6/6 ”I don’t know how long I slept, but at some point, the man woke me up and said it was too dangerous to stay. We had no idea where to go, but we just kept moving. We slept in destroyed and abandoned houses. Sometimes we would find some food. I could barely walk. He would often carry me. There were so many moments where I wanted to give up, but he kept pushing me to continue. I felt so weak. I was so exhausted from all the blood loss. I told him he should continue the journey without me. He would have a better chance of surviving on his own. He refused to leave me alone. He kept telling me that I should stay strong and that we would make it. He was truly a brave man. We slowly continued our journey together. One day, we were crawling through the high grass and we arrived at a nearby village. We saw people and overheard their conversation. They were speaking about Srebrenica. My friend said: ‘Maybe they are Bosnians.’ We got closer, and we could see that they were wearing traditional Bosnian clothes. My friend approached them, but when they looked at us, they got so scared they ran away. We were completely covered in dirt and blood. I don’t remember if I lost consciousness or not, but the next thing I remember is waking up in a village with lots of people around me. They were pouring drops of water into my mouth. I started to cry. I realized: we had survived.”

5/6 ”I was waiting for it. Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in the side of my stomach. I waited for the next bullet to end my suffering. I saw people falling down around me. A moment later, another bullet hit my left foot. Everywhere, I heard the voices of people crying and moaning. I heard one of the Serbian soldiers ordering the other soldier to check all the bodies. First, he refused, saying everyone was already dead. Then he stood just in front of me and killed a guy next to me who was still moving. I was waiting for him to kill me, but nothing happened. I asked myself: ‘Why aren’t I dead?’. The soldier shot everyone who was making noise. Slowly, it became quieter. Moments later, all the soldiers left by truck. I turned my head, and I noticed someone was moving in front of me. I asked him: ‘Are you alive?’. He said yes. I was so weak I could barely move. He begged me to try. When I finally reached him, he was able to bite off my ties with his teeth. I tried to take off his ties with my teeth, but I didn’t have the strength. In the distance, we could hear the trucks arriving again. I was in so much pain, but I started crawling over the dead bodies. We managed to hide in the bushes. We could hear another row of people getting shot. I found a stone, and I managed to cut off his ties. He took off his shirt, and he wrapped it around my wounds. He tried to stop the bleeding. He used my underwear and wrapped it around my feet. After that, all I can remember is being exhausted and falling asleep.”

4/6 ”Finally, we arrived in front of a school building. We were all crying out for water. When they opened the truck, they started beating almost every one of us. They lined us all up and took us to a classroom. Again, they forced us to chant: ‘Srebrenica is, and always will be, Serbian.’ You could hear voices coming from the other classrooms. As soon as night fell, the soldiers started taking people outside, five men at a time. Minutes later, you would hear gunshots and people screaming. This routine kept repeating itself over and over again. The Serbian soldiers would come in and tell us that the Red Cross was coming to register us for prisoner exchange. Everyone wanted to escape, but it was obvious we had no chance. Around midnight, it was my turn. They ordered me to take off my clothes. They took me to an empty classroom. On the floor, there were many piles of clothes. A few minutes later, they ordered us to leave the classroom. When I got outside, I recognized one of my friends from school. We stood next to each other with our heads bent down. When we left, we saw dead bodies in front of the school. I could feel blood sticking to my bare feet. We were put on a truck and ordered to sit down. There were so many of us that we couldn’t. After 10 minutes, we arrived. We could barely see anything but heard the gunshots. On the truck, everyone tried to hide behind someone else, just to live a bit longer. I knew I was going to die. I just hoped I would die fast without suffering. Finally, it was my turn to get out of the truck. I walked with my head bent down and my hands tied behind my back. I started to think about my mother and how she would never know where I ended up. They were lining up rows of 5 people. They told us to line up. In front of us, there were already rows of dead bodies.”

3/6 ”We emerged from the forest onto an asphalt road. The Serbian soldiers acted calmly. When everybody got out on the road, tanks surrounded us. They separated the wounded people and started to torture us. They made us chant: ‘Long live the king, long live Serbia.’ They took us to a meadow next to the road. They forced us to lay down with our heads in the grass. While we laid there, we heard gunshots. When we finally got up, all the wounded people were gone. They put us in sealed trucks so we couldn’t see anything and nobody could see us. However, there was a tiny hole in the truck’s canvas, so I could peek outside and breathe in fresh air. They brought us to a nearby town, which I recognized because my uncle used to live there. It was the first time I saw lights in three years. That night we spent in the truck. It was about 30 degrees Celsius and there was no food or water. The soldiers would bully us with their rifles. The next morning, we headed towards Zvornik, where I was born. I remember peeking through the hole and seeing people swimming in the river and children biking outside, and here we were in this truck. Inside the truck, everyone was constantly trying to figure out what would happen to us. Some said that we would be taken to a concentration camp. Others said we would be reunited with our families. The truth is, none of us really knew what was waiting for us.”

2/6 ”When the Bosnian Serb Army took over some checkpoints near us, the Dutch soldiers immediately left their checkpoint and left us behind in the refugee camp. I remember feeling extremely disappointed. We thought they would protect us, but they didn’t. My mother and my three younger sisters went to the Dutch UN base in Potocari. My father and I decided to try to walk to Tuzla, a city 100 kilometers further, which was the safe zone. We ran away from the camp and went to the forest. There was complete chaos in the forest, and I lost sight of my father. I found myself in a mass of random strangers. I was crying and running, calling my father’s name. After that, I never saw him again. I joined a convoy of thousands of people, mostly men. Many of them were carrying wounded people. I was in the back. Trees surrounded us so we couldn’t see where we were going. It was a horrific scene. After two days of walking, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we heard a voice through a megaphone. The voice ordered us to surrender and to come out of the forest. They said that we wouldn’t be killed. They also mentioned the Geneva convention. I didn’t know what they meant, but I remember learning about it in school. From that moment, I knew the Serbian soldiers had found us, and I feared for my life.”

1/6 ”Our house and village got destroyed at the very beginning of the war. We escaped from the Serb soldiers in time, but we had nowhere to go. We wandered through many different villages, and we would sometimes stay in the woods. The area was already under the control of the Bosnian Serb forces, so we had no other choice but to go to Srebrenica in March 1993. When we arrived, there were so many refugees. We found a small garage next to a school in which to live. I remember that year as a constant search for food and water. It felt like a concentration camp without wire. Still, from a young boy’s perspective, there were some interesting elements. My friends and I were impressed by the UN soldiers. We would ask them questions about cars, soccer, and their rifles—things that interested me as a 15-year-old boy. We would often go to their base during lunchtime. Sometimes, when the soldiers had some leftovers from their lunch, they would give them to us. After a year, we left the school and went to live in a refugee camp built by the Swedish government. We stayed there for one year. It might sound strange but this was the best period of my life. The camp was next to the river, so we had clean running water. I used every moment I could to go swimming. My friends and I would sometimes play soccer with the Dutch soldiers. That year Ajax played in the Champions League, going on to win the competition, and that was exciting for all of us. We talked a lot about soccer. One of the soldiers gave me a poster of one of the players. At the time, I had no idea who he was, but I put it up in my bedroom. Later, when I was able to watch TV again, I found out it was Jari Litmanen.”