Day 5 (July 16, 2017): Difficult to process this place...
We arrived in Sarajevo late Saturday night with a lot of curiosity. We wanted to see where the events that triggered World War I started. We wanted to see how it had organized itself for the 1984 Winter Olympics. And mostly, we wanted to come to an understanding of how the city suffered during the 1992-95 war.
We were on the go by 10AM Sunday morning, and didn’t get back to the hotel until 10PM. It was an action-packed day, best outlined by the photos and captions below.
Instead of elaborating on our comings and goings, I’d like to take a few paragraphs to share what happened to Sarajevo in case, like us, those war years are just a confusing blur from the TV news of a former Yugoslavia being ripped apart by ethnic differences.
But first, Muslims comprise the single largest religious community in Bosnia and Herzegovina (51%). The other two large groups are Eastern Orthodox Christians (31%), of whom most identify as Serbs, and Roman Catholics (15%), of whom most identify as Croats.
Sarajevo is situated in a valley, so when the Serbian Army surrounded the city and started pounding it with shells in 1992, it believed the city would fall within days. In fact, the city withstood the siege for 1425 days. From 1992-95, UN forces registered an average of 330 impacts a day on the city. In just one day (July 22, 1993), the Serbs fired 3777 shells on it from the surrounding hills. The shells killed many, and every one left scars on the cities pavement, sidewalks and buildings. Today, 22 years after the end of the war, one doesn’t have to look far to see bullet marks in buildings or buildings that were burned out or shelled and have yet to be replaced.
But it wasn’t just the shelling that terrorized Sarajevo. Snipers constantly shot at citizens, making daily coming and going a genuine risk. Water, electricity, food, gasoline, medical care… were all cut off. Imagine the impact on 500,000 people – mostly living in high-rise socialist-era apartment buildings – to have to go without these things. Every element of a civilized urban life came to a sudden halt.
More than 18,000 people were killed in the most cruel ways during the siege – 1600 of whom were children. 56,000 were severely injured. The Serbs targeted everyone in Sarajevo: able-bodied men, women, elderly, disabled, children. The goal was to exterminate as many as possible.
Sarajevo fought back with less than 10% of the weaponry that the Serbs had. It is a testament to the unity and resourcefulness of the city that it defended itself amid such conditions for so long. The UN finally moved in in August 1995 and bombed the Serbs. But by then, the siege had devastated the city, and ethnic cleansing had killed tens of thousands in over 600 concentration camps. We all remember the 8000 men and boys slaughtered in Srebrenica in a few days and thrown into mass graves. But the camps and horrors went well beyond that atrocity.
The city contains many museums dedicated to telling its story, but most are closed on Sunday. So we obtained most of our information from a visit to the “Museum of Crimes Against Humanity & Genocide 1992-95” and the Sarajevo Tunnel Museum, which shows the hand-dug secret tunnel under the Sarajevo Airport runway that was used to transport essential goods to keep the city alive during the siege.
A wonderful city in many ways. But a gut-wrenching history.
We were on the go by 10AM Sunday morning, and didn’t get back to the hotel until 10PM. It was an action-packed day, best outlined by the photos and captions below.
Instead of elaborating on our comings and goings, I’d like to take a few paragraphs to share what happened to Sarajevo in case, like us, those war years are just a confusing blur from the TV news of a former Yugoslavia being ripped apart by ethnic differences.
But first, Muslims comprise the single largest religious community in Bosnia and Herzegovina (51%). The other two large groups are Eastern Orthodox Christians (31%), of whom most identify as Serbs, and Roman Catholics (15%), of whom most identify as Croats.
Sarajevo is situated in a valley, so when the Serbian Army surrounded the city and started pounding it with shells in 1992, it believed the city would fall within days. In fact, the city withstood the siege for 1425 days. From 1992-95, UN forces registered an average of 330 impacts a day on the city. In just one day (July 22, 1993), the Serbs fired 3777 shells on it from the surrounding hills. The shells killed many, and every one left scars on the cities pavement, sidewalks and buildings. Today, 22 years after the end of the war, one doesn’t have to look far to see bullet marks in buildings or buildings that were burned out or shelled and have yet to be replaced.
But it wasn’t just the shelling that terrorized Sarajevo. Snipers constantly shot at citizens, making daily coming and going a genuine risk. Water, electricity, food, gasoline, medical care… were all cut off. Imagine the impact on 500,000 people – mostly living in high-rise socialist-era apartment buildings – to have to go without these things. Every element of a civilized urban life came to a sudden halt.
More than 18,000 people were killed in the most cruel ways during the siege – 1600 of whom were children. 56,000 were severely injured. The Serbs targeted everyone in Sarajevo: able-bodied men, women, elderly, disabled, children. The goal was to exterminate as many as possible.
Sarajevo fought back with less than 10% of the weaponry that the Serbs had. It is a testament to the unity and resourcefulness of the city that it defended itself amid such conditions for so long. The UN finally moved in in August 1995 and bombed the Serbs. But by then, the siege had devastated the city, and ethnic cleansing had killed tens of thousands in over 600 concentration camps. We all remember the 8000 men and boys slaughtered in Srebrenica in a few days and thrown into mass graves. But the camps and horrors went well beyond that atrocity.
The city contains many museums dedicated to telling its story, but most are closed on Sunday. So we obtained most of our information from a visit to the “Museum of Crimes Against Humanity & Genocide 1992-95” and the Sarajevo Tunnel Museum, which shows the hand-dug secret tunnel under the Sarajevo Airport runway that was used to transport essential goods to keep the city alive during the siege.
A wonderful city in many ways. But a gut-wrenching history.
Sarajevo is situated in a valley. Most of its 500,000 inhabitants live in high-rise apartment buildings, such as these. Life in these buildings -- most of which were damaged or destroyed in the 1992-95 war -- was horrible, with no electricity, water, or heat.
One needn't look far to see bullet scars on buildings and infrastructure -- even 22 years later. The reconstruction has been amazing. However, bombed out / burned out buildings are easily found, such as this seniors complex next to our hotel. It had just opened when war broke out, and was destroyed.
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