Two Days After

"I was born in Knin and went to school there. I was at university in Belgrade, where I married, and decided to stay in Pancevo", Nada Golubic told "Vreme". Before the war my father built a summer house on the "Jadrija" estate near Sibenik. When the war began, my parents decided to stay in Knin, and our house in Sibenik remained untouched (my husband is a Croat, so he was able to travel there and pay the local taxes). This year I requested and got a Croatian visa for three months, so at the end of July we went to Sibenik on holiday. We found the house in good order and the neighbours treated us politely, as they always did. We were in Sibenik when the Croatian offensive began".

Soon after the fall of Knin, a relation of mine who worked for the Defence Bureau - Knin situated in Sibenik suggested that I come to Knin with her, her friend, a police inspector from Zadar who was going to look for his parents and a friend of his, a Serb who decided to go out of curiosity", Nada Golubic continues. "We left Sibenik on Monday, 7 August. In Unesic we saw that the house which belongs to the former Yugoslav prime minister Milka Planinc was on fire, and that many houses on the road through Drnis have been destroyed. The ruins were obviously the result of the fighting in 1991. We have noticed no signs of more recent fighting. Unpleasant impressions began near Siveric where smoke was still coming out of burning houses. We passed quite a few abandoned tractors, trucks, and rusty tanks on the way... My fellow passengers saw a corps of an old lady at the road side, but I myself failed to spot it. Along the road we saw abandoned cattle, a dead horse, discarded clothes. In the villages of Tepljuh and Cetnici, on the left side of the road every single house was on fire. There were no traces of fighting so I suppose the houses were set on fire deliberately".

"As soon as we arrived in Knin, I set off to visit my house", Nada Golubic says. "The house was empty (my father died earlier, and my mother left for Belgrade as soon as Grahovo fell), it had been broken into and was ransacked. It is interesting that only my father's rifle and a portable TV were missing.

The civilians stationed in the barracks and the local High school, less than a thousand of them, are practically the only remaining inhabitants of a town which only a few days ago had a population of 12,000. After visiting the barracks, at the request of a frightened relative, I went to inspect her flat which was in the same building as the one belonging to Milan Martic. In the flat, I encountered two unarmed soldiers. They were rummaging through the flat and were clearly embarrassed to see us. They left straight away and moved to the flat next door which had also been broken into. Search for weapons and ammunition was said to be the main reason for breaking into deserted houses. While walking through the town, on several occasions I saw smoked ham lying in the street, while at the corner in front of the police station there was a dry blood stain."