Sarajevo - a City on the Mend

Poor Sarajevo; if ever there was a city beaten repeatedly by the bad luck stick, this would be it. Between 1992 and 1995 the city was under siege: by the time it was finished, over ten thousand people had died, most of them civilians, and virtually the whole city required rebuilding or major structural repairs.

The siege was shocked people around the world, especially those who remembered Sarajevo as it was just a decade earlier when the city hosted the Winter Olympic Games of 1984. This was Sarajevo’s heyday: the eighties were a good time for the city and the hosting of the games was considered a success. However, that fact that the games went to Sarajevo at all, or, more correctly, that it was even considered as a candidate, was a contentious one. Many believed, certainly within Yugoslavia (and especially Slovenia) that there were places in Slovenia that were better equipped to host such an event. The debate was fierce; Sarajevo had no proper facilities and no particular history of competitive skiing and other snow sports while resorts in Slovenia had plenty of facilities and hosted international competitions already. While most countries would have been proud to have any of their cities host such a prestigious event, the debate in Yugoslavia dragged on and on.

Seventy years before Sarajevo hosted the Winter Olympics, the city acquired the dubious distinction of being the place where the First World War started. Actually, it was in Sarajevo that Gavrilo Princip, a Yugoslav before that country properly existed, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sofia, an event that led to Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia (setting into motion a chain of alliances and ententes that had been negotiated and agreed in the previous few decades). It’s a charge that is more than a little unfair on Sarajevo. Princip was an ethnic Serb, he was not Bosnian (though he was born in Bosnia), and that the assassination took place in Sarajevo was merely happenstance. As there was growing opposition to the Austro-Hungarian rulers, an attack might have happened anywhere in the southern part of the Empire; it was by no means significant that it took place in Sarajevo.

The powers that be have obviously decided that if Sarajevo must be lumbered with this distinction, they should get out of it what they can. To this end there now exists a museum housed in the building on the very corner where the shootings took place. It’s actually the "Museum of Sarajevo 1878 – 1918" and it covers the run up to the assassination, the event itself and the aftermath. It’s limited in scope but the exhibition has been cleverly put together (to justify its existence, I expect).

The background – why does the museum exist?

What is now Bosnia and Herzegovina, was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1878 and 1918; this vast Empire stretched from what is now eastern Germany to what is now the middle of Romania. By the 1910s there was growing dissent in some parts of the empire, especially the Balkans. Gavrilo Princip was part of a group of young men who wanted independence for Serbia and on 28th June 1914, they turned up in Sarajevo where the Archduke and his wife were paying a special state visit.

The events of this day are dramatised in a short film which is shown on a screen in the museum. There’s no dialogue so to compensate, it seems the actors have been directed to over-emphasise their reactions. It’s quite comical to watch but it does explain what happened that day and I learned a few things about the incident; the most surprising of these was that before the shooting, one of Princip’s fellow nationalists threw a grenade into the Archduke’s open car which the Archduke swiftly caught (there is no truth in the rumour that he was known in Vienna as "The Cat") and quickly lobbed out of the vehicle to explode in the crowd. Is this true? If it is, it differs from the version I’d heard, which was that the grenade was thrown under the wheels of the Archduke’s car. I also thought that the couple were shot when they were travelling to the hospital to visit the people injured when the grenade had exploded – this film tells a different story.


THE MUSEUM

The museum is on the corner directly beside the Latin Bridge. A poor quality screen on the outside wall shows parts of the video that is shown inside, perhaps to get your attention and entice you inside. On the exterior wall beside the entrance there is a stone plaque that describes how this is the spot where the assassination took place.

Just inside the door is the ticket desk and then you turn directly into the exhibition space. The screen is immediately on your right and you should follow the exhibition from the right. Even if you are familiar with the history, it’s worth watching the film as it helps put some of the exhibits in context.

I won’t describe the exhibition in great detail as it is not vast. Sarajevo has had a chequered history and the museum acknowledges that by contrasting the Ottoman period with the Austro-Hungarian era. It does this using mock-ups of a domestic interior from each period (one would lounge in an Ottoman house whereas with the Austro-Hungarians came more formal furniture) and with costumes that correspond accordingly. There is military memorabilia, documents relating to the arrest of Princip and his accomplices and a number of other items that relate to the Berlin Congress of 1878 at which Bosnia and Herzegovina became officially annexed to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The exhibits are presented behind large picture windows with a small card listing each item with a short explanation in Bosnian and English, at the front of each display. A longer text is presented on the wall as you come to each new window. There was sufficient information and it was written in pretty good English, which is unusual for this part of the world.

The highlight (for us) was a wonderful tableau using dressed mannequins to represent Franz Ferdinand and Sofia. Unfortunately the mannequin of the Archduke has posture issues and looks like he’s about to keel over; his moustache, however, is the business.

IS IT ANY GOOD?


While I found it fairly interesting, I was more fascinated to learn about what the museum USED to be; when it opened in the 1950s, the museum was actually dedicated to Gavrilo Princip, who was regarded, for many years, as a hero. Just outside the building there had been a plaque with an imprint of supposedly Princip’s footprints. This caused great controversy; while some accused him of being a terrorist, others hailed him as a hero and would leave burning candles there in his memory. In actual fact the footsteps were not Princip’s at all but they were removed anyway as a result of the Bosnian War because Princip was a Serb and therefore no longer a hero in Sarajevo.

A visit to this museum will take up anything between twenty minutes to an hour depending on how interested you are in the displays. While the exhibition doesn’t cover things in much depth I did like the fact that it addressed a wider concept – that of Sarajevo under the Austro-Hungarian Empire – rather than just the assassination, and it looked at the domestic and cultural changes rather than merely looking at the political ones. Certainly worth a visit if you are interested in history.

In spite of many months of fierce attack plucky Sarajevo managed to defend itself – thanks mainly to an 800 metre tunnel that connected the city with "Free Bosnia".

How the exact location of the tunnel was not discovered by the Serbs is a miracle. It runs under Sarajevo Airport which, although it was designated a neutral zone, was often closed due to heavy shelling. The Serbs knew roughly where the tunnel was but were never able to pinpoint it exactly. The tunnel was no secret; everyone knew of its existence. Food, fuel, medical supplies and arms – all were brought through the tunnel.. Without it Sarajevo would have fallen. The tunnel was the only way the Bosnian defence forces based in the city could get round the arms embargo. It was the Bosnian capital’s only lifeline.

You might well ask why the tunnel was not used to evacuate the city – at least to free civilians who weren’t actively involved in the defence of the city. Quite simply, the tunnel was a useful propaganda tool. The government recognised that only by highlighting the plight of the Bosnian people trapped inside the besieged city could they hope to win the support of the international community and so they placed a heavy restriction on the number of people allowed to leave. Getting to use the tunnel was almost impossible; you needed written permission and obtaining it was not only a slow process but a dangerous one too as you’d have to venture outside of your house and make your way – usually under fire – to offices in the city centre to make your request. It was not unsual for people to pay quite large sums of money to buy a ticket through the tunnel.

A steady stream of aid made its way into Sarajevo through the tunnel on the backs of soldiers and other volunteers. At times the tunnel was knee deep in water and the volunteers would bump their heads on the beams of the low roof. As I walked, bent over, through the 20 metres or so that still exist, I couldn’t help but feel deep admiration for those people who trudged the whole way time and again, knowing that without these goods, the suffering of Sarajevans would be even greater.

The house under which the city entrance of the tunnel sits is now
a museum. It’s in a small village on the edge of the city, just within sight of the airport.

You can visit the museum independently and can access it using public transport in combination with a short walk. It’s easier to take a taxi from the centre. We visited as part of an organised tour from the Tourist Information Office.This turned out to be a good way of visiting the tunnel museum because, while travelling there, our guide identified all the landmarks we passed which put into context the dangers of getting to and from the site of the tunnel.

We parked up opposite the house and climbed out of the minibus. In spite of the proximity of the airport it’s a very quiet area; if you have ever been to Auschwitz or the battlefields of northern France you might know the strange feeling that you get – peaceful but uneasy, idyllic yet quite horrifying at the same time. It’s hard to put into words but the feeling is quite palpable. The house is like many of the houses in the area but while those have largely been repaired and re-rendered, this one has not so it’s pock-marked façade looks quite disturbing.

First we went into a small room where we watched two videos; one about the tunnel – from construction to use – and the other a montage of clips from the siege of the city. Neither were narrated, they didn’t need to be – the horror was only too easy to comprehend. Afterwards we got some time to wander around the exhibits ourselves before our guide came and explained more about them. There were examples of the aid packs that were sent by the International Red Cross; they were originally ration packs for soldiers but Sarajevans were now the recipients and had to make do with these meagre rations every now and again. Other food stuffs did come through the tunnel but often ended up in the hands of black marketeers and were sold at the central market to those who could afford it. To afford it many people sold family heirlooms but to sell them they had to risk their lives to get to the market. This was the ONLY place in the city you could buy and sell things, local markets no longer operated. In two of the bloodiest events of the war the market was shelled on two occasions resulting in the loss of a total of 105 lives (but many more injuries); many of those who died on that day had already managed to avoid death on Sniper Alley on their way to market.
Other exhibits included a chair built to be put on the rails in the tunnel to enable Izetbegovic (who was wheelchair bound) to pass through the tunnel, army bergens filled with weights to give you an idea of what the volunteers carried through the tunnel (women would carry one such bag, men carried one on their back and one in front of them around their neck). One one wall of the main exhibition space are photographs of international statesmen and celebrities who have visited the tunnel museum, pictured with members of the Kolar family and handwritten notes of appreciation and support. The museum does not have official status and receives no money towards its running costs from either the local or national government so it relies on admission charges, donations and international press coverage to encourage more visitors to come.

The main aspect of a visit is experiencing what it’s like down in the tunnel. Only a short section can be walked (the remainder of the tunnel collapsed a few years ago) but it’s enough to know that it’s narrow and the roof is low. Although the tunnel was dry it smelled very earthy and I can imagine it would become quite overpowering after a while. I read an account that said sometimes it could take almost two hours to get through the tunnel when carrying two packs and wading through a foot of water, weak with hunger and exhaustion.

When we had passed through the section of tunnel we gathered in the garden around a map that showed how Sarajevo was surrounded and how the tunnel joined the city with Free Bosnia. Our guide's English wasn’t as good as other people I’d met in town but he conveyed a sense of the horrors of the war and the reality for those working the tunnel quite brilliantly.

Before we left we were given a few minutes to look at part of the exhibition in the space around the entrance to the tunnel. Here there were lists of the names of the people who had died as a result of the siege - about eleven thousand people in total, many of them civilians,and approximately 1,500 of them children. There were a few things to buy but nobody seemed inclined to take home "souvenirs".

Sarajevo is a wonderfully scenic city, packed full of fascinating sights and I wouldn’t really say that the Tunnel Museum is one of them. I found it very interesting but the Bosnian War is a subject I’m very interested in. If you get talking to locals in Sarajevo you will find plenty of people willing to talk about their experiences of the war and you can learn just as much about the siege of Sarajevo from them as you can from visiting the museum. On the other hand, what the Kolar family is trying to do is very important and the more people that visit the museum, the more likely the project is to secure the funding it needs to keep it open so that future generations can learn what happened in Sarajevo.

Admission - 5KM (Approximately £2.40 in Sept 2009)
Tours through the Tourist Information Office leave the city at 11.00am and 2.00pm and run daily so long as there are at least three customers. The cost is 12 Euro per person which includes admission to the museum.

The museum is open daily between 9.00 am and 5.00pm, but may be open longer into the evening in summer; check with the Tourist Information Office in the city centre.


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