Will my mother find out how I was killed?

Nedžad Avdić, who was a boy at the time, told us his story of the harrowing journey from Srebrenica and surviving an execution. After all he endured, he returned to Srebrenica.

"At the beginning of July 1995, the offensive began. First, the shells started falling, increasingly intensively. We lived in a refugee camp located between the UNPROFOR lines and the Serbian army. We started fleeing through the forest towards the villages around Srebrenica. After several days, on the evening of July 10th, we escaped towards Sućeska, where Bosniak village territories were located. We could no longer go towards Srebrenica. That's when we decided that my mother and sisters would head to the UNPROFOR base, and my father told me to decide whether I would go with my mother to Potočari or with them to Šušnjare, where a column was forming that would try to break through to the free territories. And, I decided to go with my father. I wasn't sure that UNPROFOR would save us, considering their attitude towards us children all that time. Because UNPROFOR played as the Serbs dictated."

"So we parted ways, and on July 11th, my father and I were in Šušnjari, where there was real chaos. In that mass of people, I clung to my father until the shelling started, and in my attempt to find shelter, I lost him. Chaos ensued. When you lose your father in that crowd and in the night that followed, when you don't know anyone else, crying and running around calling for him, but no one looked back, everyone was trying to save themselves. On those clearings, on the meadow, I remained until three o'clock the next day. The column had already moved ahead, and fearing the Serbian army, we headed into the forest. That's when the shelling of the column began and did not stop. I didn't know anyone in the column. I encountered crying boys, people missing an arm or a leg begging for help not to be left behind... And, we just kept moving forward through the forest. Honestly, what I feared most was getting wounded and being left alone."

The Path to Captivity

They were hiding in the forest when the column was cut off. In fact, they were lost in the middle of the forest, not knowing how and where to go next. Thus, they survived the night in the forest, and on July 13th, they continued on, hiding until Serbian soldiers called them via megaphone to surrender. Initially, they did not agree to this. Then, having no other choice, we emerged onto the asphalt road between Konjević-Polje and Bratunac. There were about 2,000 of us. There, they lined us up on the asphalt road and ordered us to put down all our belongings, which they would return to us later. Trucks carrying women and children from Potočari, who could not pass because of us, arrived at one point. They ordered us to stand up and run towards Bratunac, where they placed us in a meadow in Sandići. This is the meadow where you can see footage of a man calling out: "Come here, Nermin, to the Serbs!" Around us, there were many soldiers sitting on the balconies of Bosniak houses. One of the soldiers addressed us, saying that they were from Serbia, and that we should have surrendered earlier. He said sarcastically: "You will be transferred to the hangars in Bratunac and you won’t have dinner!" because, obviously, he knew what was going to happen to us. They ordered us to then shout slogans: Long live the king, long live Serbia, and we chanted this in chorus. They ordered us to lie face down, and I felt them walking on us. We lay there from 5 to 8 o'clock on that 13th of July, and in the distance, from the direction of Kravica, we heard gunshots. When we were ordered to stand up, we saw that the wounded who had been there were gone. We also saw soldiers shooting from outside into the interiors of houses, where they had probably taken the wounded and executed them. I noticed my uncle and some neighbors there too. Then, semi-trucks arrived which we had to climb onto hurriedly. The trucks were covered with tarps. I was on the last truck, so I could notice a police car: a white and blue Golf that followed us all the way to Bratunac. This shows that both the police and the army were involved together. We spent the night there, hungry and thirsty. The next day, they closed the tarps, and we started towards Zvornik. They stopped somewhere near Zvornik, opened our tarps, and we got out in front of a building. They hit and cursed everyone in the process. A Serbian soldier asked one Bosniak, "Do you recognize me?" And when he nodded, the soldier hit him even harder with his rifle in the ribs. They began to beat him and jump on him. He groaned and eventually crawled to the doors where they kept us. There, we had to chant in chorus: This is Serbian land, and Srebrenica has always been Serbian land and always will be! The noise of people in classrooms that were full could be heard.

Survived the execution

On the night of July 14th, mass shootings began. The intentions were clear. Serbian soldiers started taking people out of the classrooms in groups of three to five. Those waiting their turn heard bursts of gunfire and realized what was happening. We were then ordered to exit in pairs. After leaving for the hallway, they tied our hands, stuffed us into another classroom, and once they finished tying us up, ordered us to line up and board a truck. However, when I stepped outside, I realized it was the end. I understood that what was sticking to my feet was human blood. They took us on a truck, and ten minutes later, we arrived at the site designated for mass execution. In fact, I would only realize this the next day. When they brought us there, they opened the truck and ordered us out in groups of five. I tried to hide and crouch down until one man asked me, "Do you want me to untie your hands?" I told him not to, thinking they would kill me anyway. I walked with my head down, noticing dead people beside me. I thought about how they would kill me here and how my mother would never know how I died. They started separating us into groups of five and began shooting. I lay down and didn’t remember that moment anymore. When I regained consciousness, I remember lying face down, trembling, my right arm and right side of my stomach hurting, while bullets hit all around me. The smell of gunpowder was in the air, and a man beside me was groaning. When they shot the next group, I felt a bullet hit my foot. It hurt, and I just wanted to die. People around me were wailing, and when the shooting ended, they began to kill those who had survived. I heard one shout, "Jovo, put another bullet in each of their heads!" Out of the corner of my eye, I saw boots in front of me and thought it was my turn. But I only felt the splattering of stones hitting my shoulder and head.

"I couldn't move, and it wasn't realistic to expect that I would be able to escape. The moon was out, and spotlights illuminated the plateau. I tried to turn my head, but the stones were painful. In my attempt to move, I noticed something stirring a few rows ahead. I asked, 'Are you alive?' and he replied, 'I am, untie me.' I told him I couldn't move, but he kept insisting. Somehow, I managed to crawl over to him. I just managed to reach him and tried to untie him with my teeth, but it didn't work. Then, he used his teeth to untie me. A truck came, its headlights illuminating everything, and they continued killing. Still, somehow I managed to untie him, and we crawled further. Once we had moved a bit away, he bandaged me up and encouraged me to keep going. He carried me."

Wandering, they eventually arrived at the Bosniak village of Vitinica near Sapna. He was taken to a hospital in Tuzla where he found his mother and sisters. Unfortunately, he later heard that his father had not survived.

Source:
Preporod newspaper