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Published: November 10th 2019
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Attractive as it is there’s no denying that Bosnia and Herzegovina’s capital is helped in punching way above its weight as an obvious tourist destination by three events or episodes of modern history.
One of the events, the 1984 Winter Olympics, is pretty simple to get your head around. Yugoslavia won the bid a couple of years before Tito’s death and hosted a successful games, East Germany topped the medal table but our very own Jayne and Chris won gold with that Balero routine.
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914, near Sarajevo’s Latin Bridge, and how it resulted in nearly twenty million more deaths, including many hundreds of thousands of our Tommies in trenches and Flanders fields, isn’t as straightforward. I’m not sure I’ve ever really understood how this event and the Austro Hungarian empire’s declaration of war against Serbia acted as the catalyst for such a widespread conflict that engulfed the world to become the Great War. But at least now I can claim to have seen the spot where Gavrilo Princip did the deed and just maybe it’s brought me closer to history. Just how it connects with the rows upon rows of
Portland stone I’ve gazed sadly upon at Tyne Cot, Thiepval and countless other Commonwealth war graves will remain a tragedy and a story of bravery and sacrifice that I respectfully commemorate, but struggle to comprehend, every November.
Fast forward eighty years and Sarajevo was in the midst of a siege that lasted 3 years, 10 months, 3 weeks and 3 days and claimed nearly 14 thousand lives including 5,434 civilians. This was another tragedy and one that occurred within my living memory and was played out on daily TV news bulletins. Horrific as it was, at the time I found it confusing and impenetrable even with the likes of the trusty BBC’s Kate Adie and Martin Bell reporting. The turmoil in the Balkans wasn’t a simple and customary two-way scrap between a couple of opposing traditions, ideologies, nations or religions. The lid on nationalistic tensions that was lifted after the great unifier Tito died in 1980 and the later breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991 resulted in a series of chaotic and bitter inter-ethnic conflicts which prevailed throughout the 1990’s.
My fascination with Sarajevo, and my desire to visit, had been partially triggered a couple of years ago by
a chance meeting during our travels with someone who had lived through the siege. This charming fun-loving lady had spoken only briefly of the ‘stupid war’ and hinted at the horrors of raising her daughter, a toddler at the time, often with inadequate supplies of drinking water. I had sensed pain and the rawness of memories and hence wasn’t comfortable in prying for further personal insights.
Twenty four years after the Dayton Agreement and the ending of the siege we were fortunate to be staying in the iconic Hotel Holiday, formerly the Holiday Inn, which served as the front line lodgings for the international journalists covering events.
Built in the lead-up to the 1984 Winter Olympics this place truly has historical significance and an unmistakable architectural style of the time. In common with most buildings it suffered its share of shell damage during the siege and there’s an example of the Sarajevo Rose (a common memorial in the city made by filling the scars left by mortar shell explosions with red resin) close to the entrance.
Wanting to get a better understanding of the conflict and the siege we visited some key sites:
First was the
tunnel, constructed in just three months during 1993, that linked the besieged city to Bosnian-held territory on the other side of the airport. The 800m tunnel allowed food, war supplies and humanitarian aid to come into the city and allowed people to get out. This is now part of a museum that pays tribute to the resourcefulness and ingenuity of those under siege.
On higher ground, on our way to visit the 1984 winter Olympic bobsleigh track, we took in some of the positions used by the artillery and snipers of the Serbian forces.
The Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide 1992-1995 was a far more harrowing experience dealing as it does with personal stories of the atrocities inflicted on the Bosnian people during those dark days. It’s hard to comprehend that genocide was again being perpetrated against an ethnic group in Europe in such recent times.
With the current absence of any direct flights from the UK, Sarajevo isn’t the easiest place to visit, but we’ve been well rewarded having made the effort to get here.
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