War Childhood Museum

“During the two and a half years of working on the book ‘Childhood in War: Sarajevo 1992-1995,’ I had the opportunity to meet several hundred participants and hear their stories and testimonies. I learned how complex growing up in war is, how underexplored it is, and how it is a universal experience. Many of them described or showed me their war memories: personal items, photographs, diaries, letters, drawings, and other documents. Twenty years after the war, a large number of these things were lost during relocations, accidentally discarded, or permanently damaged. In May 2012, I wrote the first concept for the ‘Museum of War Childhood.’ My dream was that one day these items would be exhibited in a museum and preserved permanently.

 

Three years later, in May 2015, the process of creating this museum officially began. After several months, the collection already included several hundred objects and documents. Creating this museum is not only important to permanently preserve memories of war childhood. It is important because, unlike other war museums, it documents the experience of those who have no influence on the outbreak of wars but still suffer multiple consequences. It is important because it is through stories about children's experiences that understanding, as a precondition for reconciliation, can be most easily achieved. Ten years after its opening, the Museum of War Childhood in Sarajevo will be the world's largest archive dedicated to the experience of growing up in war.

 

The mission of the Museum of War Childhood is to continuously and according to the highest standards document and digitize materials related to growing up in war, and then present them through various media with the aim of educating a wide audience about this experience.

 

The vision of the Museum of War Childhood is, on an individual level, to help overcome trauma and prevent the traumatization of others, and on a collective level, to promote mutual understanding with the goal of supporting personal and societal development.

 

In the introductory words for the book ‘Childhood in War,’ I wrote that I hope the book will contribute to understanding this specific experience and to raising awareness among adults about their responsibility to create a better world for children. I hope that the Museum of War Childhood will have the opportunity to do even more than that.