Anonymous, 41
Zadar, Croatia | Benkovac, Serbia
“Pa, that was, pa, you’re… you live in a house which is a kilometer from the front lines. What are you going to do at night? What are you going to do now? If you don’t know who is coming up to your door–you don’t answer. Normally you’d just shoot at whatever. It’d be a good day if that didn’t happen… I slept on the front lines. The front line was over there [gestures], 50 meters, and we kept an M-84 behind the bed, the most modern machine gun that existed, the best. That machine gun and one box with 50 hand grenades. That was under my bed.”
Interview originally conducted in BCS.
Okay, so first, where are you from? Where were you born? Where did you grow up? What was a typical day like before the war?
Born in Zadar, in 1980, I lived in Zadar until 1991, and then at the beginning of the war, we went to Benkovac. We lived there until 1995. After that we left for Serbia, we were there until 2001. Then we came to America.
Before the war, what was life like in Zadar?
Really beautiful.
What was a typical day like?
Oh it was… there were no criminals, we had school for free, healthcare for free, we had money to buy what we wanted, we had a car, we had a house, we had a big family. How do I say this… everyone was together, no one left or migrated anywhere because life was just so good. And no one had plans to leave and live in some other country. And so that’s how it was… perfect.
How old were you when the war started?
11.
Ah, you were young
Yeah, a kid.
When did the war start for you? Was there a specific moment when you realized, “ah, oh this is happening?
16… September 15, 1991...
What happened?
Pa, there was an attack on the military barracks that were close to us. It was the socialist army, Yugoslav National Army, and there was an attack on those barracks. That was the beginning of the war.
And what was life like during the war in the beginning?
Pa nothing… that’s how those situations go, you adjust to them and that’s that. There isn’t anything special. After… the terror comes after. But at that moment, there isn’t anything. The bigger fear then was… it’s not at the beginning of the war, that wasn’t… the t-t-terror, terror was after, when we lived in a new village, in one house, that was by itself [with no nearby neighbors], we were always in fear that someone would come in the night to kill us. There was only one house near us and it was down a ways, it was far away, over there [gestures], half a kilometer, and the frontline was a kilometer behind our house, maybe a kilometer and a half.
In Benkovac?
Yeah, in Benkovac, in Benkovac.
When the war started, how long did you stay in Zadar before leaving?
I was born there, 11 years I lived in Zadar, until 1991 we lived in Zadar. The war was, you know, from 1991 to 1995. We moved…September 1991.
How did you go from Zadar to Benkovac? How was that journey?
Yeah, yeah, we went with my Mom. She had a house in a village and her parents, and her dad also had a house in the village and his mom lived in the village with her.
So you had relatives in Benkovac?
Yeah, that was considered Serbia’s free territory, because that was under Serbian patrol. And then we stayed there until 1995.
Yeah, so three years you were in Benkovac?
Four.
Four.
Four, four years.
And how was it, living there?
Pa… to us everything seemed normal, at least for the kids… everything appeared normal, there were some grenades falling, but…
Besides that, normal? (Laughs)
(Laughs). Pa normal I guess. We didn’t go to school– that was a good side of war, if war has any good sides! No? (laughs). It’s sad that people die in war but (laughs) it has its good sides. We don’t go to school, we didn’t need to… so, if there are any good sides to that, it’s that we didn’t go to school. But… no good sides to war.
Pa, so it was normal… if you guys didn’t go to school, how did you guys spend your days?
Pa you know… sometimes we went to school, but sometimes we didn’t, when there was lots of shooting we didn’t go to school. And if bombs were falling on the city on Sunday, then we didn’t go to school on Monday. Then we wouldn’t go to school for the entire week. Because normal people don’t send their children to school if rockets were falling, so that they wouldn’t kill their kids. Otherwise we’d go every other day to school-- if the kids are going to die, let them all die (laughs).
We [my family and I] worked with crops. We sold them in the war and we lived off of that and financed ourselves, and that worked really well. We earned some money on that, and lived and we managed our crops, that was that.
My dad was somewhere in the war, sometimes at home and all, but we planted all the crops ourselves and we sold them and we lived well. No one ever whined about anything really, we all had our own responsibilities. All of the kids worked, even at 12 years old, working with crops, and they had their own obligations. At 15 years old people already knew how to work with cars as mechanics, and no one complained. It wasn’t like we were all whining and crying for ourselves about anything, there wasn’t the time for that.
We knew everything that was happening and we understood it as normal. Nothing there was anything special, like kids we still knew who was at the top of the music charts and we would have our own debates or something about who we liked politically but otherwise no.
And how did you guys decide to leave Benkovac?
Ah that was… 1995 in the middle of an attack, when the Croats attacked Serbian territory. And that we (chuckle)... and then we really knew we didn’t have a chance. Not even the people in technical positions could fight anymore. And we knew that the world wasn’t on our side. And that was that.
How did you guys escape?
Through Petrovac in lower Bosnia, Drvar, Petrovac… and from Petrovac mostly… from Banja Luka to Belgrade and there we sat on some bus. And there was our truck… we came to Banja Luka on a small truck. One small truck, it was some truck, and on that we came from Benkovac to Banja Luka, with some truck, like a semi-truck, to Belgrade, and that moved us somewhere around Belgrade and we moved there on a bus. They gave us lunch boxes, and then we came to southern Serbia to-to-to Šum, 17 kilometers from the city near some mountain. And that was that.
And that was in that city?
That was an abandoned worker’s settlement that was in really good condition. There were workers that were constructing some bridge that also lived there. The settlement was in really good condition. We had (my sister and I) our own rooms, we had normal heating, we had a kitchen for food. That was everything, but in general we didn’t do much there, we were hungry for something.
We had free schooling, we had free transport to school, and there was a community phone that everyone used, one phone for the community. I finished school there, my sister finished later in Belgrade. That was… how do I say… I found friends from school or wherever… I found some friends who, to this day, we’re friends, both live in America.
There were maybe, I don’t know, 150 people who lived there [in the refugee center]. I… but it was, it was pretty much arranged like, on the other side was those humanitarian organizations like UNHCR. Those organizations gave help regularly, and they helped, but it was really those who lived around us [who helped the most]. They were really poor people. That was, I think, the poorest municipality in Serbia, but they helped out plenty.
Those women really helped me... one time, I was wearing some old, old Converse. Those old ones, and they were Chinese copies, they weren’t even the original. They had a hole in the sole, and it was winter, there was snow, but I had no shoes. I had clothes, but I had no shoes, and then they [the women in the town] saw me in school like that, and they collected money and they bought me some boots. And then one woman bought me socks. Her name was Biljana. I’ll never forget that. I really… think about that a lot.
And so—
—A, no, no, no, no, we knew we were getting ready, we knew what we were getting ready for, and my dad, before he went to his job in the war, he was talking with people who could connect us to some people with a truck so that… and then we already had that provided in advance. You say that you want to drive and they give you a coupon for a certain amount of fuel and of course, you don’t just pay to get out, it’s all prepared in advance. Because that didn’t all just come one night, that was all announced beforehand, pa… no one was stupid, everything was organized before hand. And from the Croatian side too. And that wasn’t… i think there were victims where… we had 2,000 dead and over 250,000 people displaced. Yeah… it was like that, and they attacked that way with 150,000 people, from our side it was 30,000 people. It was with that logic that NATO helped them and we didn’t have anybody. Yeah.
Ahah… and your dad was, your dad was on the front line?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Did, did he come with you guys like…
No, no, no.
Like from Benkovac?
We found him in Banja Luka, we found him in Banja Luka. The average age of our fighters was 50 years old, but on their side it was 30 years old. So NATO planes knocked down our communications, hmm, but not Croatian communications. And they said that they caught them on radar, but that’s not true. Maybe it is, it’s possible I guess, but I don’t believe it’s true, and they knocked down those receivers so that our communication would be interrupted. All of that was on TV, but we didn’t have electricity during the war. Some weeks, some winters, we would have electricity but we wouldn’t have water, But we would have electricity for two hours daily, or for two hours every seven days. Pa, we made those– you take potatoes, you cut potatoes, you add fat, you could make a meal.
And then we found, from UNPROFOR, those Canadians, we found old batteries tosed away in holes, old batteries that they would throw away, and we would use them to jump the radio, someone jump-started a tractor battery, someone made something that way, and so, you know… we’d make it work. And sometimes, sometimes the electricity would come on and that was a celebration, a rarity.
And so you could maybe make electricity with these batteries
For the radio and for some other things. So I had a Walkman, which was something that UNPROFOR actually threw away, and so someone found that Walkman, it was broken, and I remember, in that time, someone gave me two zoljas, you know what a zolja is? Zoljas are the manual rocket launchers, like bazookas. So they gave me two of those for that Sony Walkman because it was original and because you could listen to music, yeah, and so… that was hardly…
I eventually replaced it with some bike, and, what do I know, I don’t remember.
And so, after you left, how did you find your dad in Banja Luka?
No, no, no, no, no. He went to Banja Luka first, and then we found each other in Banja Luka. The military went to Banja Luka first, from all sides, and then civilians later. Whenever there was an attack, civilians wouldn’t move or go anywhere. It was really easy to find him from our end… after WWII, in 1945, in Vojvodina (a northern part of Serbia), after the Germans left, our relatives kept their same phone numbers. Everyone who lived up there had telephone numbers from someone in Serbia and they knew roughly where people were. People all know each other, so everything went really, really quickly. It goes very fast.
I had a bus pass from the Red Cross, for searching for my parents (laughs) and I took a bus to find them. When they saw me, I still hadn’t had lunch, so I used that pass to get lunch. That pass was great for me. That was… it was really great to have that seal from the Red Cross on a piece of paper saying that I was approved for transportation and to travel in the service and so, yeah, I don’t remember the rest, but that was great.
I have to say that all those people helped us when we came [to Serbia] in ‘95. Everyone, everyone helped. After all those negative examples and allegations and those negative examples— the positive was a thousand to one. You know, you can always find two sides, you know… whoever wants to find negative things will find them, and today, that’s all clouded. You don’t see the positive things around you–that you’re not hungry, you’re not thirsty, nothing– and those who are in war and if you could get out of it, you have to go to school, you have to work here, there, i was never happy in school, but you have to work, you have all this stuff around you.
The problem is in families who lost someone… that’s still, that’s still coming out… those who had brothers that perished, sisters, mothers, and there was… in my family that didn’t happen. I think I have some distant relatives who died in ‘95, but it wasn’t… it was distant family and that’s a big difference.
And that was… when I talk about the war and when someone else talks about losing someone, that’s really– that’s like comparing sky against the earth. I can’t understand that. And I’m happy that I can’t understand that. That-that-that is a huge difference. It’s funny–people talk about it like it was a tournament, and someone talks with bitterness and sadness because they lost a dad or their mom, sister, brother. It’s as if we came here again… we’re living and we’re working to this day, and everything is okay.
There isn’t…simply… that was that part of that past and one has to put that behind. And that’s that.
[Long pause].
You know, I got my first automatic rifle when I was 12 years old.
During the war?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think that that was normal– you need to take care of your mom and your sister, your dad isn’t there, and that was normal. That was it. And that was… everything was normal. I think that to you that’s nothing normal, but to me it’s absolutely normal (laughs). I know when I tell you that it was normal and then you…
(Laughs) Because you were also taking care of your family and for your mom and your sister
Pa, that was, pa, you’re… you live in a house which is a kilometer from the front lines. What are you going to do at night? What are you going to do now? If you don’t know who is coming up to your door–you don’t answer. Normally you’d just shoot at whatever. It’d be a good day if that didn’t happen.
One night, there was some old guy and his friend, we didn’t—I didn’t kill them–they got drunk, it was raining a little bit, and they pounded [on the door] and they didn’t say who they were… it was just like…you thought you’d kill them.
I slept on the front lines. The front line was over there [gestures], 50 meters, and we kept an M-84 behind the bed, the most modern machine gun that existed, the best. That machine gun and one box with 50 hand grenades.
That was under my bed.
(Laughs).
What are you scared of? (Laughs).
(incoherent talking and laughing)
And there was grandma, and my grandma slept in my bed, the army slept on one of the lines 20 or 30 meters ahead of us, and soldiers were there in that house. And sometimes, there were those who weren’t fighting that night, they weren’t out there, but in general, at night, we had some patrol, and whatever else. And what are you going to fear when you have the best machine gun in the world and 50 grenades? (Chuckles).
And fortunately, none of it was ever used, but it was… bad things were happening, they were… they were civilians there too. Civilians were dying and grenades were going off… that happened and that happens in every war.
Was it like that when you left Benkovac? Were you guys always armed?
No, no, no, we weren’t, we weren’t, we weren’t, we weren’t, we weren’t, we weren’t we weren’t. That was left on a street in Republika Srpska. We left the rifle there…. most of the time, what’s it gonna be…when you cross borders and when you come from somewhere to the territory of Republika Srpska, you’re already doing something criminal, in Serbia especially, you’re armed, right? It’s not a joke, especially with an automatic rifle. And bombs and rockets and whatever else we had…And that was that kind of… (incoherent)... I was 15 years old, so that was like… cool, that was like what the iPhone is now, (incoherent) (laughs), that’s how it was.
When I talk to people about the war, people often say that the war came out of nowhere—that it was a total shock. When you think about the war now, or the years before the war, do you see any warning signs?
Ah, that was the story… maybe it was this, maybe it was that… but it came as a surprise. They didn’t know that it would be so bloody. That it would be a complete bloodshed. They probably didn’t know.
Was it a shock for you?
It wasn’t. How is it going to be a shock when there’s a war every 50 years? The first balkan wars, WWI, WWII, pa that. Who was it a shock to? Every 50 years there’s some war. Nothing there is surprising, that’s every 50 years, I just hope we can abandon that tradition….So that it won’t be that way anymore.
At least I hope, I just think about today’s kids and I think that there’ll be no more war, because today’s kids are always… none of them took pistols in their hands to go to war, they just play games. And these phones? My god they’ll never be separated from them. That’s just sitting at home, playing games, no chance they’ll grab a pistol. One generation still needs to pass and there won’t be any more war. That’s for sure. And for if you take their phones and give them a pistol? That’s nothing [laughs]. That’s how… that’s how I see it. It can’t continue like that anymore.
[Long pause].
So, in 1995, you were in Belgrade—
No, we were a little outside of Belgrade, and I-I, we came to Belgrade once a day, we were there a couple of hours, and then we got back on the bus.
Aha
And then, that whole time people were helping us with food and then we got food when we came to Belgrade.
Mhm
You know, someone organized all of that, you know. We weren’t like an angry mob moving around… it wasn’t like that. Everything was pretty much as organized as it could get. 250,000 people who were really angry, who were really nervous when we were moving around, someone still needs to organize it.
Mhm, and how was it in Belgrade? 1995, so the war is technically over—how was it afterwards?
We lived in Šum, after that we lived in the south, and we lived normally. I think that we still went to school after that, and we finished school there,you live. And we lived in a, like a camp, you know. In a house you don’t have that,,. It wasn’t great (exhaul), but it was normal again.
Yeah
You think, “Okay, what am I gonna do?”
Did you feel like everything was normal? Peaceful?
Pa, it was… it was…Because you got used to your friends, you got used to your family, you got used to all of that, those people don’t meet any other people anymore, and then (pause)... so you just always feel that. And once you escape from one place, everything after that is the same and you just live, nothing else makes sense… you just have your first place, where you were born, and it makes sense, and besides that...
Were you all in Belgrade until you came to America?
Yeah, yeah. We lived in the south first, in that worker’s village, and that was 17 kilometers from the city. That city had 5,000 or 6,000 residents and we were in that worker’s village and we stayed around there after we sold the house in Croatia, made our own.
You came to the US in 2001, so you were in Belgrade during the NATO bombings?
Yeah, 1999. 1999. 1999.
How was that, how did everything start?
Pa, this is good, this is just… I think bombs started falling and I think that was… you don’t know where they’re going to fall. We got accustomed to another kind of war [earlier], where we’re armed, where it was known where enemy lines were, but this was, like… they fall from the sky, onto you like they’re from god, a couple kilometers away, and not…you can’t do anything, there isn’t anything for you to do, you’re not armed, you’re just a civilian in that war. That’s what you think. What are you going to do? You got used to five times worse and now you’re going to complain about this?
The problem is that I was already 19, other guys my age were in the war. I wasn’t at that time because I didn’t have Serbian citizenship and Serbia, as a state, didn’t allow refugees to go to war. Yeah.
On day, we sat down at some cafe in Barev, and I was going home, and I took some bicycle and the bike fell– I rode bikes really well throughout the entire war, and this one time when it wasn’t wartime, I fell, and one of my friends said to me, “Okay, you’re like one of those pitbulls, dogs, that someone trains and conditions for wartime,” and that’s how I was functioning at the time, and he was joking.
“Okay, sit down, we’ll drink some more beer,” and we just had to more, and he says, “Look, yeah, yeah, don’t go anywhere, we’re just going to sit,” and I needed to get all the way home, on that trip it would have been some three kilometers, four. And that night, on that trip, there was a citizen’s barrack, and a bomb fell on it. (Laughs). Had I left that night, I wouldn’t have survived (laughs). It was really so close.
Mhm
I came home, everyone was crying over me like I had died (laughs). Everyone thought I did, but um… they didn’t get me! And that’s really how I always remember it (laughs)
During the bombings, did you ever have a sense that something would happen? Like, “They’re coming now and we need to go inside,” what was it like?
Pa… what do I know? I’d, you know, go to work, my sister went to work, parents went to work, and… we built that house and that was the house. Nothing, nothing special. And everything… we had neighbors around us to keep us company, and some friends, we’d all do something together, somewhere, someone. We spent some time in Langenfeld, that’s-that’s what we did, i worked as a cook, I finished culinary school, and that’s that.
Eh, I… that was…everything was like that, and that’s how everything functioned. All the boys w-w-who came with me to school… I hear about them today, they’re successful, around the world. Some who are engineers, some who have their own companies, some have this, some have that, and they’re all doing well, and no one complains about the war and no one talks about the war. It’s rare that we talk about our own things and those kinds of memories as something that we did, but all of us in general created our own lives.
Nothing is complained about by anybody and that’s our experience and we talk about it and we laugh about it, you remember when it was and you remember what it was like when they were throwing bombs (laughs), you remember when we went here or there and when we went wherever, and some other stupid things we did, we were kids between 11 and 15 years old (mumbles). So, in that, uh, uh… I remember that there was some joking around.
And then you left for America after the bombings?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
How what was that process like?
Pa… by then people were leaving en masse. There was this whole mass of people leaving, because there were such low wages in Serbia, 200 marks– that’s $100 per month at the time… And 200 marks was maybe 100 euros at the time, and that was a month’s pay.
And so yeah… we wanted to live a little better. A little better.
And then our country was under sanctions and then it wasn’t… there were sanctions in place. Not even I know, a couple of years so that there wasn’t… the economy wasn’t functional.
Do you return to Serbia?
I was there in 2013, um… I don’t have time. We were there in 2013, but normally everyday I watch the news from Serbia. And other that… you don’t have time. Here, you make money, here you spend it, you pay taxes, and so… you simply don’t have time.
And you guys still have that house in Belgrade?
Yeah, yeah.
And your dad built that house?
Yeah, yeah, while they work here [in America], they’re finishing that house while working from America. That all started before and now, money, stuff like that…they’re finishing it with that money they make here.
Was there, during the war, did you have some kind of “all is lost” moment or some kind of moment when you felt good, hopeful?
I didn’t, nothing special.
Everything is the same… there was nothing really special.
What was it like when you got to the US?
Pa, good… we had financial help here, we got checks, I think, and my sister and I got $360 each, and my dad got $450. The Americans did it perfectly, they did it perfectly. They gave us our social security numbers within a month and they let us go work, which mattered the most. I started to work a month later. I started cleaning carpet, and then after that, I was cleaning some buses, after that I went to become a driver for a flooring company, and then I started installing floors after that,I went off to work for myself a bit, but that paid worse, and so now I drive a truck. It’s the best country for life and to make money– that’s definitely America (laughs), there isn’t anywhere better. Here a driver and a doctor earn the same. I think it’s still, still like that.
I know your parents want to go back to Serbia when they’re retired and everything, to you also want that?
Ahh… something I’ll tell you, I don’t have time to think about that. You have so many plans in front of you and so many… everything hits me at once, that I need to get married, you know, that’s the war I’m waging now (laughs), that rather than that other war, that, that war is the most dangerous, that’s the most… yeah.
I don’t know, you get used to this standard, and you get used to… like I told you earlier. I know America. Now, I know more places here than [the former Yugoslavia]… I don’t know, I know more about America with how much I’ve travelled all of the cities here and in Canada. There isn’t a city that I haven’t been to. I know everything and you get used to this country and you get used to these people and you get used to that now… you never know what’s gonna happen in the day or in the night.
We were refugees two, three times. What can you guarantee? That we’re not going to live here? You just leave it to the test of time. And now, in this moment, I live here and it’s good for me. I was a refugee so many times and now something is planned as much as it can be planned, daily or by the month, whatever I can, that’s what preoccupies me. Now, where I live that’s what I can see.
Just this standard is still among the best in the world.
Is there anything specific you want to say sort of concluding the whole interview?
I don’t have anything. Just that… there can’t be war anymore and it would be okay, That would really mean the world to me. To start dealing with the economy and not with that stupidity anymore. For them, that’s the one thing that is really a problem– the economy needs to be handled better, you know. And not to talk a lot about the war. That, I think, you see here… everyone works together, Serbs, Croats, Muslims, Albanians. Everyone works together. Everyone hangs out. Everyone is respected. We don’t need to hate each other anymore.
When someone is a refugee in a war or someone escaped someone else in the war, those people are normally not going to be looked at the same way as someone who isn’t and aren’t going to look at others in the same way. I think that’s a natural thing. That’s in people’s nature. There’s just some people that can control it and some who can’t.
During the war my good friend was a Croat. And now, we hear from each other less because we don’t have time, neither I nor him. Now I have friends from every, every belief and every nationality. You see what kind of person someone is and not what they are.
And when did the war end for you? Was there a specific moment of, “it’s finished, it’s over, we’re okay.”
Nothing. No.
Is there something that you want Americans to know about the war in the Balkans? Or students? Or for people here to know about the war in the Balkans?
Eh… go down and listen to those people. I think that there are a lot of lies from the media. And to find out the real truth, whoever’s interested, to go and talk to those people. Yeah.
What kind of, what kind of changes in Balkan culture did you notice before, during, and after the war? What kind of cultural changes?
All of the values that we had, we have them and more... In the ex-Yugoslavia, now it’s… the little things are different. But still, you also have to pay your bills and to live with everyone normally like it is here, and everyone and everything had the same standards in the ex-Yugoslavia. Everything was standard. That’s how my parents, at 30-some years old, could successfully build a house, you know, without any debt—they had a loan from a company, but they weren’t in debt for thirty years… you go to the doctor, you don’t pay anything. But in general, those were the differences… in the ex-Yugoslavia, we didn’t have the standard of driving a car with eight cylinders or anything, you didn’t buy cars with a loan but rather with cash, that was… Or it was some really small loan, for a couple of months, and that was a difference.
And then in the war, you lose everything and then you come to America and and again, you have to you have to build everything from the very beginning.
I think…but we had really, really…these supermarkets, American supermarkets everywhere, everywhere, and televisions are for sale, and bicycles and they even had cafes inside, this bar and– that was not normal. Before the war, we worked in agriculture, and so for us, we worked 24 hours a day, someone was always doing something.
Is there something specific that you want other Balkan people to know about the war?
Just that we’re not fighting anymore and that’s that (chuckles). Just to not go to war anymore, and that’s that. Nothing else (laughs). Just that. Just that. Just that. They know, all those people who lived through that, know everything, just that we’re not at war anymore. Nothing else. Just that there can’t be any more war. That’s…
Do you feel that relationships between people changed during the war?
You found your people… I found my friends who I–we met in ‘91, and in 2000 I ran into some of them in Toronto. Like my sister’s best friend, she’s a Croat, I’m a Serb, and she found me and I found her. We were kids and we were good friends and to this day, she’s my number one, what does it matter what our beliefs are. Between us, nothing can change now. Nothing can change anything.
For sure–thank you for talking with me!
Yeah of course. For me it’s just a story, everything is normal now.
You know how it is, I don’t have time to whine about anything. Life goes on, I think, now just remembering and making drama out of life. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Be positive, be something, go work, go make something. What was collapsing…
Yeah that, my parents are living, we’re living, we’re not hungry, we’re not thirsty, and that’s that.