Worse Than a Concentration Camp
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2006
1
71
120
Trip End
Sep 02, 2008
Sarajevo,
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Monday, November 6, 2006
"That's what it was like here, during the war. People were like those pigeons going after what little food there was." Marion picked us out as tourists, even if we were bundled up just like the locals. The fact that we stared at the pigeons must have given us away. "I'm glad that you're not taking photos of the pigeons. I can tell that you are a different kind of tourists," he said, since we had stayed where we were to listen to him. I left my camera in my pocket.
In his way Marion wasn't entirely wrong about us. We were in BiH, for one, not many tourists are. And secondly we listened to him. Most of the time when a local approaches me and they have something to say, I ignore them. But then again I had never heard anyone accost me using a war as an intro to a sales pitch, so I didn't feel intimidated.
We were all interested in what Marion had to say. It's hard to come to Sarajevo and not want to know about the war. At the moment it's not known for a lot of other things. What would a person to school for, if not to learn?
"What you have to realise is that people had nothing to eat here during the war. It was completely cut off from food. People would eat bits of grass, whatever they could find. They fought for what little there was. It was worse than a concentration camp. At least there people were given a food ration. During the siege, there was nothing."
"Now the survivors who lived through all that are dying from cancer. In their colon, liver, because of the malnutriton of those years."
"Before the war, Sarajevo was like Jerusalem. There were people here from all over the world, living in peace. All religions lived here and everyone got along. I am Catholic. There was a peaceful interaction of peoples."
"When the war came [April 1992] I was nearly finished my Veteranerian's degree. I had to flee and I was very depressed. They sent me to a refugee processing centre in Denmark. They gave me a bit of money but I couldn't work, there was absolutely nothing to do there but sit in a refugee camp. Then they gave me a choice of countries to go to. I chose Canada."
"I became a manager at Tim Horton's in Toronto. I just came back to Sarajevo this year. I am still too depressed about it, and no one understood me in Toronto. How can you relate? My mother died in this war. Look at all the graveyards."
"Before the war, there were seven hundred thousand people here. Three hundred thousand people are left. The middle class, went elsewhere in the world and stayed. Doctors, lawyers, they spend money but they aren't here. All the people with money stayed away, and that's why the city is so poor."
"But there are not a lot of homeless. Some people come here because this [Bascarsija square] has a bit more traffic. But everyone has a house. They are cheap, many were abandoned. There is one man," who came along sure enough, a bit later, "who comes around here but the restaurants look after him. People are generous to each other here. They remember how it was." A moment later another woman came by for a hand-out. "She's different." A career beggar.
We were getting cold and anyway Marion had to be along on his way. Our doner kebap were fabulous. We took a tram to find the Tunnel Museum, as best I could according to the instructions in our LP and the Sarajevo Tourist-Historic Guide. Both were extremely wanting. Needless to say we went on a long long walk that took us through the very shot up Dobrinja area (it was close to Serb/Montengrian ammunition dumps so it got shot at more than most other places, and for a while it was cut off from the rest of Sarajevo too). We reached the airport, but the wrong side of it, so we took a Taxi even farther along to a place that wasn't marked properly anywhere.
The Tunnel was besieged Sarajevo's lifeline to the outside world. The Serbian/Montenegrian army had completely surrounded Sarajevo from the hillside. One of their generals reportedly told his troops to fire slowly, to drive the inhabitants mad. The UN intervened and the UNPROFOR occupied the airport. Free Bosnian lines to the rest of Bosnia made it to the other side of the airport.
Someone had the idea of building a tunel beneath the runway. The UN was "neutral" during the conflict (ask a Bosnian from the Federation of BiH and he will say that the UN stood by and watched a genocide. It was UN policy to not let anyone cross their lines without getting first approval from the Serbian/Montenegrian command!), so they didn't let anyone cross the airport. So over six months they dug a tunnel day and night, by hand only, almost 800 meters long. Once it was completed, it was the city's lifeline, supplying millions of tons of food and supplies over the years of the siege.
The museum has a little section of the old tunnel that hasn't yet collapsed. It looks in considerably better repair than the tunnel does in the videos taken during the siege. An audiovisual presentation covers the destruction of the city, including the burning of several landmarks, including the library/city hall.
The display also criticised the UN's "limited intervention," lack of assistance to the beleagured city. In the display, there was a letter from a French diplomat praising the museum and France's contribution to the UN effort and to the aid of BiH. To this French speaker it seemed to contradict the general theme of the display (the UN did not do enough) but as far as I can tell no one speaks French in BiH.
We saw "Borat" that night in the Apolo cinema in the city's oldest. It was built back when the Austrians were in charge. The travelling cinema of "Cinematograph Edison" showed up in 1906 to screen the first movie ever made in Sarajevo. "Borat" was a hit with the audience (us included), who particularly applauded every instance when Bush was ridiculed and for the anti-semetic jokes (us not included). We understood the better part of the movie - Oh those crazy Americans - but all of the subtitles had been rendered in the Bosnian South Slavic dialect. We must have missed the subtleties.
And now for a little known fact.
Have you seen the movie poster? You may be amused to know that it is the same here as elswhere, with the funny "A." It's a "D" in Cyrillic, so if you are used to reading Cyrillic (as they use in this region, and the poster is everywhere, but not particularly in Sarajevo), it actually would read something like "Vordt," although the "R" in Cyrillic looks like a "P" and an "R" with its second leg doesn't exist in that alphabet.
