PAIN FOR HER MOTHER HAS NOT FADED EVEN 30 YEARS LATER

NOVI GRAD, AUGUST 4 /SRNA/ – Even after 30 years, Jelena Dalmacija’s memories and the pain for her mother Milena, who was killed on September 19, 1995, in Blagaj near Novi Grad, when the Croatian army shelled a convoy of Serb refugees, have not faded.

Jelena remembers the shelling that took place on the first day of the Croatian army’s attack on the West Krajina municipalities, which followed the criminal Operation Storm and the mass expulsion of Serbs from Republika Srbpska Krajina. “My mother, brother, and I were in the basement with neighbours; my father was at the front. A neighbour came and said we had to leave town,” Jelena recalls. At the age of seven, she set off in a convoy toward Prijedor with her mother Milena, her nine-year-old brother Dragoslav, and neighbours. “The morning was calm; there was no shelling like the previous day. We all walked together in a convoy, eating what we had. I remember one woman brought homemade bread that was still warm,” Jelena recounts. In Blagaj, near the train station, they heard gunfire, then shelling. “My mother was holding our hands. I felt something pass by us and hit a building—my mother fell. We looked at each other, not understanding what was happening. They moved us into a hedge. Neighbours took us into a house as the shelling began,” Jelena remembers. She recalls the arrival of an ambulance and being told her mother had been taken to the hospital, wounded by shrapnel in the shoulder. “When the shelling stopped, we continued on foot toward Prijedor. I remember someone loaded my brother and me into a truck and took us to Prijedor,” she says. They spent two days in a kindergarten, the name of which she doesn’t recall, but she remembers a caretaker, Koviljka, who took her and her brother home with her to sleep for two nights. “After two days, our father arrived. We were outside and saw a familiar face- it was our dad. On the way back, I asked where mom was. He couldn’t tell us the truth,” she recalls. Back in Poljavnice near Novi Grad, at her grandfather’s house, Jelena realized that her mother had died that day - when a funeral vehicle arrived at the house. “It’s hard. Even 30 years later, I miss my mother. The memories don’t fade, the pain doesn’t go away. Our father was there for us; he raised us right. My brother has four children. I, unfortunately, can’t have children due to illness, but I always wanted to be a mother because I grew up without one. I need my mother - I’m a daughter,” Jelena says. Her brother Dragoslav has three sons and a seven-month-old daughter named Milena, after their mother. Jelena graduated from university and works in Banja Luka, but she wishes her mother could see what she has accomplished. On weekends, she returns home as she is closely connected to her brother’s children. Every time she comes or goes, she passes the cemetery where her mother is buried. She remembers her mother as a hardworking and kind woman who knew how to sew - that was her trade. “She sewed clothes for herself, and it was the most beautiful clothing in the world. She also sewed for children. I still keep her sewing machine, even though I don’t know how to sew. I know she was a good person, everyone tells me that. I try to be like her,” Jelena says. What hurts her the most is that, even after 30 years, no one has been held accountable for the crime when Croatian shells targeted civilians in the refugee convoy. Milena, who was 36 years old in 1995, was the only person killed that day in Blagaj. Just over a month earlier, only a few kilometers away in Svodna, Croatian aircraft attacked a convoy of Serbs fleeing from Republika Srpska Krajina.