The Girl Who Smuggled News Out of a City Under Siege (Zlata Filipović, Sarajevo)

Quick answer: Who is Zlata Filipović?

Zlata Filipović was a ten-year-old in Sarajevo who kept a diary she addressed as “Mimmy.” It recorded the 1992 siege from a child's eye: closed schools, the cellar, hunger, power cuts. Its first 45 pages were published locally during UNICEF week in 1992, drawing journalists and helping get her family out.

Zlata Filipović started her diary because she had a pretty notebook and wanted to do what older girls did. She was ten, living in Sarajevo, and she named the diary “Mimmy.” Then the city's mood changed. On April 5, 1992, she wrote, “Mimmy, I'm afraid of WAR!!!” and noted, the way a kid would, that all the schools were closed. On May 2 came “the worst day ever in Sarajevo,” and her family moved into the cellar. As the siege settled in, her diary did what official statements wouldn't: it recorded the civilian cost. Fear of crossing a street. Hunger. Power cuts. A spring that felt wrong. She refused to let war make her hateful. A teacher learned of the diary, and in 1992 its first 45 pages were published in Sarajevo, drawing reporters who called her “the Anne Frank of Sarajevo.” She pushed back; she'd hoped it would be funny. She wasn't trying to be a symbol, John writes. She was trying to stay a person.

Why it matters for leaders: When life turns confusing, keep a plain, dated record; it holds reality steady long enough for someone to act.

Q: Did Zlata welcome being called “the Anne Frank of Sarajevo”?

A: She pushed back, saying she had hoped her diary would be funny, closer to Adrian Mole, before the war changed it.

Q: What did she write about war?

A: “The people must be the ones to win, not the war, because war has nothing to do with humanity. War is something inhuman.”

Read the full essay on Substack → https://heroespath.substack.com/p/the-girl-who-smuggled-news-out-of

By John Fenzel, founder and CEO of Heroes' Path Foundation