On November 6, 15 years ago, we heard that our friend and fellow journalist Božo Knežević had died on the road near Gračac. A few days before that announced trip, he was in our apartment in Zagreb: Mišo and I talked with him about all the crap that happens to us, about his newly made film Storm over the Krajina, for which he was attacked from left and right... He forgot his glasses then. at our place, without one glass: we called him before that fateful trip to tell him, Mishi said: it doesn't matter, I have others, and these ones never had that one glass anyway.
And Božo saw clearly, even without glasses, from both glasses...
I had the privilege of working with Boža, who - whoever wanted to admit it or not - already in the eighties, on the eve of our wars, was the author and mentor of documentary on (then) Zagreb Television, which shamefully renounced it in the years when was becoming Croatian. As a journalist on HRT said a few years ago, regarding another driven away great man of "crooked blood cells", it was "a time unfavorable to individuals"; that's how Božo went: he didn't want to become a propagandist, he was and remained a journalist, he didn't want to enter into pacts with the then Croatian all-powerful people, so he didn't even want Croatian citizenship through a relationship, no matter how much it hurt his Zvjezdan and then (and later) little girl.
And he paid the human and professional price before he died tragically.
Božo left his big mark in the documentary program on today's Croatian television, he left his mark in reporting on Yutel about our ex-yu's terrible and shameful wars, in which he did not lie for (any "of his") country and in the film Storm over the Krajina, which even today disturbs contemporaries ready to lie.
If Božo were with us today, I am quite sure, he would be just as desperate as some of us because of what journalism has fallen into: he was a man, a journalist, a man who did not let politics shape his reports and films. I am sure that he would still remain the way he was - honest and professional and uncompromising.
That is why Bozidar Knežević should be remembered today. That's why I remember him for 15 years already, sure that missing him will last.
