RADMILA NIKOLIĆ REMEMBERS LOSING HER BROTHER AND HUSBAND IN WAR: MOTHER NEVER STOPPED MOURNING HER SON

BANJA LUKA, JULY 2 /SRNA/ – Radmila Nikolić from the hamlet of Brana Bačići near Kravica remembered the deaths of her husband Branko Nikolić, her brother Radomir Milošević and her uncle Milutin Milošević during the 1992–1995 war in a testimony recorded by the Republika Srpska Memorial Center.

"When you lose your brother, you think no greater tragedy is possible. Then, three years later, you lose your husband. You no longer know where to find the strength to go on," Nikolić stressed. She remembers that the family's first devastating loss came when her brother Radomir Milošević was killed in an ambush near Glogova. Nikolić described her brother as a sociable man who loved people, football and music, and who deeply valued freedom and his homeland. "My brother had two young sons. One of them was only a few months old when he lost his father. The younger one has no memory of him at all. The older one remembers only a few things - the swing in front of the house and his father's truck," Nikolić stated. The hardest part, she added, was watching their mother, who never stopped mourning her son until the day she died, visiting his grave every Sunday, bringing flowers, and lighting candles. "The tragedy did not end there. In May 1995, my husband, Branko Nikolić, was also killed. That day he was returning from his shift guarding the mine and heading with his family to Kravica, where a monument to my brother Radomir was to be unveiled," Nikolić stressed in her testimony. She said her husband never reached Kravica because the convoy was ambushed at Rupovo Brdo, where five Serb soldiers, including Branko Nikolić, were killed. Nikolić said the family later heard various accounts of the attack, with several individuals identified as participants, but that no one has ever been held accountable for her husband's killing. After his death, she was left to raise their three sons alone, the youngest of whom was just a year and a half old. She said that, alongside her own grief, the hardest part was watching her children grow up without a father and seeing her mother mourn her son every day. "Your heart aches for the children who suffer, for the mother who cries, and most of all for those who are no longer with us," Nikolić said. Today, she lives surrounded by her sons and grandchildren and says that time cannot erase memories or ease the pain, but that her family and the memory of her brother and husband give her strength. "I wish only one thing for my sons - that they grow up to be like their father. That they be good people, love their own, and never harm anyone. My greatest wish is that war never happens to anyone again," Nikolić concluded. To mark the 34th anniversary of the suffering of Serbs in the Middle Podrinje and Birač regions, the Republika Srpska Memorial Center will present a series of previously little-known testimonies documenting the suffering of the Serb people in the area during the 1992–1995 war. The testimonies will be published daily on the Memorial Center's digital platforms. The central commemoration for the 3,267 Serbs killed in the Middle Podrinje and Birač regions will be held in Bratunac on July 4, under this year's slogan: "Bratunac is not a place you're invited to - it is a place you go to."