Zemina Jaroš

Zemina Jaroš was born in 1959 in Bizovac, near Osijek, to a family that comes from Bosnia and Herzegovina. When she was seven years old her family moved in search of work, to Osijek, where Zemina still lives today. When the war began she was a single mother of two children, aged 10 and 14. In 1992, after failing to meet an obligation to come to work, despite war conditions, she was fired from the firm she worked at, Saponia Osijek. On April 5, 1992, Zemina Jaroš's daughter was killed by a shell fragment that hit her in the neck. It was very hard for Zemina to return to normal life after that. An aggravating circumstance was that she and her son lived in very bad economic conditions; they were surviving thanks to her occasional work for a private business. She acquired the right to a disability pension from the state. When, on June 28th, 2012 a memorial to veterans and civilians who had lost their lives was unveiled in Osijek, with the names of those killed, her daughter's name was not on it. She is a member of the Association of Civilian Victims of the Homeland War and she finds great comfort in socialising with people who have been through similar tragedies.