War Victims

Chapman University is sponsoring a benefit concert April 10, with proceeds going to the Bosnian Women's Organization. Located in Zagreb, Croatia, the Bosnian Women's Organization provides psychological services, elderly care, vocational therapy, medical assistance, clothing and shelter to traumatized, raped and wounded war victims. Sponsored by the university's Albert Schweitzer Institute, the concert begins at 8 p.m.

Like hundreds of thousands of his fellow Kosovo Albanians, Bashkim Millaku was forced at gunpoint to leave his home and his country by Serbian troops last week. On his way, the 36-year-old father of two was caught in a roundup of 400 men, held prisoner for three days and two nights, tormented mentally and physically, robbed and denied food and water. He was used as a human shield. By the time Millaku reached Albania on Saturday night, he was in shock.

Their most frequent companions are hunger and cold, and like Oliver Twist, they daydream of being able to eat their fill. Home--if you can call it that--is a drafty building without electricity, heat or running water on a dusty plain littered with abandoned Soviet military equipment. For as long as they can remember, the 850 residents of northwestern Kabul's Daurul Itom orphanage, ages 6 months to 21 years, have known nothing but war.

Shin Jin-tae says he lives in the unluckiest town on Earth. During World War II, when the Japanese occupied Korea, thousands of residents of this small farming community were shipped to Japan to work in munitions factories. Their destination: Hiroshima. Shin and his family were there on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, when the U.S. military dropped the atomic bomb, leveling the city center and vaporizing many of those within a mile of the blast.

Amra Zulfikarpasic's sequined cocktail dress glistens as the late afternoon sunshine passes through windows sheathed in plastic, the only visible reminder that a war is going on. Her brother's wedding reception is warming under the influence of rakija (homemade brandy), and guests in pressed white shirts and little black dresses over lace stockings indulge in tea cakes baked with ingredients scrounged from humanitarian aid packages.

Re "With Conservative Stand on Minors' Rights, U.S. Irks Its Allies," Aug. 31: I am fed up with those in the U.S. who insist that sex education is taboo, contraceptive services unethical and reproductive health services encourage abortion. I was raised in an open, liberal household wherein, from an early age and often at the dinner table, my parents discussed sex, counseled us on contraception from the birth-control pill to condoms, encouraged abstinence and instilled in my brother and sisters and me a sense of self, honor and responsibility.

An American Red Cross tracing service that reunites World War II survivors and their relatives in the United States is not being used by enough people in Southern California, an official said. "This service has brought together many families, and yet most people don't know that we offer this service," said Lourdes Del Rio, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles chapter. "People think of us as only a disaster-relief and blood-donation agency."

Bosnian Serb experts have exhumed 55 bodies from sites at two Sarajevo cemeteries near the former front line, but there was disagreement Sunday whether they were actually mass graves. The exhumation work, which started Thursday, was completed Saturday, the daily Dnevni Avaz reported. The bodies were transported to Lukavica, a Sarajevo suburb that is part of the Bosnian Serb republic. Autopsies and identifications were expected to start within days.

The patients were whisked from their hospital beds Monday in armored cars, forced to dodge sniper fire on their way to the airport to begin what authorities called the riskiest evacuation thus far of those injured in the Bosnian war. The daring maneuver culminates today when 18 wounded people and a 6-month-old with a heart condition are scheduled to arrive in the United States, part of the first medical airlift to this country from the ravaged city of Sarajevo.

Those who believe their relatives may have been victims of the Nazi Holocaust now can apply for Red Cross help in searching wartime German concentration camp records seized by the American military nearly half a century ago. Access to the files to trace the fate of family members can be obtained by completing a form at Red Cross offices. American Red Cross President Elizabeth Hanford Dole released information Tuesday containing 7,000 names.