part 1 Interview with Almira Rzehak and her amazing escape from Sarajevo

Interview with Almira Rzehak and her amazing escape from Sarajevo interviewed By Laszlo Szontagh She is a child psychologist working for the betterment of this universe Remember Sarajevo BY Peter Maass January 2003 Do we need to remember Sarajevo? The war in Bosnia ended in 1995, and much has happened since then, not only in Bosnia, but in the rest of the world. We have lived through the events of 9/11, we have engaged in war in Afghanistan, and we are on the verge of another war in Iraq. We are being told that America’s survival is at stake, and though we may doubt the severity of the threat, or the wisdom of the government’s response to it, there are people who wish fatal harm to America. Sarajevo, and the agony it suffered in the 1990s, would seem to carry little importance today. It is just a scarred Balkan city filled with aid workers, peacekeepers and a population that sadly remembers its history even as others forget it. Bosnia is not in material breach of anything today. Sarajevo is fading away, filed in the recesses of our historical memory between the tragedies of Somalia and Rwanda, which briefly grabbed our attention before they faded away, too. Yet Sarajevo was besieged not just by men with weapons but by evil. It was a multicultural city set upon by nationalists who engaged in ethnic cleansing on a scale not seen in Europe since World War II. In the past year or two, the phrase “ethnic cleansing” has retreated from the lexicon of national discourse, replaced by the new catchphrases of our fears, such as Al Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction and Osama bin Laden. Even so, the evil of ethnic cleansing must be recalled, alongside the shameful fact that America and its allies tolerated mass murder because it did not seem to threaten us. When, finally, it did menace our interests—the NATO alliance was ..................