The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

I always had intensive contacts to my compatriots, and became aware
of how many of them were having ever greater difficulties, because they
had the idea of having to be better than the Germans and the Turks, and
therefore always worked more than the others. At the same time, they
wanted to prove – even to their former enemies – that it had been
worthwhile to go abroad for work, by taking home many presents for
relatives and acquaintances, and by building houses in Yugoslavia. At
the same time, they lived in cheap flats in Berlin, ate bad food and held
several jobs at a time. To stand the pressure, the men drank and the
women swallowed pills. Their children wanted to take root in their new
country, and be at home there, but their fathers wanted them to be part
of their village communities, for they were stuck in the era in which they
had been when they had left their villages. The mothers stretched themselves
between their husbands and their children, were frequently beaten,
and took even more pills. For these women, I organized the first wom -
en’s group in Berlin, then the first and the second women’s shops.
After I had worked the stories of innumerable women and my own experiences
into an exhibition, I wanted to start doing what I had always
wanted to do, study literature and philosophy. I actually registered, but
never started to study. For in 1989, I noticed how my compatriots who
were so familiar to me gradually began to change. First, they read the
newspapers from home about the economic crisis, then about the national
conflicts which became ever more violent. They founded national
organizations in Berlin which became more and more nationalistic, matching
the sharpening of the tensions in Yugoslavia. In these organiza -
tions, they watched the evening TV newscasts from their respective
capitals together. Even so far away from home, and living in a tolerant
city, they couldn’t resist the influence of the propaganda. With helplessness,
despair, rage and hatred they spurred each other on; they claimed
to be all good citizens of their respective nations. They got caught up in
the propaganda nets, and began to peer ever further back into the past.
Like psychotics, they talked about threats from the “others”, who, in
their eyes, had forfeited their human countenances. No words could
serve to move them away from these visions, for it was as if their minds
had been switched off. There was deep distrust, even against their own
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