Nedjeljko Mitrovic
63 years old
“Why would anyone force me out of my house? And where would I go, anyway? This is my homeland, I was born here. That’s also the reason why I joined the Croatian National Guard. ‘Smokey goes to war’, that’s how they used to say about me.”
Nedjeljko is one of the numerous members of the Roma community who joined the Croatian Army during the Homeland War. More than 80% of men from the Roma settlement Josip Rimac near Slavonski Brod were Croatian soldiers, mostly members of the 108th Brod Brigade.