Kosovo’s house schools

In 1990s Kosovo, a generation of Albanians received their education crammed into thousands of private homes. When Slobodan Milosevic’s Serb nationalist regime forcibly evicted them from schools and universities, Kosovan Albanians responded with improvised house schools in their apartments, attics and cellars. The spontaneous reaction to their ethnic exclusion quickly evolved into a nationwide education system that would endure for the best part of a decade. Linda Gusia, a pupil in the house schools, and university professor Drita Halimi speak to Jack Butcher. A Whistledown production for BBC World Service.(Photo: A Kosovan house school. Credit: Shyqeri Obërtinca)

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Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest, the disastrous D-Day rehearsal, and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.