A Light in the Darkness
Kunosic found a woman standing in her hallway, flanked by two soldiers. The woman ordered Kunosic and her children to vacate their apartment immediately. The soldiers didn’t display guns, but they didn’t have to: word had already spread throughout Sarajevo that people who resisted orders had been shot and even killed.
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She has helped her countrymen living here by assuming two roles: coordinator for the Bosnian Refugee Center and founding member and executive director of the Bosnian and Herzegovinian American Community Center. Both organizations share a small office on the third floor of the Institute of Cultural Affairs, a building at Sheridan and Lawrence that houses Travelers & Immigrants Aid and several other immigrant groups. Later this year, the two Bosnian centers will merge and move into larger quarters in Rogers Park donated by Loyola University.
The goals of the two organizations are the same–serving the Bosnian refugee community. With 15,000 currently living here, 17 percent of all the Bosnian refugees in the U.S., Chicago has the largest Bosnian refugee community in the nation. Most reside in an area along the lakefront, beginning in Uptown and continuing north into Edgewater and Rogers Park.
The wide variety of offerings available through the community center is a reflection of Kunosic’s vision. Tom Robb, director of development for the Bosnian and Herzegovinian American Community Center, says, “If it weren’t for Zumreta, we wouldn’t be offering Bosnian refugees such extensive services.”
But the divisions that forced their departure had followed them. Her fellow refugees became hostile to Kunosic and her children because of her marriage and her children’s mixed ethnicity. “They didn’t accept us,” she says. “Even the people who continued to talk to me felt uncomfortable speaking to me in front of the others.”
If there’s one weak link in the resettlement process, it concerns children. Younger children adjust fairly quickly, but teenagers have a more difficult time. Kunosic remembers that while living in Vienna, she and Alma, now 12, cried almost all of the time, but Danko never discussed his feelings. “I felt guilty because what was happening to us was robbing him of his childhood. I wanted him to have the opportunity to dream and hope, but it seemed as though those dreams and hopes were being destroyed,” she says.
