For eight years, our gymnasium operated in the school of Lismir. Crossing the railway tracks there was especially difficult, it was almost impossible for a night to pass without some student being frightened or beaten by the police of that time, the Serbian militia. Fortunately, the parents contributed a great deal. Without their help we would not have been able to achieve anything, neither then nor today. They sent their children to school and said, ‘The children are yours. Take care of them at school where you are. You cannot accompany them on the road,’ because we had at least 400 students. Four hundred students with five teachers could not possibly be escorted. Those were the most difficult years. But fortunately, in the houses where we held classes, the students tried hard even in those small, cramped rooms, sitting on some rug with a notebook on their lap, or sometimes sitting on a plank used as a seat. Wooden boards were used in place of blackboards. They were extraordinarily disciplined and worked very hard. Many of them succeeded and today they are the intellectuals who work at the University of Prishtina and also abroad.
Selim Krasniqi was born in 1956 in Junik. A graduate in Albanian Language and Literature from the University of Prishtina, he spent the majority of his career until his retirement in 2020, teaching at the Hyvzi Sylejmani Gymnasium in Fushë Kosovë. Selim Krasniqi was active in the parallel system of education and during the war he wrote for various Kosovo newspapers, documenting the war’s impact and identifying missing persons in the Fushë Kosovë region.