The War Childhood Museum

January 2021

This is the fourth piece in a multi-part series on Sarajevo, in which I hope to capture and convey the various emotions I felt on my first journey there in 2019. 

Located on a quiet street on a hill just north of central Sarajevo is a museum which showcases the stories of children who grew up during the war. Few places in this city will haunt you more, no mean feat in a town full of countless sorrows.

Inside the main hall of this small building you will find various artifacts sent in by young Bosnians, now in their twenties and thirties, who experienced the siege as children. There is a card made by a little girl out of scrap paper, given to her mother to commemorate International Women’s Day. There is a small wooden rocking chair that a father built out of small scraps of scavenged wood. A faded magazine from before the war, which offered some little boy a glimpse into a war-free world, even as the shells tore up the ground around him.

There is Nina’s diary, written by a fierce little girl who wrote:

Nina was killed in August 1995. She was one of the last children to die during the siege of Sarajevo..

Then there is the book (War Childhood), a collection of brief responses sent in by young Bosnians in 2010 when asked “What was a war childhood for you?”. Its 328 pages contain a touching mix of sadness, levity, curiosity, pain, and resigned acceptance. Here are a few snippets that will bring you to your knees:

The museum encapsulates the elegiac sadness at the heart of Sarajevo. It tells stories big and small, of children growing up too fast amidst horrors no human should ever have to endure. It is a harrowing glimpse into the shared national trauma borne by Bosnia, the memories of those who were alive when the snipers killed their parents and tore their childhoods asunder.

Near the museum’s exit, there is a final section, filled with artifacts from more modern war childhoods, sent in by Syrian and Afghan children growing up in refugee camps across Asia and Europe. Beautiful in its own right, it is a sad reminder that even as one chapter of misery closes, somewhere else another continues to be written.

I wonder, whom did I wrong so much by my name and origin that he was so determined to spill my blood on the asphalt?

Damn you, why are you killing our souls, which exist only to love? To love peace, to love play, to love happiness...

Haris Jamaković. A childhood friend who never grew up. The first time I asked myself what ‘killed’ meant.

There is no childhood during war...it is what you lose while learning to recognize the shells and rifles by caliber...