Le Journal De Zlata

[Kimbery Challacombe]

Warbroke out in her home city of Sarajevo when Zlata Filipovic was 11 years old. Now an author and filmmaker, Filipovic tells how she, her family, and her neighbors used resilience to survive the years of horror

[00:00:00] Stephen: This is Road to Resilience, a podcast about facing adversity. I'm Stephen Calabria. Today on the show we have acclaimed author and filmmaker Zlata Filipovic. Zlata was born and partially raised in Sarajevo, Bosnia, which at the time was part of the larger country of Yugoslavia. When war broke out and came to Sarajevo in 1992, Zlata was just 11 years old, and over the next several years she would witness and endure innumerable horrors. Zlata recounted her what she saw in her journal. When that journal was published in 1992, under the title Zlata's Diary, it received worldwide recognition and would provide Zlata and her family the opportunity to escape. We're honored to have Zlata on the show.

[00:01:00] Zlata: It was sort of like the change when it happened, I think when it was happening, was imperceptible and slowly encroaching. But now when I look back on it, I would say that there was a one day where my life was kind of cut into two halves -- the time before the war, and then the time once the war started.

[00:01:21] And in a way, everything kind of harks back to that moment of the slicing of life into two halves. So even though it's now, you know, 30 years later you still think, that was a, it's 30 years since my life completely changes. My life was sliced into the time before the war and since the war.

[00:01:42] And that kind of almost seems to suggest that you're still living through a war because it hasn't stopped. You haven't had the second slice where you're gonna move away from it. but actually thinking of kind of, t he details of when it was happening. I think there's a sort of a level of rejection when something big is coming and changing your life, that you're kind of pushing it aside and you're not accepting it and you're not believing it.

[00:02:07] So therefore, the changes are actually happening in the moment more gradually than with a bit of perspective of time. You say, oh, that was the moment when it all changed, but there was a series of moments where you didn't believe things were changing. But they were.

Zlata Filipovic was born on 3 December 1980.[1] She was living in Sarajevo before the Bosnian war started. During the war, Zlata kept a diary, which she named Mimmy, from 1991 to 1993. Zlata and her family escaped to Paris in 1993, where they stayed for a year before settling down in Dublin, Ireland.

Zlata Filipović was given a diary in September 1991, when she had just begun fifth grade, and wrote from 1991 to 1993 during the Bosnian war, which began just before her eleventh birthday. Zlata's diary chronicles her daily life and the war's increasing impact on her home town of Sarajevo.

Reporter Janine di Giovanni, who met Zlata in 1993 and wrote the introduction to the book, described Zlata as "the Anne Frank of Sarajevo." Like The Diary of Anne Frank, Zlata's diary contains many descriptions of the horrors of war as viewed from the innocent view of a child. Furthermore, both diaries take place during conflicts at least partially motivated by racism and ethnic differences.

In 1992, a small press in Sarajevo published 45 pages of Zlata's diary and released it for the UNICEF week.[2] Following the release of her diary, Zlata became moderately famous. International journalists visited the Filipović family's apartment and interviewed Zlata. In December 1993, the United Nations helped Zlata and her mother move to Paris.

Critical reception of the book was positive. In The New York Times Book Review, Francine Prose praised the "pure innocence and desperation" evident in the book, characterizing Zlata as an everygirl. However, Prose was critical of Western publishers looking to cash in by equating Zlata's story with that of Anne Frank, lamenting the indecency of "contrasting and judging the private writings of children in war".[3]

Twenty years ago this week, as the bombs began raining down on Sarajevo, Zlata Filipovic wanted to escape. Cowering with her family in the basement of their house, frozen with fear, she dreamed of peace and freedom.

The Serb siege of Sarajevo went on longer than the Second World War siege of Leningrad, now St Petersburg. Its 380,000 people were left without food, electricity, water or heating for 46 months, hiding from the 330 shells a day that smashed into the city.

And while the horrors of war raged on, Miss Filipovic continued her diary. The handwritten notebook detailed her ordinary life, her reaction to the war, and her hopes and fears for the future. She dreamed of going to the park, playing with her friends as she used to. She wrote about hiding with her parents in the basement of their house, near the National Theatre in the centre of Sarajevo, and how her canary Cico died because they couldn't get enough food for him.

Some UNICEF workers in the city heard about Miss Filipovic's book, and Zlata's Diary was initially published as a pamphlet in Serbo-Croat. But it was when a group of French journalists discovered it that the family's fortunes dramatically changed.

For a while she became a media sensation. Television crews followed her round London, as she visited Britain for the first time. Still aged only 13, she was asked to talk in detail about the war and the violent political landscape of her home country, having tea with the prime minister, John Major, and a French defence minister. The book sold 80,000 copies.

After three years in Paris the family moved to Dublin, where Miss Filipovic studied at Trinity College before Oxford University. She is still living in Dublin, working as a film producer and documentary maker.

"When the war ended in 1995, at first we were very suspicious of the peace accords. But then when we saw it was lasting, there was this tremendous sense of 'Wow, we're alive! Let's go back and do things!'

She tells the story of a friend of hers, who left Sarajevo to study in the United States, eventually receiving a degree from Harvard University. "He came back to Sarajevo full of ideas and projects, but no one recognised his qualifications. He couldn't get anything done. In the end he was so demoralised he went back to the US and got a job on Wall Street."

"We need an overhaul of the entire state, because nationalistic sentiments have seeped into every facet of life. General society is so divided; it is all about whether you are a Bosnian or a Croat or whatever," she said.

Bosnia has some 120 ministers and multiple layers of government. Public administration is the biggest single employer swallowing half the meagre state budget. Posts are given out as patronage, guaranteeing votes for the ruling parties.

200 pages.

In a voice both innocent and wise, touchingly reminiscent of Anne Frank's, Zlata Filipovic's diary has awoken the conscience of the world. Now thirteen years old, Zlata began her diary just before her eleventh birthday, when there was peace in Sarajevo and her life was that of a bright, intelligent, carefree young girl. Her early entries describe her friends, her new skis, her family, her grades at school, her interest in joining the Madonna Fan Club. And then, on television, she sees the bombs falling on Dubrovnik. Though repelled by the sight, Zlata cannot conceive of the same thing happening in Sarajevo. When it does, the whole tone of her diary changes. Early on, she starts an entry to Dear Mimmy (named after her dead goldfish): SLAUGHTERHOUSE! MASSACRE! HORROR! CRIMES! BLOOD! SCREAMS! DESPAIR! We see the world of a child increasingly circumscribed by the violence outside. Zlata is confined to her family's apartment, spending the nights, as the shells rain down mercilessly, in a neighbor's cellar. And the danger outside steadily invades her life. No more school. Living without water and electricity. Food in short supply. The onslaught destroys the pieces she loves, kills or injures her friends, visibly ages her parents. In one entry Zlata cries out, War has nothing to do with humanity. War is something inhuman. In another, she thinks about killing herself. Yet, with indomitable courage and a clarity of mind well beyond her years, Zlata preserves what she can of her former existence, continuing to study piano, to find books to read, to celebrate special occasions - recording it all in the pages of this extraordinary diary. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly A graphic firsthand look at the war in Sarajevo by a Croatian girl whose personal world has collapsed, this vivid, sensitive diary sounds an urgent and compelling appeal for peace. Filipovic begins her precocious journal in autumn 1991 as a contented 10-year-old preoccupied with piano and tennis lessons and saturated with American movies, TV shows, books and rock music. Soon the bombs start falling; her friends are killed by shrapnel or snipers' bullets; her family's country house burns down, and they subsist on UN food packages, without gas, electricity or water, as thousands of Sarajevans die. Filipovic, whose circle of friends included Serbs, Croats and Muslims, blames the former Yugoslavia's politicians for dividing ethnic groups and playing hell with people's lives. She and her parents escaped to Paris, and her diary, originally published in Croat by UNICEF, was reissued in France and has already been much written about in the U.S. Photos not seen by PW. 200,000 first printing; film rights to Universal; first serial to Newsweek; author tour Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From School Library Journal YA-From September 1991 through October 1993, young Zlata Filipovic kept a diary. When she began it, she was 11 years old, concerned mostly with friends, school, piano lessons, MTV, and Madonna. As the diary ends, she has become used to constant bombing and snipers; severe shortages of food, water, and gas; and the end of a privileged adolescence in her native Sarajevo. Zlata has been described as the new Anne Frank. While the circumstances are somewhat similar, and Zlata is intelligent and observant, this diary lacks the compelling style and mature preceptions that gave Anne Frank's account such universality. The entire situation in the former Yugoslavia, however, is of such currency and concern that any first-person account, especially one such as this that speaks so directly to adolescents, is important and necessary. While not great literature, the narrative provides a vivid description of the ravages of war and its effect upon one young woman, and, as such, is valuable for today's YAs. Susan H. Woodcock, King's Park Library, Burke, VA Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal In September 1991, at the beginning of a new school year and while war was already as close as Croatia, Filipovic, a ten-year-old girl in Sarajevo began keeping a diary about her school friends, her classes, and her after-school activities. The following spring that childhood world disappeared when the war moved to Sarajevo. Instead of school and parties, her world came to consist of cowering in cellars during the shelling, trying to survive despite intermittent electric power and water supply, and sadness: sadness when friends and relatives left the besieged city for a safer area; sadness when those who remained behind were killed; sadness that her childhood had vanished. Filipovic has no interest in the politics of this war (she dismisses all political leaders contemptuously as kids) but only in its effects on those close to her. The power of her book lies precisely in its concern with innocence lost. Recommended for popular collections. Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Zlata Filipovic of Sarajevo began keeping her diary in 1991, just before her eleventh birthday. Ebullient and accomplished, Zlata recorded the swirl of activities she avidly pursued, from school to piano lessons, skiing, parties, and watching her favorite TV shows, all American. We immediately sense that Zlata and her family have a deep love for their country, but just as we begin to enjoy Zlata's fine young mind and cheerful disposition, the chaos and terror of war shatter her world. Schools close, socializing becomes too risky, and what was once a cozy home is transformed into a fragile shelter bereft of electricity or water. In spite of great tragedy and deprivation, Zlata keeps making her lucid diary entries, carefully chronicling the claustrophobia, boredom, resignation, anger, despair, and fear war brings. Another birthday passes, and Zlata's observations become even sharper and more searing. The convoys of fleeing citizens remind her of movies she's seen of the Holocaust; she notices that grief and hardship have made her valiant parents haggard and sorrowful; and she can't believe that her clothes no longer fit. How could she be growing when she has so little to eat? With a precision and vision beyond her years, Zlata writes that the political situation is stupidity in motion, and more hauntingly, life in a closed circle continues. Zlata brings Sarajevo home as no news report can. Her diary was first published by UNICEF, then released in France; U.S. serial rights have gone to Newsweek, and Zlata and her parents will be visiting here this month. Donna Seaman From Kirkus Reviews Originally published in Croat by UNICEF, this is the wartime diary of a Sarajevo girl who has since moved to Paris. Zlata began keeping her diary at the age of 11, nearly eight months before the shelling of Sarajevo began. A chronicle that begins in September 1991 with Zlata buying school supplies is forced, by March 1993, to reckon with the fact that all ``the schools near me are either unusable or full of refugees.'' Zlata's voice, understandably, has difficulty maturing at a pace demanded by the events it records, and some passages communicate more bathos than outrage or insight. But that's history's fault, not Zlata's. (First serial rights to Newsweek) -- Copyright 1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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