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In homes and schools around Bosnia, youngsters prepared gift boxes they hoped would put a smile on the faces of their peers living through the war in Ukraine — just as such gifts did for many of their parents a generation ago.
Responding to an appeal launched by a small Sarajevo museum, hundreds of Bosnian children filled small boxes with warm clothes, toys, candies and other simple gifts to be delivered to the children of Ukraine in time for the New Year.
For parents and educators who helped them select what to send, the experience awakened rare happy memories from the time when they were on the receiving end of the kindness of strangers while growing up in constant fear of death.
“When I told my dad that we will prepare gifts for children in Ukraine, he told me how happy such gifts had made (him and his friends) feel when they received them,” during the Bosnian war, said Sara Nur Spahic while helping label the gift boxes for Ukraine that were piling up in her primary school in Sarajevo.
“I hope the children in Ukraine will be equally happy,” the 11-year-old added.
Bosnian Serb forces laid siege to Sarajevo in the early 1990s, during the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia.
As many children in Sarajevo and elsewhere in Bosnia grow up listening to their parents’ stories of a childhood spent in war, they easily empathize with their “unknown friends” in Ukraine, said veteran educator Elvira Velic-Muftic.
This article was provided by The Associated Press.