Srebrenica’s Young Translators: How Our Jobs Saved Our Lives

Ramic spoke English and he became one of several young people who managed to feed their families by working as interpreters for UNPROFOR or other international organisations such as the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

But while working as an interpreter, he had to witness some traumatic incidents, such as an artillery attack on the village of Konjevic Polje.

"At some stage a man came to us, crying. He was out of his mind, holding two children in his arms. The children were between six and eight years old, as far as I can remember," Ramic recalled.

"So he was totally out of his mind, he was crying and begging. I translated what he said. The children were in a state of shock, as if they were not aware of what had happened to them. So the legs of both children were hanging on by small pieces of skin, but they didn't cry and they kept telling their father: 'It's nothing, we are fine,'" he said.

Escaping the violence and hunger in the Han Pijesak area, Admir Jusupovic also found refuge in Srebrenica in 1993 and started working as an interpreter at the age of 16.

After he had spoken to an UNPROFOR soldier in English and helped him fix a fuse box, the soldier invited him to come again the following day and help him.

"He gave me a meal. It meant the world to me to get a slightly more luxurious meal, which we would not even consider a proper meal today, to get a meal from those [military] lunch boxes and share it with my family," Jusupovic said.

"I was so happy, I was the happiest young man at the time."

Ramic's focus was also on getting food for his family.

"When the UNHCR first asked me to work for them exclusively, they asked what kind of remuneration I wanted. My answer was - food for me and my mother," he said. ...