"Muslims or Serbs: Who Is To Blame?"
an excerpt from the new book
NOT MY TURN TO DIE:
Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia
by Savo Heleta
Published by AMACOM Books
Reprinted here with permission.
INTRODUCTION
The excerpt below is from the new book, NOT MY TURN TO DIE: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia, by Savo Heleta. The author was 13 years old when the siege of his home town of Gorazde, Bosnia, began in 1992.
Ethnically Serbs, the Heleta family was in the difficult position of living in a Muslim city under constant attack by Serbian forces. The book is a nonstop chronicle of terror as the family is locked in a detention center, starved out, burned out, and facing the risk of death on an almost daily basis.
The excerpt is called "Muslims or Serbs: Who Is To Blame?" It shows how difficult it is to attach blame, as Muslim families come to the aid of the Heleta family and Serb forces threaten their lives. Savo Heleta pins the blame for atrocities in Gorazde, not on the Muslim army, but on the local police chief and mayor who make no attempt to hide their desire to murder every Serb in Gorazde.
More information about the book, NOT MY TURN TO DIE, and author Savo Heleta follows these excerpt. Thank you for considering this difficult material.
"Muslims or Serbs: Who Is To Blame?"
by Savo Heleta
I was 13 years old when the siege of Gorazde began on May 4, 1992. Serb forces first cut off, then bombed and sniped the predominantly-Muslim city from the surrounding hills. My sister, Sanja, was 11 years old. In July, after repeated death threats, my mother, father, sister and I were taken in by a Muslim couple named Nedim and Jasna. We hid inside their apartment for weeks until we could safely reunite with my grandparents.
From time to time, some of our Muslim friends would visit us at Nedim and Jasna's home and give us moral support to endure our hardships. They usually arrived in the evenings or at night, when there weren't many people around to observe their comings and goings. It all had to be done in total secrecy.
These visitors told us the stories circulating in the city regarding my family's disappearance. One said that we were killed on June 18, 1992, and our bodies sent to the Serbian side, after which they were seen floating in the river Drina. Another rumor was that we'd escaped from the city and that my parents had already been seen fighting against the Muslim forces. Yet another said that we were still hiding somewhere in the city.
Some of these visitors were in high positions in the Muslim army. They told us that the army hadn't been responsible for the organized killings of Serbs in the city but the mayor and his government and the local police forces had. We learned from them that the Serbs murdered in the previous months never had access to a lawyer or a trial. About a month after they were killed, the city mayor ordered one of the judges in Gorazde to write death sentences with forged dates to have documentation in case of possible future investigations.
One family friend, a high-ranking military officer, told us about a meeting of the top Muslim military and civilian representatives at which he was present.
"One of the topics at the meeting had been the ongoing arrests and killings of Serbs in the city," he said. "Myself and a few other military officials openly disagreed with the mayor, Hadzic, who wanted to liquidate every single Serbian civilian that stayed in the city. Fighting against those who are attacking you is noble, but torturing and killing innocent people is simply unacceptable for us. After some harsh words, one of our top military commanders took out his gun, put it on the table, and said to Hadzic that if any more Serbs were tortured and killed by the police, without first being found guilty, he would hold the mayor personally responsible and kill him."
"What did the mayor say after that?" my dad asked.
"Nothing; he left the meeting angry. He said we were all traitors for defending Serbs."
Hearing the stories of organized terror perpetuated by the mayor and the police and fearing that the situation could only deteriorate further, my parents asked our friends if they could help us cross the dividing zone between the Muslim and Serbian forces to escape from Gorazde.
"This is not our war," my father told them. "We stayed in the city because we never did anything bad to anyone. Now I see that in a war, you don't have to be guilty in order to be terrorized and killed. We just want to leave."
"We will leave behind all we have," my mother said, "if we can only get out of the city. We must go far, far away from this place."
"It is too risky to undertake such an escape," one of our friends said. "If you, Slavko and Gordana, were alone, we would try it, but we cannot risk the lives of your children."
My parents understood their reluctance. If we attempted to escape, we would have to go somewhere into the woods beyond the city, stay in a Muslim trench, and wait for an opportune moment to run across to the Serbian side. The Serbs wouldn't know our identities or purpose, so there would be a strong chance that they would kill us on the spot. We had heard that a few Serbian civilians had died this way when they'd tried to escape from Gorazde.
