Hajrudin Alispahić

SAVING THE HAGGADAH

We tried to open it, but we weren't able to. For this reason we had to break into it, but breaking into it meant going at it with picks and crowbars. And in all that banging, as we were close to the lines, most likely the people on both sides heard the noise, and so there was some gun firing, but not so much that it was really dangerous. At any rate, after five hours, almost, of working on that strong box, we finally opened it up. They took out the Haggadah along with some other highly valuable items that professor Imamovic chose, put them in a large trunk and drove them by car to the Office of the Security Service. Since it was already late, somewhere around 6 in the evening, and the city was under mortar fire. That night we didn't know what to do with all those valuable museum pieces because most of the shelling was directed at the Office of the Security Service in the former August Cesarec Street, and we finally found a place to hide them. They put the chest in our safe, and the next day, we took all of the pieces to a certain place, actually I can say it now because everyone already knows: to the treasury of the National Bank.