The 1990s war tore their country apart; now many of them live in the St. Louis area.
BY DOUG MOORE • dmoore@post-dispatch.com
Posted: Friday, April 6, 2012 12:05 am
ST. LOUIS • Childhood came to an abrupt halt for Ertana Dzidzovic 20 years ago.
The sixth-grader put on her jacket and backpack and started for the door when her mother asked where she was going.
"To school," she said.
"You can't go," her mother replied. "The war just began."
The 12-year-old girl didn't fully understand what it meant for Sarajevo to be under siege by the Serbian forces. She just knew that the capital city of Bosnia had been attacked and it was now unsafe to go outside. Access to the school had been blocked.
"Suddenly, we don't have a school. There was huge confusion."
Six weeks later, it became painfully clear.
"May 12 (1992), I lost my dear friend. He wanted to pick apples," she said. "For me."
But he was struck and killed by enemy fire.
"That's the day when I really understood what war is," said Dzidzovic, now 32. "People are losing life. After that, I became numb."
More than 11,000 people would be killed and an additional 50,000 wounded during the 44-month siege that began a month after Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence from the former Yugoslavia.
Ertana, her younger sister and their parents were among the million or so Bosnians that fled their homes. And the Dzidzovics are among the thousands who ended up in St. Louis, which today has the largest Bosnian population outside of the Eastern European country. Estimates of the region's Bosnian population today are as high as 70,000. That includes Bosnians resettled elsewhere in the country who eventually moved here to be with family and friends, those who came here through the immigration process and those who were born here.
Today, Bosnians around the world plan to commemorate the siege of Sarajevo, part of the Bosnian War. Locally, a series of public events has been scheduled this month to mark the anniversary, including an exhibit at Fontbonne University of photos and text blocks that chronicle the history of religious and ethnic cooperation during the war.
Ertana and her father, Sukrija, founder and publisher of Sabah, a Bosnian newspaper published in St. Louis and distributed throughout the country, spoke at the show's opening this week.
Sukrija, 54, a former air force officer in Yugoslavia before the breakup of the country, later worked as a military press officer for Bosnia's newly established army. Part of his job was supervising a team charged with following what the "propaganda" media was saying, he said.
"My job was to feel, predict and make a report about what the enemy media was doing," Sukrija said. He also started a military newspaper, known as Front Line where he worked as an editor and took photos, which he will share at a talk at the Bosnian Chamber of Commerce.
They include images of burning high rises and people running from gigantic plumes of smoke. As in prior presentations, he plans to show them alongside images of the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001. Sukrija was living there at the time of the attacks. He moved his family to St. Louis in 2006 to be among a larger Bosnian population.
"That smell of death, the smell of burned bodies. I'll always compare the two," he said.
Ertana said seeing death around her almost daily began to take its toll.
"It's hard when you're growing up and not knowing if you are going to be next," Ertana said. She remains upset that she was forced to grow up fast, a 12-year-old girl helping a nurse tend to a man whose leg had been cut off. She wipes her eyes as the details of two decades ago come back so vividly.
"Even nowadays, I have nothing in common with people my age," Ertana said. "I feel 100 years older because of my experiences."
Her father says he adapted to the U.S. better, and thought that he had successfully moved on from the past. But when he started preparing for the events this month, his dreams turned to his country being torn apart. Of fearing for the lives of his wife and two young daughters. Looking at the images he took 20 years ago made the memories fresh. Makeshift graves in parks and side yards because cemeteries were a target of bombers. Schools, libraries and buses torn apart by explosions.
"After 20 years, I thought it had passed," Sukrija said. "It's not easy."
After arriving in New York at age 15, Ertana worked as a junior ambassador for UNICEF, talking about her time in Sarajevo.
"People listened and I raised a lot of money for them," Ertana said. But since coming to St. Louis, it's something she rarely talks about.
"I want to set it aside and keep on living," said Ertana.
"It's not like I forgot. I don't want to remember."
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