Hi, I had a similar experience...[8)]
am from Yugoslavia,Serbia.
I lived in a nice building with friendly people and plenty of friends.
We use to go outside everyday and have plenty of fun... in 1999 when US went to take controll of Kosovo, and Slobodan Milosevic refused to alllow US troops near Kosovo all hell broke loose. US started bombing Serbia and I remeber at night my friends and people I knew fled in the basements at the bottom of the city buildings every time the sirens went out, all the lights were turned off and you could see the sparks in the sky as jets fired... I still remember when the ground shook...
and in the morning they would show on the news the damage that was created, bridges and factories were most hit in my city...
Anywho, the way I see it this kind experience is a part of people's lives and it like everything else becomes forgotten and lost because we live in a moment and not the future or the past because we don't know the outcome of the future and we can't change the past, it's best to live and experience what the life has to offer and not get stuck behind cause of some memory that is a fragment of nothing but an emotion. Bringing back the emotions won't help or make a difference to me. I hope for the best in the moment, to feel its experience so I can move on to release it and make room for new emotions because it makes me feel alive and happy...[8D]
In this thread I will speak of a strange phenomenom that had occured to my family and, I think, to the rest of people that were affected by the war. But first I translated an essay that I wrote while helping my brother in learning.
Do not take my childhood away!
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Nobody cared about the children then. Nobody asked us a thing. The fathers who were leaving barely had the time to tell us "I'll be back...". Basements turned into homes, and homes turned into ruins. The families who had not fled were allways afraid of bombings, hurt or sudden death.
Nobody asked us where are our friends. No one asked us why aren't we playing outside. Nobody asked us what we want. Yet we were the ones who asked. We asked where our fathers are. We asked when will these explosions stop. We asked when will we sleep in our rooms, our beds again. Whenever a grenade exploded in close range we asked will we ever again see our family, friends, or neighbours...
To others who fled from that chaos wasn't any better. Everyday the listened to the news on the radio with fear. They watched the reports of brave, and sometimes foolishly brave, reporters from the first line. We, children, watched these pictures of terror on the TV and could not understand what was happening and why. To us, it was just another world that was far from ours. We were just asking when will we go home, when will we see our father and friends again, when will we see our room and toys again.
Many have lost a father, mother, sister, or a brother, friend or neighbour. Today, they are only faint memories. some aren't even that. Some are forgotten and, to us, it looks like they were never a part of our world, lives, and childhood. We children were adaptable. We put behind our bad memories and forgot the dead. We live in this world like nothing happened. The War is history for us, another bad dream that has to be forgotten. We have problems of greater importance now, like school, new friends and other new things that we accepted.
Our childhood was taken though we often do not realize it. I often try to remember 1991 but I just can't remeber a thing. That whole war is just a big hole in my memory. Time can not be reversed. Mistakes can not be repaired. All I can do is to send a message to people; don't take our children's childhood away!
Daniel "V00D00" Ferenc
13.11.2003.
I think most of you had heard about the war in Croatia that occured in the 90's. Croatia was defending it's freedom and Serbia was trying to found "Big Serbia". I live in Osijek and I experienced only few days of war before we fled to Hungary. And these few days were terrible. The phenomenon I'm talking about is that my family and me have only a few memories of that year spent in Hungary. We do not remember any celebrations like birthdays, Christmass or Easter. I can't remember my first day in school. I have only few memories like a "vision" that I had when I was sick. Two or three events that occured while I was in hospital.
This is not a thraumatic effect since I was 7 years old and I never fully understood what's happening. The worst of all is that Croatian people somehow forgot what happened. They are trying to be very good friends with the Serbs that only a decade ago were killing their familly and friends. My oppinion is that things can be forgiven but they can never be forgotten. My childhood was taken and I have a one year big hole in my memory.