In the news - Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia

St. John’s grad finds healing with memoir

By Amy Bowen
St. Cloud Times
May 10, 2008

A St. John’s University graduate’s recently published memoir helped him heal after his war-torn childhood.

Savo Heleta, a 2006 graduate, wrote “Not My Turn to Die” while at St. John’s, and the book was released last month.

In it, he details life growing up in Bosnia during its civil war in the 1990s.

“I’ve completely moved on in my life,” Heleta said. “I have reconciled.”

Heleta was 13 when war broke out in his hometown of Gorazde. The city was mostly Muslim, while Heleta’s family was Serbian.

The family was thrown into a detention center for four months and feared being killed even when they were released. They fled in 1994, two years after the city was under siege.

For years, Heleta contemplated revenge on those who tried to hurt his family. He credits his parents for helping him to stay peaceful and realize violence was not the answer, he said.

Heleta was also helped by joining the program, PeaceTrails Youth Leadership Program, which was started by St. John’s alumni Daniel Whalen after the war. The program teaches young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina leadership skills, Heleta said.

In 2002, Heleta earned a scholarship from the Whalen Family Foundation to study in the United States. He chose St. John’s in Collegeville, majoring in history and management.

“It’s probably the best choice I’ve made in my life,” he said.

Heleta told friends about his childhood and the war while studying abroad in South Africa in 2005. They encouraged him to write about his experiences.

After much encouragement, he wrote the book and finished the first draft during his senior year.

“Somehow I was able to put this experience behind me,” Heleta said. “It’s not a bad, painful memory anymore. I was able to release all that (bad energy).”

The book led him on a journey that now has inspired him to help bring peace to other troubled parts of the world.

Heleta is studying conflict transformation and management at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

He plans to travel to Darfur and try to negotiate peace.

It may sound like a big task, but Heleta knows it can be done.

“There are ways to choose hope and reconciliation over hate and revenge,” he said.