Sarajevo

Sarajevo in Mourning

Sarajevo is located high up in the mountains of Bosnia Herzegovina and was the host of the 1984 Winter Olympics. 

Sarajevo is not a stranger to tragedy. The first occurred June 28, 1914 when the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophia of the Hapsburg Empire were assassinated by a Bosnian nationalist, and this started WW1. The tragedy that surrounded the Balkan war started when Marshal Tito died in 1980. Until that time he had held the Union of Slavic Countries (Yugoslavia) together with his brand of politics but after that others had Nationalistic ideas and by 1991 the countries were unraveling.

First a picture of the Latin bridge where the assassination took place, and the plaque  of remembrance.

Latin Bridge

The Siege of Sarajevo became the longest in modern warfare lasting from April 1992 to February 1996 when 13000 Bosnian Serb soldiers surrounded the city and reduced its people into medieval practices where the water source from the brewery (PIVO) was the only source of drinking water.

WW I plaque

Excellent Beer here

Click on image to enlarge

Here you will see a map that depicts the area under siege (remember you can click on any image to enlarge it) and the window (a tunnel) to freedom, dug in 1993 under the airport runway. The UN forces (loosely speaking) maintained the airport runway as a common area between the occupying Serb’s and the Bosnian’s. Unfortunately they lit the airport at night so there was no way Bosnians could flee to safety, therefore the tunnel became a necessity.

Entrance

Remember there was no water, electricity or heat in the city for over 4 years. The guide who spent time with us at the museum was born in 1992, is Muslim, and still gets very choked up with every explanation she provides. There was no currency during this period of time, save packages of cigarettes.  Anyone could use the tunnel but they had to get permission first which could take up to a month and when they returned they wore packs of food stuffs that could weigh close to 150lbs in total. No alcohol, fuel or other things that could influence a black market were permitted.

Mother of Sarajevo Freedom

This lady provided her home as the terminus for the tunnel and provided every person who crawled through a glass of water. She is 86 and still alive today. Her name is not provided.

Today the city is still recovering with many burned out buildings still hoarded off, many occupied structures still bullet riddled and pock marked from the artillery of that war. It can be a daily reminder to many of what transpired only 20 years ago.

Inside Markale Mkt.

The Markale square massacre of late 1995 caused President Clinton to intercede and send bombing missions in to break the siege. These war crime trials bear a striking resemblance to the WWII trials. We walked through the Markale and there is a small commemorative plaque of the people who died that day.

Markale Plaque

During the siege it was unsafe to venture outside most of the time and with so many dead a central city park was converted out of need to a cemetery. 

Straddles Olympic Way

Exterior of Tunnel House

One picture is of the park converted to a cemetery and the other of a cemetery that straddles both sides of the road out to the Olympic Stadium.

Park to Cemetary