NIKO KOŠARAC REMEMBERS LOSING TWO SONS, MEMBERS OF ILIJAŠ BRIGADE, IN THE SAME DAY

SOKOLAC, OCTOBER 19 /SRNA/ – Niko Košarac of Sokolac today recounted to the Republika Srpska Memorial Centre how his sons, Spasimir and Milomir, were killed while serving in the Ilijaš Brigade on the same day in 1994. During the exodus, their remains were transferred and reburied at the Novi Zejtinlik military memorial cemetery.

Although he was celebrating his family's patron saint's day, St. Thomas' Day, Košarac chose to share his painful story with other families of fallen soldiers.

He said his sons were hardworking young men who served in the Ilijaš Brigade of the Army of Republika Srpska and believed they would be safer if they stayed together.

They were killed in the same trench alongside three other soldiers when enemy saboteurs approached them, he said.

News of his sons' deaths reached him on January 18, 1994, the Orthodox feast of the Veneration of the Chains of St. Peter. The date remained etched in his memory as the moment he faced one of the greatest losses a parent can endure.

"I went to their command post that day, and they confirmed it was true. I returned home, and the following day we buried them in the village cemetery," Košarac remembers.

The transfer of his two sons' remains from Sarajevo to the Novi Zejtinlik military memorial cemetery was an especially painful blow for the parents, who experienced it as a second funeral.

He said the death of his two sons was the greatest tragedy of his life, but the circumstances of the war brought further hardships, forcing him and his family to change their place of residence three times.

After the exodus of Sarajevo Serbs in 1996, he settled in Sokolac, where he and his wife now visit their sons' graves together.

In May, Istočno Sarajevo Mayor Ljubiša Ćosić, representatives of the city's municipalities and Republika Srpska Memorial Centre Director Denis Bojić signed a memorandum on institutional cooperation in documenting the suffering of Serbs during the Defensive-Patriotic War in Sarajevo and the Sarajevo-Romanija region.