‘They Will Kill Us’: One Woman’s Story of Escape from Srebrenica

Velic had fled to Srebrenica with her husband and children after her home village of Pobudje, near Bratunac, had come under fire.

But when Bosnian Serb forces seized Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, she and her family had to flee again.

"I thought: 'People will not survive, they will kill us.' And so they did," she recalled.

Velic was speaking in an interview conducted last year as part of an oral history project about the Srebrenica genocide created by BIRN and the Srebrenica Memorial Centre.

A total of 100 video testimonies from Srebrenica survivors have been recorded as part of the project, entitled 'The Lives behind the Fields of Death'. Some of the interviewees have also donated personal items to the Memorial Centre for preservation - mementoes belonging to people who did not survive, or items found next to the remains of their loved ones when they were discovered in mass graves.

Velic donated a skirt and headscarf that she took with her when leaving Srebrenica in July 1995.

'Everyone wanted to save their own lives'

After fleeing Srebrenica when the town fell, Velic and her family headed towards the nearby village of Potocari, where UNPROFOR had its base, seeking safety.

The family - Velic and her husband Hasan, three young children and two married daughters with their children - spent the night outside, near a bridge. "That night was horrible. God forbid we ever have to go through that again," she said.

They then moved to a nearby road. "It was crowded, impossible, everyone trying to leave, everyone wanting to save their own lives. It was dangerous, it was hard," she recalled.

When buses arrived to take them away, mostly women, children and elderly men got on, as did Velic, but her husband...