Oral history - Positive stories

Do you have a story?

Summary of the project

Contact information

Oral History project

Positive stories

Do you have a story?

The Research and Documentation Center has started implementation of  the project Oral history- Positive Stories. The aim of the project is to collect stories about Bosnian citizens who helped each other during the war.
RDC encourages you to participate in this project by sharing with us your personal stories, and knowledge or providing us with information about others, who have similar experience.

For more information, please read summary of the  project provided below:

Summary of the project:

Much has been written about mass atrocities committed during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995. Scholars, journalists, researchers and others have documented the forcible expulsion, rapes, missing and executions which happened during that period.
However, what is less known is the fact that many citizens risked their lives defending and helping their neighbors and fellow citizens. These unknown heroes have challenged the evil by protecting what was the most important at that moment –lives of their friends and neighbors.

The experience we gained while working with different actors of the war, revealed fact-based examples of the human courage and citizens’ solidarity. In addition, through our work we realized that no matter how horrifying the circumstances were, there were a number of good and honest people, who risked their lives in order to save other people lives.
            We think that this is a proper way to demonstrate that, even despite the danger and the hatred of the war, the bonds between the people and especially the neighbors based on the traditional relations were not completely destroyed. In our opinion, this could serve as a model of behavior and relations in the period after the war, while creating the atmosphere of dialogue, understanding, and strengthening the individual relations as well as the whole society.
            Our intention is to interview all involved parties: both those who were helping and those who were helped.
The RDC team will come to the place of residence of those willing to share their stories and record them by video or audio. All participants in Project will have chance to choose the way how to participate in the project. RDC will offer them protection of identity such as protection of other mentioned persons in their stories if it is necessary.

After the gathering and transcribing the stories, the RDC intends to analyze and select these which will be published and publicized through a number of public presentations. Our intention is to emphasize the importance and value of these examples of citizens’ courage, solidarity and humanity. In addition, all the stories/interviews are going to be stored into the RDC archive.

We are kindly asking you to prevent the “positive examples” from becoming forgotten. We believe that your testimonies can contribute to the process of establishing the truth about the events of the last war and war crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Contact information :

You can contact our team on following adresses:

Selma Korjenić, project manager
RDC office Sarajevo, Kupreška 17,
E mail: korjenic@idc.org.ba, centar@idc.org.ba
Tel: 033 725 350
Fax: 033 725 357   

Snježana Filipović, head of office Brčko
RDC office Brčko, Safet-bega Bašafića 1/1
E mail: filipovic@idc.org.ba
Tel/fax: 049 211 079

Aida Kuduz, associate from the office Goražde
RDC office Goražde, 43. Drinske brigade 34
E mail: kuduz@idc.org.ba, gorazde@idc.org.ba
Tel: 038 222 365