Tonight on BBC – Emina finally finds the doctor who saved her family during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Emina Hadžiosmanović is our colleague who has worked for BH UK Network for years and helped our community on the Island. She holds a PhD. in Psychology from the University of Birmingham. She recently took part in a series for BBC 2.

In the first episode of the new series “Saved by a Stranger” on BBC 2, Anita Rani presents the personal story of Emina and her desperate search for the doctor who helped her family escape from war-torn Bosnia.

Emina was only 4 years old when the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina started. And she believes her family survived ethnic cleansing only because of one woman’s incredible kindness. “I know it was like hell. Hearing bombs go off and sniper fire. The sounds of war,” she explains in the new BBC show Saved by a Stranger. When Bosnia and Herzegovina voted for independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, their comfortable life in Sarajevo suddenly changed overnight when the city was attacked from the nearby hills. They were targeted because they were Muslims, and the people they lived with and were friends with took up weapons from the other side and started shooting at them. “I think that was one of the most difficult moments of that conflict. Nationalist propaganda radicalized people you had trusted to the point where they wanted to have one ethnic community in Bosnia. It was a mass ethnic cleansing,” says Emina.

A grenade exploded in their yard, and parts of the grenade entered the building. They realized they definitely had to escape when Emina’s sister Edina became very ill and needed emergency medical attention. Sister Edina was born with Down syndrome, which her mother had never heard of and didn’t know how long she would live or if she would ever be able to walk or talk. One of the first people their mother Jasminka met was pediatrician Nataša Savić , who was incredibly supportive when Edina was born. Dr. Savić told the family that Edina needed medical care that Bosnia could no longer provide due to the high number of civilian casualties. There was no guaranteed safe way for people to leave the city on their own, but Dr. Savić managed to get them on a special medical evacuation list.

Dr. Savić ensured that the family was on one of the only buses that were allowed to leave Bosnia with people who needed emergency medical help at the time. However, their father decided to stay and defend his country, and Emina remembers screaming and crying as they were separated. They were still not safe in the bus because the journey was stopped due to the arrival of the Serbs for checking. “If you have valuables, they were taken. If you refused to give your ring, your finger was cut off,” explains Emina. “People were taken off the bus and never came back. They were mostly boys.” Over two million people fled the war, and over 100,000 were killed.

By far the worst part of the trip was crossing a bridge that was bombed just minutes after they crossed – and Emina remembers seeing it explode and hundreds of people fall to their deaths. After surviving a few days on a bus, they transferred to a refugee bus in Croatia before starting a new life in Birmingham, and it took another 10 years for their father to finally join them in the UK. Coming to the UK was everything they had hoped for in terms of opportunities and support for Edina and the whole family, but they always wanted to get together with Dr Savić to thank her.

“She not only saved our lives, she had a huge impact on what we went on to do,” says Emina, who was inspired by Dr Savić’s actions to become a doctor of criminal psychology to help others. “My sister would never have had the treatment she received in the UK, completed her education, university, got her NVQs, had dreams and hopes. That was simply not the case for children in post-war Bosnia with Down syndrome.” Unable to find any trace of Dr Savić in Bosnia, host Anita Rani and the “Saved by a Stranger” team begin their search and find her name in a newspaper article published just two weeks after they fled. They speak to British volunteer Jeremy Braid, who was helping people onto buses as part of a peacekeeping mission and witnessed many of the atrocities. “I left absolutely shocked and horrified by the capacity of human nature. A big lesson for me is that civilisation is incredibly fragile.” He has no recollection of meeting Dr. Savić, but directs them in the direction of the doctor who was working in the city while the snipers were shooting, dr. Faruk Kulenovik.

This then leads them to Duško Tomić, who founded the World’s First Children’s Embassy, an organization that tries to get children out of the war-torn country. He explains that they have taken out 50,000 children and mothers, including Emina’s family, and Dr. Savić was his first associate on the medical team. “She didn’t discriminate between people. I’m not either, I’m a Serb, but a normal person who loves Bosnia,” says Tomić. “These are the people I surrounded myself with, and Nataša was one of them. She was a great mother to everyone.” They discover that Dr. Savić, who received an award for outstanding work in her field in 2012, now lives in the Netherlands and wants to come to the UK to see her family.

Before they met, dr. Savić said: “We tried to help the children who could no longer live in Bosnia. It was very difficult. “I didn’t ask: ‘Are you Muslims? Are you Serbs?’. For me, they are just people we could help. “But I never know where the people are, where the child is, I’m so happy that people are looking for me. I’m so glad that they found me.” After 27 years, the family finally has the opportunity to express their heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Savić. Tears came from hugging.

“For 27 years, I want to say ‘thank you’ from me and my family and all the other children you saved. You changed our lives,” says an emotional Emina. Doctor Savić explains that her mission was to help people, while Emina says she gave her mother hope that her sister Edina could have an incredible life. The last time Dr. Savić visited Edina saw as a baby. When they meet Edina for the first time, they are both in tears as they hug each other. Doctor Savić told her, “You are still my little girl. Today is something special for me. The feeling of my people, my little girl. I have missed so many years. I am so happy now.”

Emina says: “The moment I hugged her, I felt a great weight lift off me own shoulders because I saw that our doctor was well and happy. “One of the most moving moments of my life. It was amazing in the most amazing way possible.”