Kemal Krkalic was 27 years old when – as a wounded man – he was transported from Gorazde to Belgrade under a false name. Together with two Bosniaks, he was discovered in the Belgrade Hospital and, two months later, taken to the Correctional Center in Foca, from where he was called for exchange in August 1992, after which all trace of him was lost.
Hikmet Krkalic escaped with his brother Kemal in April 1992 from Foca to Ustikolina, and then to Gorazde. During the interview, he told how his brother was wounded as a member of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) on May 7th – in the first days of the fighting in Gorazde – a town where, he notes, the locals accepted them nicely as refugees. The last time he saw him was in a hospital bed.
”Well, my son, that’s a bit of a story… he was a little different from me. Maybe he was a better judge of some things in a way; he was more aware, very careful, and, truly, infinitely brave. He died early there in Gorazde, on the third or fourth day of the battle – he was wounded on May 7th,” says Hikmet, who finds it too emotional to talk about his brother, for whom, he says, he keeps his emotions to himself.
For him, the fate of his brother is a horror story that, as he says, some people still don’t believe. Hikmet states that at the beginning of the war, Gorazde had no hospitals, staff, or equipment for operations on the wounded. So, he said some of the wounded were transported under Serbian names to Uzice, and some to Belgrade.
”They were taken to Belgrade to the Emergency Center of Serbia. In the group where my brother was, there was also Dzevad Hajric, son of Dzafer from Gorazde, and Husein Bezdrob. After treatment at the Emergency Center of Serbia in Vracar – a large hospital up there, they were discovered,” Husein states, who did not want to reveal the details from whom he learned about it.
He adds that when they were discovered, the military police from Foca came for his brother and the other two and arrested them in a hospital in Serbia.
”The three of them were transported by car to Foca, to the prison camp, where they were later liquidated. At the end of July, they were brought from Belgrade. My father was also in the camp, and he saw him. Izo Causevic told him: “There’s your Kemo, he’s walking across the circle in hospital pajamas.” The hospital handed him over in hospital pajamas, to be taken away and killed,” Hikmet describes.
He says that at the end of August, according to his knowledge, Kemal was taken to an alleged exchange with a group of people that was never found. He partially learned about this from his father, who was being moved from one room to another in the camp that day.
”When my father moved from room 21 to room 23, he found Dzevad and Husein, who were with Kemo in Belgrade. And Dzevad showed him Kemo’s leg cast, which he took off before leaving for the exchange. “This,” he says, “was on his leg.” And just two days later, Dzevad and Huso went to the alleged exchange,” Hikmet recounts what he learned after his father’s release from the camp.
Hikmet was in Grebak when he learned from a relative that his father had been transferred to Trnovo, where he found him in the Trnovo kindergarten.
”We are entering the kindergarten, I want to sleep there. And I hear Jusuf Kumar yelling and I say to him: “What are you yelling at?” “Hiki,” he says, “here’s your dad.” I approach, and my father is so slim. From 96 kilos, he “dropped” to 54. There was no time for tears or anything. We hugged and then we started talking, talking, talking, talking… until we bored the whole room,” Hikmet recalls.
It is difficult for him to talk about life before the war – with younger brothers Kemal and Nedim, father and mother who died in 1991, days on the Drina river in the village of Foca, which was named after their surname.
”It was kind of nice. You have a family, you grow up, you have a house,” said Hikmet.
The families of the victims, he says at the end of the conversation, do not want revenge or new wars and divisions, but to find their missing and get the justice they deserve.
”I’ve been to two or three identifications. In Visoko, I’ve been to two. It’s a terrible feeling,” he says, concluding that those who talk about new wars have not experienced it in their lives, Detektor writes.
E.Dz.
