Bassim
VIP Member
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2008
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Bosnian
- Home Country
- Bosnia Herzegovina
- Current Location
- Sweden
Would you please correct this short text, which I have written just an exercise?
In the northern Adriatic Sea, belonging to Croatia, there is a little island called Barren Island. It's name suggests that there is no water on it. The Yugoslav communist government had chosen this place to build the prison for political prisoners. It opened in 1949 to incarcerate those who the government classified as "dangerous" who should be kept away from ordinary prisoners. After Tito's conflict with Stalin in 1956, anyone suspected of supporting SSSR and Stalin was sentenced to a long sentence and would end up on the island. When the relations between the two countries normalised, the political prisoners still continued to be brought to the island.
I remember already as a child how people were afraid of pronouncing the name of the island. It was a place people associated with hell. Not even the best friends and family members dared to talk about it for fear of ending themselves on it. At that time, you could never know who was an ordinary citizen and who an informer. It happened that someone cracked a joke or two about Tito or other politicians for his colleagues or friends, and the next morning he was rudely awaken by the mob of police officers who beat him black and blue before taking him to the police station. After a short trial, the joker would arrive at the little island, where he would cut and carry stones and work under the scorching sun in the next three or five years, depending on the mood of the judge who had passed the sentence.
As an enemy of the state, he had no rights whatsoever. He was like a hunted animal, left at the mercy of the guards and his fellow prisoners. The exact number of the killed has never been established. Some estimate that it could be between 600 hundreds and a couple of thousands. What those people went through it is impossible even to imagine, but their suffering was enormous.
I remember asking my father one day, "Do you know anything about Barren Island?" He turned to me, his eyes wild with fear. "Don't you ever name that name!" he said. The image of his terrified eyes imprinted on my memory for ever. Of course, I knew nothing what was going on on the island, but I sensed that terrible things must have been happening there, when even my own father didn't dare to talk about it.
The truth would come up first a few decades later, with the collapse of the communism. But even then there were people who did not want to hear it. They believed they had lived in paradise, under the leadership of great leader, Tito, a saint and revolutionary. To calm their minds, they invented a new lie. "Tito knew nothing about Barren Island. It was others who devised it and kept him in ignorance," they try to convince themselves and their interlocutors.
Nowadays, Barren Island is visited by rare tourists who arrive there on their yachts. They probably know nothing about its grim past. They see some dilapidated buildings which could have been a former socialist recreation home, which abounds along the Croatian coast. They take some selfies, photographs and pictures, walk through the empty buildings, rubble, dust and dirt, until their curiosity is satisfied. Then they return to their yachts and sail on to other places, which would offer them more excitement. They leave the island to itself, its memories, suffering and relief. It will remain a witness of human stupidity, brutality and crime against humanity, and a warning to the new generations that even the noble idea of freedom can become perverted into the worst form of oppression.
THE END
In the northern Adriatic Sea, belonging to Croatia, there is a little island called Barren Island. It's name suggests that there is no water on it. The Yugoslav communist government had chosen this place to build the prison for political prisoners. It opened in 1949 to incarcerate those who the government classified as "dangerous" who should be kept away from ordinary prisoners. After Tito's conflict with Stalin in 1956, anyone suspected of supporting SSSR and Stalin was sentenced to a long sentence and would end up on the island. When the relations between the two countries normalised, the political prisoners still continued to be brought to the island.
I remember already as a child how people were afraid of pronouncing the name of the island. It was a place people associated with hell. Not even the best friends and family members dared to talk about it for fear of ending themselves on it. At that time, you could never know who was an ordinary citizen and who an informer. It happened that someone cracked a joke or two about Tito or other politicians for his colleagues or friends, and the next morning he was rudely awaken by the mob of police officers who beat him black and blue before taking him to the police station. After a short trial, the joker would arrive at the little island, where he would cut and carry stones and work under the scorching sun in the next three or five years, depending on the mood of the judge who had passed the sentence.
As an enemy of the state, he had no rights whatsoever. He was like a hunted animal, left at the mercy of the guards and his fellow prisoners. The exact number of the killed has never been established. Some estimate that it could be between 600 hundreds and a couple of thousands. What those people went through it is impossible even to imagine, but their suffering was enormous.
I remember asking my father one day, "Do you know anything about Barren Island?" He turned to me, his eyes wild with fear. "Don't you ever name that name!" he said. The image of his terrified eyes imprinted on my memory for ever. Of course, I knew nothing what was going on on the island, but I sensed that terrible things must have been happening there, when even my own father didn't dare to talk about it.
The truth would come up first a few decades later, with the collapse of the communism. But even then there were people who did not want to hear it. They believed they had lived in paradise, under the leadership of great leader, Tito, a saint and revolutionary. To calm their minds, they invented a new lie. "Tito knew nothing about Barren Island. It was others who devised it and kept him in ignorance," they try to convince themselves and their interlocutors.
Nowadays, Barren Island is visited by rare tourists who arrive there on their yachts. They probably know nothing about its grim past. They see some dilapidated buildings which could have been a former socialist recreation home, which abounds along the Croatian coast. They take some selfies, photographs and pictures, walk through the empty buildings, rubble, dust and dirt, until their curiosity is satisfied. Then they return to their yachts and sail on to other places, which would offer them more excitement. They leave the island to itself, its memories, suffering and relief. It will remain a witness of human stupidity, brutality and crime against humanity, and a warning to the new generations that even the noble idea of freedom can become perverted into the worst form of oppression.
THE END
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