“I burned for 10 minutes to save my children” – Lazar barely survived the fire that engulfed their home!

“I entered the room, went up to the gas cylinder, turned the valve and… BOOM! I was blown  into the air with the whole room. A French bed fell on top of me, but I miraculously managed to free myself.

 I was burning all over like a torch! A nail even shot through my chest. The children were in another room in shock from the explosion, while  I was holding the door from the inside to prevent the fire from spreading. I had written myself off – I only wanted them to survive. Only when they were rescued did I come out. They tried to extinguish the flames on me, but it took a while…” began Lazar, the hero father from Međulužje near Mladenovac.

The Dimitrijević family had no idea that their lives would turn into hell just before the New Year. Instead of holiday joy, gifts and beautiful memories, Magdalena (4), Matija (7), Stefan (8), Andrija (9) and Andrijana (11) suffered traumas that would last the rest of their lives. Everything their parents had worked so hard to build disappeared in an instant!

“Oh God, when I saw him in flames and his skin falling off, I screamed and didn’t know what to do. Lazar’s parents and brother were also there. Despite the pain and chaos, he was the most calm of all of us and he told us what to do – to get the children out, to turn off the natural gas, to move the car, to keep the fire from spreading… Then the ambulance arrived and he collapsed. I went with them and what I witnessed I would never wish on anyone. His heart stopped, they were trying to revive him. When I heard “We’ll try one more time. If we don’t succeed – we will declare him dead.”, I was overcome with agony, I thought I was going to lose him. And then – there was a beep, beep… on that instrument. I don’t think there was a happier person than me at that moment, and that sound still echoes in my head,” said Valentina through tears as she recalled that fateful night, when she received burns on her hands while trying to put out the flames on her husband.

Lazar was kept in a coma for a long time, until his condition stabilized. He received a skin transplant. Then they began his recovery treatment and, for him, the most difficult thing mentally, coming to terms with the fact that he would forever be partially disabled and that nothing would ever again be the same. Even the children were scared when they first saw him!

“God himself kept him alive, his chances were 5%. I found myself in an impossible situation at that time – at one point I had to choose whether to first save my own son or my grandchildren. Even though it’s been two years since then, those scenes are still in their minds. They are afraid of firecrackers and flames, and even the lighting of the Christmas Oak tree. The boys even drew pictures of their father burning,” grandmother Mirjana added.

Although we didn’t want to ask the children too many questions about all this, they wanted to tell us how they experienced the event themselves. They did so in a kind of narrative tone, as if they were telling a story and as if it had happened to someone else, occasionally interjecting their own impressions and fears. A defense mechanism.

“It was like someone was pushing the door. We thought it was Dad, but it was the fire. I was afraid we wouldn’t have a house, that we would live on the street or worse – under a bridge,” said eight-year-old Stefan.

Thank God, they didn’t end up under a bridge, but they had to start from scratch. Again. For a while, they lived with Lazar’s parents, until he recovered a little. Then they rented an apartment, but with so many children, they couldn’t afford the rent. They decided to start renovating the house with the help of good people.

“We’ve somewhat managed to fix up these few rooms, so we can at least move in. However, there’s still a lot more work to do. Valentina works in a store, and I work in a car repair shop and we’re struggling as best we can, we’ve even taken out loans. Believe me, I would work two jobs, but my body simply won’t allow me. According to the doctors, I still shouldn’t  lift anything heavier than a glass of water and I should continue with treatment. But they need me, I have to provide bread for my children,” added Lazar, admitting that Valentina and he sometimes even go without in order to have enough for the children.

The burns on the souls of the members of this family will likely never heal. What we can change, however, is that they no longer live in a couple of inadequate and unfinished rooms with a semi-functional bathroom. That they no longer sleep on just three beds. And that they never again fear for their own safety. That is our responsibility as a society!

“I asked my mom if we were middle-class or poor, and the answer made me very sad,” the eldest, Andrijana, told us at the end of the conversation.

The Charity organization Serbs for Serbs is launching a new fundraising campaign for the Dimitrijević family. Our goal is to complete the entire house and provide the children with colorful rooms, replacing the current gray ones, and decorated, as they wished, with Serbian flags. We invite all people of good will to join us and help through their donations. These wonderful people deserve our support to be, as they say, a big happy family again!

YOU CAN DONATE THROUGH THE DONATION PLATFORM: www.srbizasrbe.org/donacije

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