Story #8
“No one in my family has ever lit a candle for my father”
(Interview with Jasmina Zivkovic)
In June 1999, Paun Zivkovic takes his family from Ferizaj to the Štrpce area, where many Serbs have gathered and feel safer as a homogeneous group. The family bids farewell to life and work in the city, leaving the house and all possessions behind.
With the new school year to start that September in a new location, the teaching staff require the files and documents from the schools in Ferizaj, where many Serb pupils were attending only a few months earlier. Six of the principals and teachers ask the Polish KFOR to provide them with an escort to Ferizaj to collect the documents they had left behind at their schools. Among them is Paun Zivkovic, a technical high school principal, and one of the two principles who went to Ferizaj that day and never returned.
His daughter, Jasmina, says her siblings do not consider their father dead, despite acknowledging that, for twenty years they have no information of his whereabouts, and no news apart from statements by EULEX and UNMIK claiming that none of the Serbs kidnapped that day survived. This leaves the family living with a strange feeling, which is always present, but hard to put into words.
With the new school year to start that September in a new location, the teaching staff require the files and documents from the schools in Ferizaj, where many Serb pupils were attending only a few months earlier. Six of the principals and teachers ask the Polish KFOR to provide them with an escort to Ferizaj to collect the documents they had left behind at their schools. Among them is Paun Zivkovic, a technical high school principal, and one of the two principles who went to Ferizaj that day and never returned.
His daughter, Jasmina, says her siblings do not consider their father dead, despite acknowledging that, for twenty years they have no information of his whereabouts, and no news apart from statements by EULEX and UNMIK claiming that none of the Serbs kidnapped that day survived. This leaves the family living with a strange feeling, which is always present, but hard to put into words.
These stories are part of “Living with memories of the missing: Memory book with stories of family members of the missing from the last war in Kosovo”, implemented by forumZFD program in Kosovo and Integra, in cooperation with Missing Persons Resource Centre, with the support of Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Rockefeller Brothers and Swiss Embassy in Kosovo)