Survival in Sarajevo

WARNING: This is a HIGH BANDWIDTH and GRAPHIC site about the tragedy in Sarajevo in the 1980's.

In this virtual museum tour, you'll see the tools and techniques used by the residents of Sarajevo during the siege before the Americans came in to stop the attacks on the Muslim population of Sarajevo.

It is long, it is well worth it. From Water to medical supplies, there were improvised methods used.

The site is a little hard to use, and you have to watch the long video introductions now and then. It's fascinating, and very, very real.

http://h.etf.unsa.ba/srp/vmuzej/index-e.htm

a local church relief agency relocated many displaced Bosnian families to our area, and I had a lot of their kids in my classes over the years...one of the first group was a very bright young lady named Tanya...the rest of my first period class was grousing about a new dress code requirement, and I asked her what she thought.. her reply was classic..."it's not important, no one shot at me on the way to school this morning"... I asked her to repeat what she had said to the rest of the class

The whole thing is flash-based and so hard to navigate I gave it up. I'm sure it would be very helpful if it were HTML or otherwise easily navigable.

I think I might pull a set of URL's and post them here. Yeah, the flash is a bit much.

'...her reply was classic..."it's not important, no one shot at me on the way to school this morning"...'

BEAUTIFUL!

But I have to ask... what was the reaction of the rest of the class? Did they even understand what she was talking about?

Sue

Susan...it's been a long time, and I honestly don't remember...I was fortunate, and had really good kids for most of my career... I hope it did at some point... I did get an invitation to her graduation from med school

related: Sarajevo Survival Guide

Sarajevo was a man-made hell on earth. It went on for so long that there were several underground businesses set up in Europe to cater to man-hunting/sniping/torture tourism. If you wanted to indulge the worse extremes of sex you went to Bangkok. If you wanted to murder and/or torture humans you went to Bosnia.

The sniping was arranged much as safaris are run in Africa. Fly in, bring your own gun, or they will provide one, for a price, and they arrange for a blind set up on favorable sight lines. Guides protect you from the worse of the danger, optimize your odds of getting a shot, and provide amenities. A service industry with smiles, back slapping, good times, and profits. One based on murdering people for fun and profit. Made possible by the near complete lack of law, order, humanity, empathy, and compassion.

A shark might bite you. A bear can maul you. But no other animal makes a science and art of gratuitously inflicting suffering and death on humans. And then compounds the evil by making a business and charging admission to arrange for others to do it.

That sort of greed, exploitation and depravity makes me wonder what the point is. If humanity was judged on this alone we wouldn't stand a chance. I'm heartened somewhat by the reports of real heroism, nobility, and resourcefulness within Sarajevo.

Thanks for that link, Martin. I was still on active duty then, and was in and out of Sarajevo and other parts of Bosnia from 1994 until 2000. I have talked to many survivors of the siege, knew many well. A little known fact is that the population of Sarajevo was very mixed, with Muslims, Croats and Serbs; all under siege together. The Serbs and Croats who chose to remain fought alongside and Muslims, and they all worked together and suffered together. They also were buried together, no longer separately as it had been done before. By the end of the siege, almost every piece of open ground became a cemetery. It is heart wrenching to see, especially the massive one on the South side of the city, on a hillside which was protected, for the most part, from Serb guns. It is HUGE.

Another event in history where you can learn a lot about urban survival, under horrible conditions, is in the 1944 Warsaw uprising. Unfortunately, they do not have an online presentation, but the Uprising Museum in Warsaw, Poland, is a must see if you go there. The book "Rising '44" by Norman Davies is a very thorough and detailed account, and provides many useful ideas for urban survival. Hopefully, a situation like that never happens again.