Logavina Street

I finished reading “Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood.” It is about a reporter who covered the Siege of Sarajevo (the longest siege in modern history lasting 3 years, 10 months, 3 weeks and 3 days) by covering the wartime lives of the different families in this six block street. The street was home to 240 families as diverse as most of Sarajevo with Serb Orthodox Christians, Bosniak Muslims and Croat Christians living side-by-side as they have for centuries. Each group suffered from the same bombings, food/electric/fuel shortages and sniper shots as the others. The Serbs that surrounded Sarajevo for years and choked its lifelines while shooting at anything that moved below (whether on the street or in their homes) didn’t care if they shot an ethnic Serb, an ethnic Bosniak or an ethnic Croat. They simply wanted to use their brute force to force the capital to surrender - something it never did.

It is amazing to see how people of all ages, ethnicities, professions and social statues survived the constant danger over three years. Every family had their loved ones hurt and/or killed and every house was targeted with shrapnel or bombs. People tried to continue their pre-war lives as best as they could. The children continued to go to school (when it was safe and the threat of snipers or bombs didn’t force them into basements.) Men became soldiers by day and protected their families as best as they could at night. Women continued to wear make-up and dress-up whenever they went out (whether it was for firewood or food.) People told morbid jokes about their situation to ease the tension. One was “What is the difference between Sarajevo and Auschwitz?” -  “At least in Auschwitz they had gas.” That refers to the lack of utilities in Sarajevo as the power plants were held by the Serbs. People also got married and babies were born.

Of course there were hardships on everyone who went through the Siege. People were wounded or killed. The elderly and very young died before their time. People went crazy from the constant shelling and threat of the unknown. People buried themselves in basement shelters for safety – often living there for months and years on end, too afraid to go outside. Despite all that the people of Logavina Street and Sarajevo as a whole showed not only the Serb fighters, but the rest of the world, that they are a hardened group of civilians that would not allow the ethnic cleansings going on in the rest of Bosnia to stop them from raising their families in a multi-ethnic city.

The book does talk about the lack of support and aid from: the UN, the United States, the European Union and many other countries. It took years of innocent men, women and children to die (in concentration camps, mass graves, bombings and sniper attacks) for the world to do something and that is something the world has to live with. Officials and people always chant “Never Again” but in reality what they mean is they will allow the killings and rapes as long as they don’t spread outside the borders. My dad was a peacekeeper after the Dayton Accords ended the Yugoslav Wars. He was stationed in Croatia and Bosnia and showed me the pictures of the war damage - which does remind you of the images from World War 2.

I have never been to Sarajevo, but really want to go there one day. When I was vacationing in Dubrovnik, Croatia (which also suffered from a years-long siege by the Serbs) I made a day-trip to Montenegro –which was un-scarred from the Yugoslav Wars. I also made a day-trip to Mostar, Bosnia (which had some of the fiercest fighting of the Bosnian War with the frontline running right through the city.) The people we met there were very friendly and helpful. I didn’t know if they were Bosniak Muslims, Serbian Orthodox Christians or Croat Christians and I didn’t care. We received more help from strangers in that one city than I have on any of my other trips around the world. If the people of Mostar are like that I can imagine how the people of Sarajevo are along the same lines.

This book humanizes the victims of the Yugoslav Wars the way Anne Frank humanizes the 6 million + people killed during the Holocaust. People should read it to see that despite all the disgusting propaganda calling for the other ethnic groups’ destruction there were many people that refused to follow what they heard and continue to live side-by-side their friends and neighbors through the most difficult times anyone could ever find themselves in.