Kosovo Museum to Preserve Childhood Memories of Wartime

It was a skill that proved vital when it turned out that he was the only one among those who were fleeing the shelling who could actually drive it.

"In this war scenario, there was no other choice. None of the adults could drive the tractor so I jumped in and drove it through many villages in mountainous areas," Hajdini told BIRN.

Most of those who remained behind, including some of his relatives, were killed and their bodies thrown into wells.

"For some days, when we made any stop, I kept trying to read anything. I was trying to divert my attention from stories of dead people in wells," he recalled.

Hajdini is now a professor of International and Strategic Management at the University of Vienna, and he wants to give the book he was reading as he fled the war, 'Hasta la Vista', a novel by Albanian novelist Petro Marko about the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, to the Kosovo War Childhood Museum, which is expected to open this year in Pristina.

The museum, which is being established by the Youth Initiative for Human Rights NGO and supported by USAID, will include the testimonies, personal belongings and diaries of people who were children during the war, looking at the impact that the experience had on their lives.

"This will be a museum of a generation that experienced the war, and it sheds light on one of the darkest sides of collective memory," Marigona Shabiu, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights' executive director, told BIRN.

"It has an educational aim, to contribute to greater understanding for society as a whole," she added.

'People can learn the personal truth'

Marigona Shabiu of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, which is organising the museum project. Photo: Youth Initiative for...