Lidija Harak was born in 1968 in the municipality of Bač in Vojvodina, in Serbia. The river Danube divides Bač from the Croatian side, where Vukovar is situated. Before the war in the 1990s the inhabitants of the Bač municipality were very much oriented towards Vukovar, where they did their shopping. At the beginning of the war in the 1990s Lidija Harak was with her family in Bač, where she witnessed a build up of troops and subsequent attacks on Vukovar that were conducted from the Bač side of the Danube. Since she and her family are of Croatian origin, it was hard for them to deal with threats and pressure that they were exposed to in Serbia. In October 1996, when their security became even more of an issue, they decided to move to Croatia. Since they had cousins who had already moved to Pakrac, in the area of western Slavonia, they decided to go there too. Following initial problems with acquiring Croatian papers, they settled permanently in Pakrac. Today she lives in Pakrac with her family and she is unemployed. She occasionally collaborates with civil society associations.