play with the shells, the gun shells that you find, you will play with. Whatever you find, even if it was a remnant of the war, we were just using it as not toys- that is not a word that I'm looking for. But in a sense, we would make toys even out of those things that seem impossible to to link to a child, right?
-O
Everything Was Overgrown And In Ruins
H’s Childhood Artifact
One of my cats is named Clara. And it's named after my childhood friend, my best childhood friend. That was during the Second World War. And we were best friends and we played every day.
We loved each other so much that our parents let us wear the same dress because that's what we wanted. In my street all nationalities live together, Muslims and Serbs and Croats and Jews. And at the moment when Clara and I were hiding under the sofa her mother came with a coach there were no cars. They were picking up Jews with horse coaches. They were living across the street from us and the Germans came to pick them up. And my mother, I heard my mother tell Clara's Mother, please don't take Clara with you. Leave her here. I will raise her like my own Meliha. And she left. Her mother left.
But after a short while, we were still hiding under the sofa, Clara's mother came back with that same German officer and told my mother they're threatening to kill us all if she doesn’t bring Clara. And Clara and I were under the sofa, we were totally quiet. We didn't dare to say anything. The only thing we would see from under the sofa were the boots of this officer.
But they grabbed, ripped her from me and took her away. I never saw her again. And that's the first tragedy as a child that I endured.
All my life I've been searching for Clara through the Red Cross and but I never I never managed to find out what happened. That's the most memorable event in my childhood.
-M
It Was A Very Confusing Time For Kids
When I look at the children today. Compared to them. I had a very rich childhood with a lot of playing outside. But at the same time, it was also marked by displacements, moving in moving out, constant movement. Shocking news that was disturbing my entire family…
So it was completely different (when we returned). When we came for the first time the road didn't exist, there was not one house that you can call a house, everything was overgrown and in ruins.
And then a year and a half afterwards, when we returned, it was completely different. Some houses were rebuilt, and people came back and what was the most important thing to me was there were 10s of children that have returned. So in the whole village like in a stretch of maybe two kilometers by two kilometers there were about 40 children. And immediately we formed little teams, you know by neighborhoods and played soccer and played all day without even thinking that it may be mined. But to get to meet all these children and to play all day with them was actually what marked my return. It was completely different than that first visit.
We played all day and these games would finish when the sun was already going down. And everybody's mother and everybody's father were yelling the names of the children, like, "Where are you all day and you haven't been home all day." And what we would eat was you just bump into anybody's house and the mother would just smear kaymak on a piece of bread and put some sugar on it. For us this was the biggest thing- that was not even you can't even compare Nutella with that. So, somebody during the day would feed you and you would just be playing from sunrise to sunset.
-H
Represents Everything Good That Happened In My Childhood.
I have a little photo that was in the passport. So it's from 2004. As children from Srebrenica, we were invited to visit Slovenia. And at the time there was this visa regime and you couldn't really travel anywhere. And then this coordinator, the person who was taking the children to Slovenia had more than 20 little pictures of children that he was taking to Slovenia in his passport. And only two or three years ago, I got hold of my picture from that passport. And it kind of represents everything good that happened in my childhood.
-H
My Childhood Is Marked By Powerful, Strong Women
I was born Born in Banja Luka and I grew up with my grandmother and my father, unfortunately, my mother died in a car accident in 1975. So, I was very attached with my father and especially with my grandmother. She was a very special person because her life was marked by three wars. She was born when the first world war started…
That's why my childhood is marked by this very powerful, strong woman. I lived with her in our old house, also built in Austria Hungarian period. It was in Bosnian style…So this scarf is handmade with gold and birds from my grandmother. So I chose this artifact as a symbol of my childhood, and her love and hugging and feeling secure during my childhood. And memories from that old house drinking coffee with her during afternoons talking with her. So I miss her very much.
-J
J’s Childhood Artifact
I was so clueless when I was little. Sarajevo was occupied and there was an underground movement. They took me to school the first day, and it was in a nearby school that was more of a Catholic school. See in Sarajevo that wasn't the most interesting thing, that was not important. It was a Catholic school and there was a choir. And we had to sing a song about an Ustasha, which is a Nazi collaborator. A Croatian Nazi collaborator. And the song was about how this one Ustasha is dying on the front line. And I was devastated because this mortal enemy, I didn't even realize (was dying). I was crying all the time while singing that song and well, at the same time my own house was a partisan cell. And I started singing that (at home) and my mother and all the people that were hiding in our house were going, "Shut up. Shut up. Don't Don't ever sing that again." It was all very confusing.
-M
When I was little I went to Music School and I went to ballet. And I always imagined myself to be like one of those ballerina dolls. And I played the piano. These little dolls are from my childhood and I wanted to be like one of them.
-M
M’s Childhood Artifact