Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
CHILD’S LIFE IN
SARAJEVO
Presented by:
Badilla, Aniela
Guillen, Larenz
Otian, Sofia
Salinas, Farrah
Sarajevo
• Sarajevo is the capital and largest
city of Bosnia and Yugoslavia.
• It is surrounded by the Dinaric Alps
and situated along the Miljacka River
in the heart of Southeastern Europe
and the Balkans.
• Due to its long and rich history of
religious and cultural diversity,
Sarajevo was sometimes called the
"Jerusalem of Europe”
• For 1,425 days, from April 1992 to
February 1996, the city suffered the
longest siege of a capital city in the
history of modern warfare, during the
A total of 13,952
people were killed
during the siege,
including 5,434
civilians.
Sarajevo itself
transforms from an
educated center of
culture to a
medieval backwater
in which survival
Zlata Filipovic
• Zlata Filipović was born on December
3, 1980 in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.
• She is a Bosnian writer and the author of
"Zlata's Diary: A Child’s Life in
Wartime Sarajevo."
• From 1991 to 1993, she wrote in her
diary, which she called Mimmy, about
the horrors of war in Sarajevo, through
which she was living. Some news
agencies and media outlets labeled her
the "Anne Frank of Sarajevo”.
• Unlike Frank fortunately, Zlata and her
family all survived the war and
escaped to Paris in 1993 where they
lived for a year. They later moved to
Dublin, Ireland, where they still reside
today.
Zlata Filipovic
• Zlata, the only child of Malik, a lawyer, and Alica, a
chemist, earned near-perfect grades in school, had
loads of friends, and played piano beautifully. She
lived close to her grandparents. She wanted to join
Madonna's fan club. Zlata and her family were
educated, cultured Bosnians who intermingled with
Serbs, Croats and Muslims.
• Zlata contemplates suicide but tries to be strong -
especially for her mother, who seems to be coming
apart at the seams. She admits she is a child "without
a childhood" who only wants peace for Christmas in
1993.
A Child’s Life in Sarajevo
Yesterday the people in front of the parliament tried peacefully to cross the
Vrbanja bridge. But they were shot at. Who? How? Why? A girl, a medical
student from Dubrovnik, was KILLED. Her blood spilled onto the bridge. In her
final moments all she said was: "Is this Sarajevo?" HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE,
HORRIBLE!. . .
Since yesterday people have been inside the B-H parliament. Some of them are
standing outside, in front of it. We've moved my television set into the living
room, so I watch Channel I on one TV and "Good Vibrations" on the other: Now
they're shooting from the Holiday Inn, killing people in front of the parliament.
And Bokica is there with Vanja and Andrej. Oh, God!
Maybe we'll go to the cellar. You, Mimmy, will go with me, of course. I'm
desperate.
. . . You know, Mimmy, we've had no water or electricity for ages. When I go out
and when there's no shooting it's as if the war were over, but this business with
the electricity and water, this darkness, this winter, the shortage of wood and
food, brings me back to earth and then I realize that the war is still on. . .
As I sit writing to you, my dear Mimmy, I look over at Mommy and Daddy. They
are reading. . Somehow they look even sadder to me in the light of the oil
lamp. . .I look at Daddy. He really has lost a lot of weight. The scales say twenty-
five kilos, but looking at him I think it must be more. I think even his glasses are
too big for him. Mommy has lost weight too. She's shrunk somehow, the war has
given her wrinkles. God, what is this war doing to my parents? They don't look
like my old Mommy and Daddy anymore. Will this ever stop? Will our suffering
stop so that my parents can be what they used to be-cheerful, smiling, nice-
looking?
Excerpts
•
from Zlata’s Diary
Wednesday, September 29, 1993
We waited for September 27 and 28. The 27th was the Assembly of Bosnian
Intellectuals, and the 28th was the session of the B-H Parliament. And the result is
"conditional acceptance of the Geneva agreement." CONDITIONAL. What does
that mean?
Once more the circle closes. The circle is closing, Mimmy, and it's strangling us.
Sometimes I wish I had wings so I could fly away from this hell. Like Icarus.
There's no other way.
But to do that I'd need wings for Mommy, wings for Daddy, for Grandma and
Granddad and. . .for you, Mimmy.
And that's impossible, because humans are not birds.
That's why I have to try to get through all this, with your support, Mimmy, and to
hope that it will pass and that I will not suffer the fate of Anne Frank. That I will be
a child again, living my childhood in peace.
Zlata’s Diary
• In mid-September 1993, there is some
talk of a conditional peace accord, but
by mid-October gunfire is still
erupting from the hills surrounding
the city. Zlata's last entry asks a
simple question of the war: why?
THANK YOU!!!