When their countrymen went to war, this village chose peace

DW (English)

As Bosnia burned between 1992 and 1995, one small village defied interethnic violence by choosing friendship over division. In Baljvine, Muslim and Christian families protected each other, but why?

Transcript

00:00Žedko is Muslim. Marko is an Orthodox Christian.

00:03And they stayed friends even in the darkest of times, which makes their village unique.

00:11You see, during the war in Bosnia, neighbors turned against each other along ethnic lines.

00:16A hundred thousand people were killed, but not in their village.

00:20We were ashamed of each other to say a different word.

00:24It's like we were family connected.

00:29Welcome to Balevinje in Republika Srpska, the so-called village of peace.

00:34The only one in the Serb majority entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina where no shots were firing.

00:40This mosque is the only one that was left unscathed during the war.

00:44But why? That's because Christian Serbs like Marko protected their Muslim neighbors,

00:49against all odds.

00:59Researchers have studied the village to understand why peace survived here.

01:03Although Serbs and Muslims share the same school and doctors, they live two kilometers apart.

01:09And the village has no running water.

01:11For generations, neighbors shared the same resource depending on each other to survive,

01:16which created a unique bond.

01:19It's normal that we, as a person,

01:23agree with each other, agree with each other,

01:25and understand each other.

01:27It's normal.

01:28It's normal.

01:30It's normal.

01:31It's normal.

01:33It's normal.

01:34It's normal.

01:35It's normal.

01:36It is מướgu,

01:41what scale does is distinctly sad.

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