ABSTRACT
Minja*is 57 years old though she looks far older. She is a stout woman now, but in 1993 when she was released from the concentration camp she weighed barely 70 pounds. As the Bosnian Serb military attacked their town, Minja, her husband, and their three children took refuge in the surrounding snowcovered woods. Soon after, she became separated from her husband and teen-aged son. Minja, her 12-year-old daughter, and 3-year-old remained in the woods along with other women, children, and old men from their town who also tried to hide from the attacking Serb forces. The snow provided little cover, however. Many were killed during the firefight that night and the next, including the mother of the two young boys whom Minja grabbed to shelter along with her own children. It was not long before the Serbs captured Minja as well as many of the others. They were taken to a women’s prison. When she names the place she shivers and momentarily gasps for breath. It was there that she was nightly gang-raped by soldiers, beaten with rifle butts and the steel-toed boots of her captors, and starved.
