In Prijedor, the 31st anniversary of the greatest crime in the Keraterm concentration camp was marked in the organization of the Association of Prisoners in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Association of Associations of Prisoners of the Banjaluka Region, the Association of Prisoners “Prijedor ’92” and the Association of Kozarac Prisoners.
During the summer of 1992, about three thousand Bosniak and Croat civilians passed through this camp, and the remains of those killed were found in the mass graves of Stari Kevljani, Jakarina Kosa and Tomašica. Many are still being sought.
In just one night, from July 23 to 24, about 200 inmates were killed from room number three of the Keratrerm camp. 370 of them were killed in total in this camp, which obliges the survivors to gather every year and remember the grave crimes committed here.
Mirsada Džolić from Prijedor still remembers with pain that summer of 1992 and Keraterm, where her husband was killed, and she herself went through all the sufferings of the camp.
“I lost 28 people closest to me, father, mother…, I’m still looking for the remains of my mother and father. I haven’t been here in 24 years. The second time I come, it’s getting harder and harder, I was raped in Trnopolje, what can I tell you… I’ve been to The Hague 12 times, I’ve testified. It’s hard, it’s a disaster, but, again, I didn’t give up because I have children, I was 29 and my husband was 33 when he was killed, it’s really hard for me,” Džolić said, adding that “no one should ever forget the suffering of the camp inmates”.
“I never thought that at the age of 29 I would survive this, be in a camp, be beaten, raped, stabbed, my back was stabbed, my legs were beaten… And, again, I only thought about the children, girls ten and five years old… I lost my whole family, what would happen to me, what would they do, that’s all I thought about,” said Džolić and added through tears: “Whenever I come to this ‘Three’, I look, as if it were now. They beat him, knocked out his teeth, tied him with wire, I also found bones tied with wire, he just said – I’m gone, take care of my children, and I never saw him again. He was found in the Kevljani pit, only four bones.”
About 30,000 residents of Prijedor were imprisoned in Prijedor camps, 3,000 of them were killed. The remains were found in 503 graves in ten municipalities in three states, and the search for the remains of 471 citizens of Prijedor is still ongoing.
