The laying of flowers on the plateau in front of the former Bone Hospital in Stolac marked the 30th anniversary of the suffering and persecution of Bosniaks in Stolac, as well as the memory of the victims of the “Bone Hospital”, organized by the Stolac Camp Inmates Association.
The president of this association and a juvenile inmate, Amer Đulić, said that every year on this day, when, as he stated, “the ethnic cleansing of the Bosniaks in Stolac was completed”, they organize an event dedicated to the victims of the “Bone Hospital”, but also to the memory of the persecution of the Bosniaks in Stolac.
“It has been thirty years since the ethnic cleansing of Stolac, from the day when Stolac was left without 8,100 Bosniaks, the day when that people ended up in concentration camps and exile. The memory is always difficult and painful. I ended up in this facility as a minor, and it was then the Koštana Hospital was a transit center where Croatian National Defense members of the Military Police brought men who were later deported to the Dretelj, Gabela and Heliodrom camps,” he asserted.
Then, as Đulić says, he saw death for the first time and felt hands on him, without being able to defend himself. He notes that five hundred people have passed through the Bone Hospital.
“The Hague verdict mentions Stolac and the Bone Hospital, and that is something that is important to us. The verdict itself is a satisfaction to us, but it is not enough because no one can bring back our dead, nor our health. Every time we come to this facility, it is just as creepy , I’m still shaking, I’m still afraid,” he underlined.
He says that in the last six years, the Stolac Detention Center Association has published three books related to this topic, and after tonight’s laying of flowers, solemn speeches and memories of those days, there was a screening of the film “Stolac – City of Defiance” published by the association.
“We made a film that will show the real truth through witnesses, while they are still alive. Many died, but we managed to find a few brave people who told how it was. We are proud as an association to present the citizens of Stolac with a film that will be a guide and a warning to the younger generations so that evil never happens again,” concluded Đulić.
On Wednesday, this association also organized an exhibition of photographs of the war period, as well as of the return to Stolac, by Mensa Medar, with the emphasis that the culture of memory is their obligation and that the memory of these years must not be forgotten.
(Photo: FENA/Branka Soldo)
