The National Library

Sources:
http://books.google.com/books?id=FAdxZ6F2uEAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=bosnian+genocide&source=bl&ots=UyYfQF45bG&sig=GLmNESZPS_aHzGdbif5XLwjh_Us&hl=en&ei=uN3oS9jqKITgsQO8_sD2Bw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=bosnian%20genocide&f=false
http://kihm2.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/library-sarajevo.jpg

Upon searching for the term "Bosnian Genocide," I was intrigued and surprised to find that a huge number of the items were about the National Library. I looked further to find this quotation from a newspaper article with an interview with Sarajevans: "The attack lasted less than half an hour. The fire lasted into the next day. The sun was obscured by the smoke of books, and all over the city sheets of burned paper, fragile pages of grey ashe, floated down like a dirty black snow. Catching a page you could feel its heat, and for a moment read a fragment of text in a strange kind of black and grey negative, until, as the heat dissipated, the page melted to dust in your hand." It seems as though all the pages, all the knowledge of an entire civilization are flying away in little strips that melt in your hand. This, to me, is the ultimate example of genocide, and attempt to destroy a culture: in one fell swoop, completely obliterating the books of a city. Upon further inspection, I found that over one million books were burned in that attack. The number speaks for itself. I also found out that, before shelling the Library, the men on the hills shelled the nearby fire brigade and shut off the water to the area so that there was absolutely no way to stop the burning. It is then no wonder that Galloway describes this moment as one of the most tragic scenes of the genocide.

Siege of Sarajevo

Since we are reading about the war between the Serbs and Bosnia and Herzegovina, I did some research into the war and the siege of Sarajevo. The siege of Sarajevo was the longest siege of a capital city in the 20th century. Approximately 10,000 died or disappeared, and approximately 56,000 people were wounded. By 1995, the city's poplulation was merely sixty-four percent of its original size.
After the death of Marshal Tito, democracies were established for Yugoslav peoples, leading to the break-up of the country. Soon after Bosnia and Herzegovina acquired independence from Serbia in 1992, Serbs began fighting their government. It was only in 1994, after sixty-eight civilians were killed and 200 were wounded in one sitting that the UN threatened the Serbs with air strikes if they did not withdraw their weaponry from beyond a certain line, at which point the Serbs agreed. The fighting had reached its climax, and this signaled that the end of the siege was not far.