War in Croatia still haunts, even after it is escaped safely

Regarding “Split View,” Feb. 11: Speaking of the war in Croatia, my heart goes out to those basketball players and the few hours they spent in that terrible war. They happen to be my friends.

But I thought that considering I actually endured the majority of the war, I could offer a different perspective. For example, while they were busy watching the invading armies and bombs explode on television, I had the pleasure of seeing those armies on the hill above my home and hearing those same bombs land around my head. We didn’t have electricity, let alone TV. While they hid in the basements of their homes, my house was being blown up — or looted by the invading Serbs for the second time.

While Vedran Vukusic was getting “tired” of swimming, we were busy worrying where we would find the next cup of clean water. While they scurried from their cozy apartments to their basements a couple of times out of fear of bombs, my home for months was a bathroom in the cellar of a shelled house in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

They peed in private, while I was forced to do my business in front of all the other families huddled in the cramped space. They had their showers and running water, but I had a cup of water to dump on my head for a shower every week and a bucket of runoff as a toilet.

Vukusic mentions his father waking him up one morning, but I can’t tell you what I would have given to know where my father was. He was nearly killed defending Dubrovnik and Croatia. My mother was the one who woke me up and she told me that I had only 10 minutes to collect everything I could before we abandoned our home. I had to watch my house and property burn.

I was 7.

Marijana Surkovic

Weinberg sophomore

Hospital should remain strong in respecting patients’ privacy

Let’s be blunt: Since the first days of President Bush’s administration, reproductive freedom has been a losing proposition in the United States. But the audacity of the Justice Department’s attempt to seize medical records pertaining to the most private of procedures, as reported in The New York Times on Feb. 12, is stunning.

Though I’m sure they would just as soon not enter the forum here, I write to express the strongest possible support for Northwestern Memorial Hospital in fighting subpoenas seeking individuals’ abortion records.

Their resolve — and that of federal judge Charles P. Kocoras, who for now has stayed the administration’s hand — is all that stands between crusading ideologues in the Justice Department and the privacy of patients who trusted the sanctity of their contact with physicians.

John McCallum

Weinberg senior