Rezak Hukanović, Trieste 2023 – photo by N. Corritore
He spent six months in a concentration camp in 1992. Once freed he was welcomed in Norway where in 1993 he decided to write a book about his imprisonment. Rezak Hukanović, journalist from Prijedor, is the author of “The tenth circle of hell” recently released in Italy with a preface by Eli Wiesel and an afterword by Paolo Rumiz. We interviewed him
“Silence was the only thing that was not forbidden in the camp. It expressed the genuine monstrosity of living there and the infinite sadness of trying desperately to forget all that suffering, at least for a moment.”
(The Tenth Circle of Hell, Rezak Hukanović)
In your book you describe the days in which you were a prisoner in a lager in Bosnia Herzegovina, near Prijedor. Qwhen they deported her and qhow long was he a prisoner?
I was locked up for six months in two different concentration camps: in Omarska [nel campo, le forze nazionaliste serbe, che avevano assunto il controllo dell’area, rinchiusero migliaia di civili bosniaci, musulmani e croati, ndr] from 30 May to 6 August [si ritiene che il campo venne chiuso dopo la pubblicazione del video-reportage dei giornalisti Penny Marshall e Ed Vulliamy, ndr] then in Manjača until November 1992. This second was, shall we say, a “lighter” version of a concentration camp: we slept on the ground, we suffered from the cold, but at least they didn’t torture us as happened in Omarska. By then the International Red Cross had registered us. At that moment everyone in Bosnia and abroad knew of the existence of the concentration camps, so they could no longer make us all disappear. My sixteen year old son, who had been imprisoned with me, was released earlier, while I was released on November 14, 1992. I know that others remained prisoners until December.
What happened once he was released?
We were bussed by the Red Cross to Croatian territory. There we were transferred to a bus with Croatian license plates and taken to a refugee camp near Karlovac in Croatia, which welcomed survivors of concentration camps . From here, a planned move towards countries that were willing to welcome ex-deportees was envisaged. Every morning we looked at the announcement board where they displayed the lists: one day 30 names for Switzerland, another day 50 for Sweden, and so my turn also came on the list, for Norway .
Usually, the list appeared three to four days before departure. And it was on the day of boarding the plane that I saw for the first time, in front of the barracks, my family who had been contacted by the flight organizers because they had the right to leave with me.
Did you receive treatment and psychological support in Norway? How did your decision to start writing come about?
Yes. Upon arrival, in the first 15 days, all of us ex-deportees were examined by a series of doctors. Some of us still had unhealed wounds on our bodies, due to the violence suffered in the concentration camps. After these visits, I felt the need to write down everything I had survived. I was lucky enough to meet an exceptional person, a Norwegian who had studied in Belgrade and Novi Sad and who knew my language very well. After reading the first 15 pages I had written, he asked me to publish a book.
First of all, I felt it as a moral duty towards those who hadn’t survived the concentration camps. Furthermore, one of the ex-deportees had asked me to write it because he said that among them I was the only writer, and therefore the only one who would have been able to do so.
Secondly, it turned out to be a form of cure for me. Let me be clear, it has been a painful journey, there have been moments in which I thought of stopping, of not being able to bear it. While I was writing, I relived what I had suffered… you won’t believe it, but I even felt again, physically real, the blows they gave me on the back, such as psychic violence, hunger. For this too, as a form of defense, I decided to use the third person and a pseudonym for the protagonist.
But getting to the end of the writing and then seeing the book published was for me the best medicine for a syndrome so traumatic as to leave indelible marks on many of us. It happened to me, even years later, to know former deportees who, contrary to myself, were no longer able to sleep.
How was your testimony received, but also that of other survivors? Have you ever been disbelieved?
What you asked me is very important. To this day, at least to me, it has never happened that someone said to my face “what you say has never happened to you”. Also because I have chosen to write only what I have seen with my own eyes and not what I have heard from others. There is only one truth, proven, there are not two, three and so on. I have often been told that I had the courage to tell what I wrote. I don’t think it’s courage to write the truth, but it sure is cowardly to lie.
When did the first edition of the book come out?
I wrote the book thirty years ago and it first came out in Norway in 1993. Then I republished it, with updates. In Bosnia and Herzegovina I published it many years later, for the first time in 2012, thanks to the same wonderful person who had helped me at the beginning. Obviously, if not unfortunately, the book was widely read and sold during the war years. So then came the request from the Americans to translate it into English, and so it was released in the USA in 1994 for three editions. The English version was then also published in other countries, three editions in Great Britain, as many in New Zealand. Versions in Turkish, German and now Italian followed.
Where does the title of the book come from?
It refers to Dante, who speaks of nine circles of Hell. To explain the title I think the words of the preface written by Eli Wiesel are enough [Il 29 novembre 1992 Eli Wiesel è entrato a Sarajevo assediata, accompagnato da alcuni giornalisti tra i quali la collaboratrice di OBCT Azra Nuhefendić, ndr] writer, Nobel Peace Prize winner, WWII concentration camp survivor: “Dante was wrong. In hell there are not nine circles, but ten. Rezak Hukanović takes you to the last, most frightening and heartbreaking one”.
Despite everything, she has decided to return to live in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in her city Prijedor. What was the impact?
I returned to Bosnia in 1996, to Sarajevo, as soon as the war ended. Back then it was still impossible to return to Prijedor [rimasta, secondo gli Accordi di Dayton, nella Republika Srpska, entità a maggioranza serbo-bosniaca, ndr]. I only returned there in 2000 and I still live there today. Prijedor is my city, I had friends, family there, after all those years I wanted to go back to my land. I wasn’t scared, if that’s what you mean.
I asked a dear Serbian friend what they said to each other. And he replied: “The good ones know and say that everything happened as you wrote, if not worse. Those who have a guilty conscience and are criminals say you are lying.”
To say, I had the great desire to promote the book also in Prijedor and I succeeded: at Narodno Pozorište (People’s Theater), ten years ago, and there were also some Bosnian Serbs in the room.
We know that the return of displaced persons and Bosniak refugees to Prijedor was very difficult, opposed if not prevented, at least in the early post-war years…
Yes, it’s true. But there were also laws that required it and that were enforced under the scrutiny of the international community. First of all, the Dayton Peace Agreement of 1995, with Annex 7 which established the right of all refugees and displaced persons to return to their homes.
Of course, it hasn’t been easy to come back, for several reasons. For example, I couldn’t go back to my house because it was completely burned down, so I moved to my brother’s flat, who had stayed in Sweden where he still lives. While I was living in his apartment, I rebuilt my house and was only able to return to it in 2012. The next day, they planted a bomb under my car. A month later someone threw explosives near the window and it shattered into a thousand pieces.
RTS journalists arrived that same day (Radio Television of Serbia ) and they asked me how I regarded that message. I replied: “A clear and loud message: that we [i non serbi di Prijedor, in maggioranza musulmani, ndr] we don’t have to go back to Prijedor. But I send an even louder message: I’m staying, this is my city. It is the city of all of us, as is Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is not of one, second or third, but of all and not only of the three constituent peoples! Every person has the right to live on his land ”.
You work in Prijedor as a journalist. Journalists in Bosnia who speak of the responsibilities of that war, who are not nationalists, are often subjected to pressure and even death threats. Has this ever happened to her?
I work for a private television, the TV 101 , which I own and in which I can speak freely, just as I do in public, about what happened to me then. I am convinced that people appreciate being told the truth. It often happened to me, on the street in Prijedor, to be approached by strangers who extended their hand to say: “Congratulations!”.
I received threats, but they never turned into concrete actions. I think whoever really wants to kill you doesn’t warn you first, they just do it. If anything, it is psychologically heavier to meet those same people on the street who at the time had deported you, beaten, tortured and killed relatives and friends.
You must not forget that the three biggest and most terrible concentration camps in the whole country were opened around Prijedor. That there are dozens and dozens of mass graves in which they have tried to hide the bodies of thousands of people. Just 15 minutes by car from the center of Prijedor was found the fossa comune di Tomašica so far the largest in the country, with the bodies of 435 people [scoperta nel 2013, ad oggi non tutti i corpi sono stati identificati, ndr]. And consider that in the city of Prijedor there has never been a war waged … they immediately “cleaned” the territory, in a few weeks, of non-Serb civilians.
For the crimes perpetrated in the Prijedor area, the International Tribunal in The Hague has sentenced 37 Bosnian Serbs for a total of 617 years in prison. Have you been a witness in any trials?
Yes, I testified three times. I don’t remember exactly when, but certainly in the early 2000s. They called a group of Omarska concentration camp survivors, for incumbent processes of some who were in charge in that camp and of others who had perpetrated the killings. All the criminals on trial where I testified were given heavy sentences.
So he had to relive everything…
This time it was less difficult. I had already lightened up, as I said, by writing the book years earlier. While writing I threw out of myself what I had experienced, even though I had written it as if I were watching a film, I had been part of those events, those places, those emotions and moods.
Of course, sometimes emotions resurface, especially when thinking about what my son went through who was deported and imprisoned with me, when he was only 16 years old. Today he has an 18-year-old son, he has built a life in Norway, but he never wanted to talk about what happened to us again. I understand that very well.
But we must continue to tell, so that we know what happened. Because it never happens to anyone else again.
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