The terrible images of the war in the Balkans that were broadcast around the world a decade ago showed the return of ethnic cleansing to Europe and motivated international forces to intervene to bring an end to a war that cost 200,000 lives and resulted in thousands of refugees and missing people.  In the middle of all the horror, cardiologist and journalist, Svetlana Broz, went to the centre of the conflict in order to tell an apparently impossible story: that of the presence of multiethnic and community peace, which had survived within a region torn apart by racial hatred.
This is the interview that Svetlana Broz, pacifist and granddaughter of Marshal Tito, gave exclusively to Corresponsal de Paz.

Author: Cristina Ávila-Zesatti - Translation: Fiona Kirton
Corresponsal de Paz- March-2009


Ten years ago, on the 24th March 1999, allied NATO forces (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) began the first “humanitarian offensives” in the Balkans, which had been embroiled since 1991 in an ethnic conflict that shook the world, still haunted by the ghost of the Second World War.

In 1992, Svetlana Broz (born 1955 in Belgrade) was working as a cardiologist at the Military Academy in the former Yugoslavia which, already suffering the first clashes of the brutal civil war, would end up splitting into complex fragments.

Moved by her desire to offer medical assistance, Svetlana signed up as a volunteer and went to where the fighting was taking place.

However, once there, the reality of the situation drew her back to the world of journalism and her initial aim – to cure her patients’ physical injuries – was replaced by a much greater task: to set about healing the very heart of a divided country. How? By telling a story of peace, overshadowed up to now by the violence of the war.

Good People in an Evil Time

In amongst the racist barbarity of the war, Svetlana came across innumerable stories of victims who in reality were heroes.
People who had risked their own lives to save their “supposed” enemies and had spurned the hate propaganda put out by the political classes, the military and the media…People who had individually confronted the fear and destructive forces and had responded to a more deeply-ingrained feeling: solidarity.

And so with the war at its height, but with the idea of “the possibility of peace” fixed firmly in her mind, Svetlana travelled six thousand kilometres across the former Yugoslavia, a journey which lasted six years, during which time she sought out and documented stories of Bosnians, Albanians, Kosovans and Serbians who had saved and helped each other, while Catholic, Muslim and Orthodox militias fought each other in the worst conflict seen in Europe since Nazi Germany.

Finally, in 1999, following that first idea, she published the book, Good People in an Evil Time: Portraits of Complicity and Resistance in the Bosnian War.

Originally published in Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian, it has now been translated into six languages (English, French, Czech, Italian, Spanish and Polish). The book contains 99 different stories told through testimonials, of ordinary people within whom the internal bonds of friendship and humanity prevailed over the thunderous extremes of war.

Corresponsal de Paz: How did your book, Good People in an Evil Time, come about?

Svetlana Broz: Right at the start of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992, I decided to go where the fighting was with the idea of helping, even just one person. And there, working in makeshift places, I started to notice that my patients – who belonged to all of the different ethnic groups that were involved in the fighting at that time – were telling me about how they'd survived, and many of them had been saved by people who belonged to groups they were fighting against in the war.

So, the following year (1993), I decided to tackle a different job, not now as a doctor, but documenting those stories that nobody knew anything about because the media only reported on the conflict; stories that I wouldn't have been able to tell working as a doctor under the obligation of patient confidentiality. I started right at the beginning of the hostilities, because nobody knew then that the war was going to last ten years.

CdP: You believe that human beings have within their power the possibility to choose between good and evil. Is it really possible to think and act peacefully even in the middle of a war?

S.B: First of all, let’s remember that every war that’s broken out in the world has broken out in a place where there was peace beforehand. I’m convinced that with time, people who've lived through recent wars will come to realize how much they were manipulated by the politicians, the military and the people at the top…It’s these people, driven by their own interests, who incite fear and hatred amongst ordinary people.

That’s why I think that humanity needs to learn to not just blindly believe in those who choose the path of evil…that’s the only way, with what I call “civil courage”, strengthening individual courage, that we’ll be able to stop this mistake happening again: the great mistake of war.

CdP: The former Yugoslavia was left divided after a decade of fighting, and people still felt a great deal of resentment. How did the people who read your book react to it talking about "the good"?

S.B: It was very interesting. I thought that after everything that had happened, nobody would be interested in these stories, but fortunately, not only was the book very well received, but it turned out to be "therapeutic"...through these real testimonials, people saw that the hate wasn't universal, as we’d been led to believe.

My book became a kind of “road to reconciliation”, especially amongst those who'd been most affected by the war, amongst the most badly wounded, and therefore the angriest.

Many people have said to me that after reading these stories, they were able to change the way they behave towards other ethnic groups a little...all of this is not down to me, but to the real testimonials that I just made public, because nobody was looking at the peace that existed within a country that at that moment was falling apart.

But it's precisely in the middle of the "evil" that somebody needs to give a voice to the true heroes, who dare to turn their backs on the institutional hate...their struggle was very important, but nobody knew anything about it. And if nobody knows about something, it's like it never existed.