‘I Hate War’: Children’s Letters to America from Besieged Sarajevo

“Although our living conditions are totally different from yours, we are just like you, interested in the same things. We love music, sports, films, Coca-Cola, love… Just like you!”

This was a letter that 15-year-old Arma Tanovic-Brankovic sent to a schoolchild in the United States during the wartime siege of her home city, Sarajevo, in the 1990s.

She also wrote that, in spite of all that was happening, the children of Sarajevo continued to go to school; she also listed her favourite writers and stated her ambition to study at an arts school.

“I don’t like math. I hate war and death. Before the war I corresponded with young people from many countries. I would like to get your response,” she said in the letter, enclosing a black and white photograph of her smiling and a drawing of a flower.

‘They only wanted to be normal children’

Earlier this year, the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives in Budapest handed over more than 100 letters to the War Childhood Museum in Sarajevo which children in the besieged city wrote to their peers in the US in 1993 as part of a project called Pen Pals for Peace, run by the Open Society Foundation.

Csaba Szilagyi, head of the human rights programme with the Blinken Open Society Archives in Budapest and acting chief archivist, explained that after BIRN’s conference on transitional justice in Sarajevo last year, he visited the War Childhood Museum and got the idea of digging out the letters from the archives and sending them back to the city in which they were written.

Szilagyi told BIRN that around 400 letters were written and sent from Sarajevo to schoolchildren in the US. They eventually found their way to the Open Society Foundation in New York and were then transferred to Budapest for archiving.

He said the Blinken archive was in possession of around 112 letters, mainly written by Sarajevo children, who introduced themselves in English and wrote about their hobbies and books they liked to read.

He said it showed him that the children were behaving as “if the grenades and the bullets were not falling on their heads”.

“Every letter, written in better or worse English, expresses the wish of the children that the only thing they wanted was to live and behave as normal children,” he explained.

“And one other thing that comes out of the letters and those who lived throughout the war can attest to this is that they were not afraid. In every other letter there is a sentence: ‘Yes, bombs are falling, but we don’t care and we are not afraid,’” he said.

Six or seven of the letters were written by American children who had been addressed by their peers in Sarajevo and then wrote to President Bill Clinton, demanding that he did all he could to stop the war.

“Those were angry letters. Their tone and content is angry, as only a 13-year-old schoolchild can be. They really ask, request and urge the president to stop this war,” Szilagyi said.

Among the letters returned to Sarajevo was the one written by Tanovic-Brankovic, but she cannot remember it because she wrote so many during the war.

“I was surprised to see how teenage the letter was, how any other teenager suffering such a situation in a refugee camp today wants everyday, simple things, just like our teenagers or teenagers anywhere else in the world,” Tanovic-Brankovic told BIRN.

“It is interesting that it was an ordinary letter from a teenager, who did not differ from any other teenager in Italy or America, except for the fact that she lived in a war and wanted to share her experience with somebody,” she added.

Tanovic-Brankovic also recalled how her parents had a large network of business contacts throughout the world, whose business cards Tanovic-Brankovic found during the war. She also wrote them letters, which she sent via people who were leaving Sarajevo.

“I don’t even know what I wanted from those people. I wrote them that the war was happening in Sarajevo, something had to be done, that we deserved a normal life. I think I even asked some of them to help us leave Sarajevo. I have never received any response, of course,” she said.

‘Everything will be OK’

The executive director of the War Childhood Museum, Amina Krvavac, said that after it was agreed to send the letters back to Sarajevo in order to exhibit them at the museum, the next step is to contact some of their authors.

“I suppose it will be both an emotional and healing experience,” she said.

But Jasminko Halilovic, the founder of the War Childhood Museum, said it will unfortunately not be possible to get in touch with all the authors, as some of them have since died.

“For instance, I saw a letter written by a friend of mine who got killed during the war,” he said.

From its opening in 2017, the museum has focused on children’s personal stories.

“I believe that, through our work, we emphasise the strength of these children, their creativity and ability to survive and do something positive for themselves under difficult circumstances, such as war,” Krvavac said.

Speaking to BIRN at the museum, Tanovic-Brankovic reflected on her childhood in the war as her daughters played behind her and looked at exhibits that belonged to some other Sarajevo children during the 1992-95 conflict.

“I am glad I survived, as many people didn’t. I am glad that my parents survived, as many people lost their parents. I am glad that I have had a nice life after the war, I finished university, I love my job, I live a good life. Somehow, during the war I learned to appreciate the real things, the basic values of life, love and family,” she said.

She added that thanks to the war, she began to read, paint and got involved in acting.

“At the theatre, we found an asylum for our spirit. We were hiding in an alternative reality that was different from the reality surrounding us,” she said.

Today, Tanovic-Brankovic teaches at the Academy of Performing Arts and owns the Sarajevo branch of the Helen O’Grady International Academy, an after-school developmental drama programme.

Asked what she would tell the teenage girl who wrote the letter to America a quarter of a century ago, she replied, with tears in her eyes: “That everything will be OK.”