During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, many religious buildings and structures were demolished, and items, including Holy Books (the Qur'an, Bible, Torah, and Haggadah), were burned or displaced. Numerous families of different ethnicities have preserved some of these items and once they got the opportunity, they returned them to where they belong.
The importance of regional cooperation and solidarity in the fight against right-wing extremism are part of the conclusions of the Podgorica Plenum “Quo Vadis Balkan,” held from February 10th to 12th in Montenegro, with prominent intellectual, academic, and political leaders from the region.
Two ordinary families of different ethnicities from villages near Kiseljak and Visoko were connected during the war—not only by the struggle for survival, great uncertainty, and waiting, but also by a togetherness, and humanity that overcame the futility of the war.
In Višegrad, which was subjected to one of the most ruthless ethnic cleansing campaigns during the war, Bosniak returnees we visited claim that interethnic relations are currently friendly, but that if there was no tourism around the famous Mehmed Pasha Sokolović Bridge and the Višegrad hydroelectric power plant “the city would be dead.“
The “Love Tales” project allowed our correspondents to tell ordinary people’s stories through research and fieldwork. Despite the obstacles society has unfairly placed before these interethnic couples, they have prevailed in telling their stories.
76 years after the struggle between Yugoslav partisans and Nazi Germany, new generations in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) are reinventing the concepts of fascism and antifascism in light of contemporary issues.