Photo taken at the Museum of Crimes against Humanity and Genocide in Sarajevo
Here is one of the stories:
/A shirt that smells like my son/
My son Senad was born in 1971. He was arrested along with his father Esad during the 1992 war, and then sent to a concentration camp. They were detained for three months. At my begging, the guards allowed me to see them once. I brought clean clothes because they couldn't take a bath in the camp. I brought Senad his favorite blue sportswear. He immediately changed his clothes and I brought his old clothes back. That was the last time I saw him.
On August 21, the enemy police came to the concentration camp, looking for candidates to exchange prisoners of war. Esad immediately nominated our son and felt that this was the only chance to be free. Before the transport vehicle left, his father sewed 100 German mark banknotes to the inner lining of Senad's shoes. He told his son: Let’s go, and when you get to a safe place, take out the money and buy some food for yourself and your companions. Senad's friend Nihad also got on the car.
All three vehicles were filled with people and drove out of the camp. Esad said he saw Senad and Nihad waving at him in the car. He cried because he had to be separated from his son; at the same time, he was happy that his son was about to be free.
However, this is their last side.
In the deep mountains halfway, the delivery vehicle stopped. The escort soldiers drove everyone out of the car, had them line up to kneel on the edge of the cliff, and then began shooting. In just a few minutes they killed Senad and 199 others, and their bodies fell into a valley 300 meters deep. The soldiers then went to the canyon and threw bombs on the corpses to make sure that no one would know their crimes. They filled all the bodies into a huge pit.
I have never washed the old clothes that Senad handed over to me in the concentration camp that day. The smell left on my clothes is the only trace he left on me. I smell this dress every day, hoping that at least one day his body will be exhumed.
Twenty-six years have passed, and I am still waiting for the day when the bones in blue sportswear are found. Every time he heard the news that a huge tomb was found, his father would go there to try to find the shoe he had sewed 100 marks...
I will be 80 years old soon. I donated this old Senad dress to the museum because I was afraid that I would not be able to wait for the day when he was buried with my own hands.
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