What does it mean to have a
peaceful dream living among your own?
In June 1991, Croatia declared independence from
Yugoslavia. This led to war between Croatia and Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. As
much of the world's attention focused on the war in neighboring Bosnia, Croatia's scars of
bombings, bullets, and ethnic hatred were no less intense. This was particularly
true in the regions of Krajina and western Slavonia where the existence of a large ethnic
Serb minority led to fierce territorial fighting between Croatia and Serbia.
Although Croatia's capital, Zagreb was far less ethnically diverse than Bosnia's Sarajevo,
it too was home to quite a few Serbian families. This is the story of one.
Zora: My family was Yugoslavia essentially. I was born in
Croatia. My son was born in Serbia. My husband from Bosnia. We were the
real Yugoslavia.
Zora's Husband: [Zora and I] knew each other only for 55 days and got
married. And we've been together for 25 years. We had a normal life. A human
life. All until these new developments that disrupted us completely.
Zora: In June of '91, there was a Census of all the Serbs in Croatia.
And they wanted to essentially write up who were all of the Serbs in various
enterprises. I'm an engineer, I had 15 years of work experience behind me, and I was
laid off just because my documents were from Serbia. I was, by birth, from Croatia,
but ethnically purely Serb. We did not belong to Croatia although I was born in Croatia.
So I was removed from my job
simply.
Zora's Husband: I worked in one company for 21+ years in Zagreb. It
was commercial kind of work. I was respected as an employee and I was very successful in
all of my tasks at the company. But when all of this began happening, we [Serbs]
began to feel threatened. We were essentially fired. I was not working, but I was
getting a salary.
The bosses respected us. Everything was as normal in that
regard. But you see that you are kind of neglected. And you have to be
silent. And you have to resolve your own problems. And we were supposed to
say, you know, "I'm leaving." We were not told that we should go, but we
felt this in the air. That this was not a normal situation. That something is
changing. That they were waiting for us to decide by ourselves that we were going
to go. And this is what happened in the end. When I came to tell my boss that I am
leaving the company, nobody asked me "Why? What? Where are you
going?" They just gave me the papers. And they just said, "Just
sign here and we'll sign everything from our side."
Zora: Our ethnicity became the most important factor all of a sudden.
Nobody looked at education, at human dignity, at respect for Croatia in which we lived,
but only our ethnicity. First, you feel it at work. Where you work. With your
colleagues. That's where you feel it. And we felt it
in 1991 with the creation of HDZ [the Croatian Democratic Union, the political party led
by Franjo Tudjman]. The desire to create an independent state of Croatia.
Zora's Husband: When I was leaving and I was organizing lunch with my
closest friends and colleagues, people cried after me, because they told me, " We are
very sorry to be losing a person like you," but they understood me. They
understood that I had to go. I respect the world. I believed in people. And
this is how I was accepted everywhere. And I was respected by a wide
circle of people in which I move. I saw that this could function. That people
are real. Up until the time that nationalism came to the human psyche.
Zora: I felt such a desire on the part of the Croats to get rid of
Yugoslavia and Serbs that we really realized that we couldn't live with them. They
did not want to accept us as people who share their country. They were not willing
to do that. They needed to show that they were Croats by not socializing with us
Serbs. They had to justify socializing with Serbs by saying, "Well, they are
Serbs, but they are good people. They are
helping us. They're good workers. They are mixed. They are not real
Serbs." etc.
The most sorry thing is that you can never defend yourself from being called an aggressor. You can never defend yourself by saying you have lived here for 20 years, you have your family, you have friends who are Muslims or Croats, but simply you're a Serb. And, when the war began and they when they essentially began fighting in Krajina, when people could no longer communicate, they couldn't go to the seaside, the Serbs were always blamed for everything.
We got advised to be rechristened. I have never been
christened. I mean, come on, why should I go to Catholicism all of a sudden?
I'm not a religious person.
In spite of the problems, the family did not leave newly-independent Croatia like many
other ethnic Serbs.
Zora: We hoped we could stay in Zagreb because we really felt that, since we are not mixing ourselves in politics and we respect the state in which we live, we want to continue living there. But ethnicity was above everything else.
I still hoped that this would be a multi-ethnic state. We felt that there is such a difference in the education of the people between 1940 and 1991. That the people have seen so much of the world. That we are a civilized state. That we will not allow our state to be dissolved. And,therefore, for families to be dissolved because there are so many connections. Friends. Families. So many marriages have been made along different ethnic lines.
This a very highly educated, nice people. But this
highly educated people essentially fell on this propaganda of this nationalism.
Issues regarding job, education. Everywhere. In shopping. You just felt
it. Ethnicity above everything else.
The family endured their life in Zagreb even as Croatia fought a war with
Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. The family lived less than 40 kilometers from the
frontlines. They could hear the bombing of their city from the 8th floor of their
apartment building.
Zora's Son: If you could draw a line between the two greatest barracks in
Zagreb, our building was midway between those two barracks. But we were protected by
other buildings. Nothing could really hit you from that side. But towards the
barracks, it was open. The snipers came from buildings in New Zagreb and they
started shooting towards us. And the other guys with grenades hit the 14th floor [of
one of the other high-rise buildings] with heavy artillery. We were only 4 km away.
We were on the line between the barracks and the high buildings. You have a
sniper and you have the tank grenade. You could be hit by either because the
buildings were between us and the barracks.
Zora: I was on my balcony and I didn't expect anything like that when it
happened for the first time. When I heard the planes. There was great fear but
also a sense that you have to leave your apartment. Especially because we were of a
different ethnic group.
The war in Croatia coincided with the war in Bosnia and it became clear that there was
no turning back.
Zora: When the war in Bosnia began, we just realized that every ethnic
group will have to live in a republic of sorts, like in some kind of prison among their
own people. I mean what does it mean to have a peaceful dream living among your own?
People began bothering me because my son was born in
Belgrade. Human beings can really tolerate a lot. But when they touch your
child, then you really have to decide how to save his life.
In April 1993, the family sold their apartment in Zagreb and
moved to Serbia's capital Belgrade. To see what this move meant for them, click here.
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