Two young men from Srebrenica, after graduation, decided to return to their town and continue to build their lives there. One survived the genocide in Srebrenica, and the other was born in exile in that painful year of 1995. Neither of them loses hope and desire that even after the genocide, Srebrenica can be a city for a bright future.
One of them is Adem Mehmedovic, born in 1987.
”By chance, I was born in Tuzla, but I always like to say that my heaven, the first one I saw, was in Srebrenica, considering that my family is from there,” Adem states.
The second young man, Mehmedovic Ahmo, was born in Lukavac on October 1st, 1995.
”My family lived in Srebrenica until July 1995. After the fall of Srebrenica, they were deported to Lukavac, where I was born,” Ahmo says.
Adem, who was 8 years old in 1995, recalls the difficult images he witnessed.
”My village was on the front line. As a child, it’s not pleasant to see dead bodies, people getting hurt, my friend getting hurt who was maybe a year older than me, my uncle getting hurt…,”Adem adds.
”If I hadn’t returned to Srebrenica, I don’t know what would have happened, but I fulfilled my wish by returning. In 10-20 years, I don’t know where we will all be. If I hadn’t returned, if I hadn’t realized my desire to return and form a family and buy an apartment and form life here, I wouldn’t be me, that wouldn’t be it,” Adem emphasizes.
Ahmo’s family returned to Srebrenica in 2003.
”I think that the new, young generations will build a better place to live here, a better life for all of us. I would tell all young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) to get an education, to focus all their capacities on education because an educated person is a winner,” Ahmo emphasizes.