It was five a clock in the winter afternoon and it was already dark. We were not allowed to turn on the lights in our apartment. The city was under air attacks again, attacks were happening couple of times a day.
I was 5 years old, sitting behind the curtain with my nose touching the cold glass balcony doors yelling out to my mum the names of the neighbours in our building in whose apartments I could still see some light, I was scared that bomb will hit our building if they don't turn all of the lights off.
When we heard the siren, many times in the middle of the night, we would take our blankets, some water, my doll and rushed down the stairs together with the rest of the people from our building to the concrete shelter positioned in the middle of the building's yard, under the ground. The shelter was stalked with iron bunk beds without mattresses. Our mums would just fold the blankets and lift up several of us kids to one bed and tried to keep us calm and quite. There were mostly women, kids and old people there.
We didn't hear from my dad for a long time now, he was somewhere close to grandparents house wearing military uniform and hunting rifles (as they didn't have any real weapons yet) together with his brother trying to break through the thick woods on foot, get my grandparents out of the harms way and try to defend the house they were born in from Serbs who marched into Croatia trying to win over, rob and burn as much as they could while killing the people who tried to stop them.
They managed to get the grandparents out but the house was burned to the ground. Next few years we didn't see much of my dad, he was coming and going every few months with some other soldiers to pick up military candles, boots and equipment which my uncle bought and shipped from Chicago.
Our apartment was always full of people and shipping boxes, my uncles family lived with us for some time - aunt, niece and nephew who were refuges from their city as it was to dangerous to live in at the time. My mum traveled daily and worked close to Zagreb at the town which was heavily attacked and bombarded every day, she was pregnant at the time, after work she would go to get some food, powder milk and military cookies in order to make somewhat decent meal for all of us at home.
Sometimes there was not much food, but my mum being as creative as she is was able to make sweets for us only from egg yolk and some sugar, she tried hard to make our life as normal as possible. My sister and I were still to little to understand much but we asked lots of questions, one question I remember never getting the answer to neither from my parents nor from dad's military friends was : 'Why are they throwing bombs at us, why do they want to kill us?'
Now, I am not a nationalist, I don't hate anyone, I didn't see the worst of it during the war like kids in Vukovar or Bosnia did. I am blessed because I didn't loose anyone from my immediate family and I was way to little to understand what was going on.
The fact is, there are certainly no kids from Serbia who can tell you the story of Croatian army throwing bombs in their back yard or taking their dad to concentration camp - because Croatian land was invaded and Croatian people were attacked and that is the simple fact which has now been officially recognised and proved by international court of justice with recent liberation of our military generals who lead our countries defense to victory. Now, our nation and it's war victims got their dignity back and with this their sacrifices were not made in vain.
Today, 22 years later, we are remembering Vukovar and it's victims, the city and the people who's homes and bodies were front line of Croatian defense,Vukovar was our shield which protected the country from falling under aggressors hands and Vukovar and thousands of people who lost their lives for us to be able to call this country our own, to speak our language and live our culture, which many people take as given or for granted. Vukovar should NEVER EVER be forgotten.
The world needs to know the truth about Vukovar and never let it happen again nowhere else, not in Gaza, not in Syria.
