Teen Author Testifies on Bosnia Before Panel

Children in Sarajevo don’t see themselves as Serbs or Croats or Muslims, 13-year-old Zlata Filipovic told U.S. lawmakers Thursday. “We just knew that the war came, that any moment we can be killed.”

The girl, whose diary is being published worldwide, said all she wants is to go to school, maybe attend a university, get married and lead “just a normal life.”

The author of “Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo,” told the congressional Helsinki Commission that her best-selling book is “not only my story. It’s the story of all the children there. I was lucky to get out of that hell. Any child in Bosnia could sit here.”