The collection at the War Childhood Museum is comprised of items that tell interesting and touching stories of how children grew up during the war that shook Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1996. The War Childhood Museum was awarded one of the most prestigious awards in the museum world – the Council of Europe Museum Prize 2018.

The museum’s current collection is made up of items that began to be collected in 2010 and were used by Jasminka Halilović when writing her book, Childhood During War: Sarajevo 1992-1995, which was published in 2013.

The book has been translated into several languages and the public in BiH and elsewhere in the world has taken great interest in what children experienced during the war in BiH. This created the need to establish a museum that provides permanent exhibits of keepsakes used by children who grew up in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1996.

The museum first opened in January 2017 in what used to be the Logavina Community Center in the old town. 

Items on display include spitz ballet shoes that were received as a gift during the war, a half-burned book that was salvaged from Sarajevo’s Vijećnica, canned and packaged foods, lead stoves, dolls, a swing used by a little girl in a basement….

Every item is accompanied by its own story and the items are rotated so that 50 different pieces are on display at any given time.