Safet Vukalić – moving portrait
Holocaust Memorial Day Trust commissioned a special project entitled Moving Portraits. This is a collection of five photographs of genocide survivors, with each individual featured holding an object that holds significance to them.
Safet is a survivor of the Bosnian War. This photograph is taken in his living room.
Safet was 16 when Muslim men and boys began being taken away to concentration camps. He remembers his father and brother being ordered out of the house, and his mother stopped him from going with them. He came to England with his mother, and later his father and brother joined them.
Safet is holding a school photograph, taken in 1982 when he was six years old, before the war started.
‘It was a really mixed group in terms of religion. We were kids and we didn’t think of religion at all. I have chosen this [photograph] because it shows how things were before, and it just reminds me. It would be nice to be able to go back to how it used to be. It can be done, I’m 100% certain. We have no problems between ourselves, it’s the politicians making these problems, and that’s the most frustrating thing.
‘It’s important to keep the memory alive, because some people are just not aware of what was happening in Bosnia, it’s a surprise to me. People were dying in concentration camps, torture took place, in Europe, in the 90s. Everyone thought that once World War II was over that wouldn’t happen again, but it did.’
Safet
Without caption
With caption
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