The siege of Sarajevo lasted 1,425 days. "Being under siege" meant accepting the fact that the former way of living has disappeared and that the abnormal is becoming normal. Over time, the citizens of Sarajevo discovered methods of survival through innovations and creations, repurposing objects that were available to them, surviving despite permanent terror and destruction. Continuing a normal life, creating even in limited circumstances, for all citizens of Sarajevo under siege was as important as water, bread or medicine.

“It meant getting up morning, evening and afternoon, I trained 25 to 30 km daily. I thought it was probably safer in the streets of Sarajevo, in the Old Town. I measured a length of 25 to 30 km daily. I knew we were in survival conditions, struggling for our lives, and there was a lack of food and my kilometres needed special food. I simply didn’t think about all that. I just tried my best to stay alive like everyone else and to be able to go on with sport.” - Islam Đugum, Marathon runner

Destruction

Sarajevo under siege defends itself with culture and thus survives. Groups and individuals created and worked in impossible conditions, without electricity, without water, with limited movement. In life-threatening circumstances, the citizens of Sarajevo showed a desire for cultural events. Already at the very beginning of the siege, the destruction of the city's rich sports infrastructure began. Sarajevo, as a sports city and the host city of the 14th Winter Olympic Games, remains without its sports fields and halls.

Samaranch in Sarajevo

“I had the honor personally to take Mr Samaranch to the balcony from which in 1984, from where 10 years earlier he had closed the Olympic Games in Sarajevo with the well-known words ‘Goodbye, dear Sarajevo’. This time I got the impression that he was unable to say a single word, they stuck in his throat when he saw the ruin and destruction of Sarajevo. Zetra where the UNPROFOR troops had been was wrecked, water, snow, rain.” - Izudin Filipović, Director of the BH Olympic Committee

Mapping of the Siege of Sarajevo

The Zetra sports hall was a place where the Winter Olympic Games were closed. Before the siege it was the venue for hockey games, skating championships and concerts. Although it had not been built of flammable material after innumerable hits from the surrounding hills it became engulfed in flames which melted its copper roof. The photo of Zetra in flames greatly saddened the President of the Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch, who had closed the Winter Olympic Games by saying: „GOODBYE, DEAR SARAJEVO“. The Zetra basement was used as a shelter and as a storage space of many humaniterian organizations.

Adaptation

Survival becomes the basic need of every individual during the siege of the city. The citizens of Sarajevo are learning new skills and acquiring new knowledge, but at the same time they want to remember their old hobbies. In order to preserve their mental health in such abnormal circumstances, the citizens of Sarajevo find activities that occupy them. Sports and recreation become ways of survival in everyday life - indoors and outdoors.

Decathlon

“The children went down in the canal that was around the stadium. They warmed up in that canal and on the north side, which was safe from possible gunshots. When they were warmed up, we gathered them on the starting line. Once again, it was in an unusual place, not the starting line for a normal 800-meter race, but on the opposite side, because it was much safer there. We waited for that moment when it was not clear whether it is day or a night. When there was only just enough light for the athletes to be able to see the track, and on the other hand, when it was dark enough so that they could not be spotted on the track. We asked the contestants to dress in burgundy outfits, which matched the colour of the track. They did as we asked them, because they knew that this could save their lives. Just when the race was supposed to start, two shells exploded near the stadium. The first shell hit the athletic track and the second one landed near maternity hospital. One of our soldiers ran out and asked his superior whether they should return fire. I ran up to them and said: doesn’t do it now. Just let us start the race; it will be over in two minutes. The officer looked at me in surprise and laughed, but he let the race be held. We started the race and in two minutes and fifteen seconds everyone finished the race. Of course, as soon as they finished the race they ran from the track into the stadium building, where another surprise was waiting for them. Using some old stove, our soldiers made some tea and with pâté from UNPROFOR and some old re-warmed bread they rewarded those hungry children. That was their diploma; they were as proud as if they were Olympic champions.” - Nusret Smajlović, Coach of the BH Athletic Association

Tennis

I used to go to tennis training every day, knowingly taking risks. There were snipers, grenades... shelling every day, but I think that was what forced me to go to training every day, to drain my excess energy, so it wouldn’t turn against me.

Everything that I experienced in the former Yugoslavia, everything that happened in Bosnia and elsewhere, meant the end of my life for me. I couldn't be happy. I can say that the league titles were nice for the players or something. But I can't be happy. I'm not dead, I can take a walk, but at the end of the day I'm someone who never believed that something like this could happen in my country.

- Ivica Osim

Sarajevo beats UNPROFOR team 12:3 (October 1992)

“We organized a football match against the French battalion in the UNPROFOR. As I had played professionally in France I expressed the wish to play them. To draw them out because they had been reserved towards us. The match was organized at Skenderija. Our players were definitely much better, because they were better at soccer. So we achieved a great score.” - Vahidin Musemić, Football team Sarajevo

Sarajevo-UNPROFOR 4:0 (March 1994)

“The Koševo Stadium was about 200 meters as the crow flies from enemy lines. They were watching us, and they could have caused unwanted consequences at any moment. But that match was extremely well organized. And I can tell you that a large number of spectators about 25 thousand spectators came to watch the game, and they were, how should I put it, surprised that they were able to go to that playing field. They were surprised, but it was really well organized. There was a lot of cheering and a generally good feeling among the spectators because the match was being held. In the game itself we dominated, although our team was young, because at that time the Sarajevo team was at a tournament. The boys who played that day had spent the entire two years up until then working and training under infantry fire.” - Sead Jasenković, Football player

A bobsled on fire

“One of our bobsleds, the one that we brought back from France from the Olympic Games at Alberville, burned up in the stadium at Grbavica. Those seven old bobsleds that were on Trebević were also destroyed. So the situation was that we had a team, but we didn't have the proper conditions for training here in Sarajevo. And we had no guarantee that we would be able to get out. We had no bobsled, and so on. So at that point it seemed incomprehensible that we wanted to go and compete in the Olympic Games. But, I think that it was because of our, I'd call it our competitive spirit, our human quality, that we were able to prepare here in Sarajevo, and that we succeeded in going to the Olympic Games. And what is more important, I think, is that we were able to keep this team together, in which there are members of all three ethnic groups. This probably seems unimportant to other people, just as it wasn't really important to me until the beginning of the war, but after that. In general, I made a point of keeping the team together, like on the platform of the Presidency in June of '92. And in the end we managed to get out. True, we left one by one, two by two, and so on. Of our ten participants in the Olympic Games in Norway there were five bobsleds, because we qualified both in the two-man and the four-man events.” - Zdravko Stojnić, Athlete

Recycling

The citizens of Sarajevo realized that they had to create an alternative way of life in order to survive. One of the important aspects of this new way of life was the repurposing of objects in order to replace everything that was not available during the siege. Inventions and recycled objects became survival tools. Sports and recreational activities were held in basements, apartments, in devastated sports halls, on the streets. The bicycle becomes a means of transporting goods, but also of producing electricity using a dynamo.

Ping-Pong

We improvised and made a ping pong table in the basement. There was a light bulb connected to an accumulator. We played for hours.

Amina produces electricity

We constructed a bike-powered electricity generator: you push the pedals and a lamp lights up. We’re producing electricity and it’s a great work-out as well.

The new normal

The siege of Sarajevo showed that a person can survive a disaster and remain a human being. Sarajevo chose culture as its weapon of defence against terror. Citizens walked the streets under the impact of grenades and snipers to perform their daily tasks of survival, play sports, go to concerts, theatre plays and exhibitions as a way of personal resistance and defence of human civilization. A new normal has set in. One civilization disappeared, and a completely new one was simultaneously established in its wake.

What did you do in your free time?

Played chess with a neighbour...

year of birth: 1944
profession: Geodetic Engineer
gender: Male
city district: Alipašino Polje

Aerobics

A PTSD Counseling Centre was opened in Sarajevo. There was a computer science course, English language course, sewing and cosmetic courses, but I picked aerobics. I could go there to have coffee, to talk to people, and when there was electricity and we could even watch TV. We needed to jump, to socialize, to exchange recipes, to energize ourselves with aerobic exercise.

Perception

The need to establish some kind of balance in the midst of chaos arose spontaneously. In order to maintain mental health, every citizen of the besieged Sarajevo tried to keep himself in balance by bringing his old way of life to the now changed conditions.

Then...

The best athletes of ’92

“We got there, and our first disappointment was that they didn't have our flag. They didn't have ours, but they had the flags of the one hundred and some odd other countries - only the BH flag was missing. The people said that they didn't even know what it looked like, so then they took our passports, made a sketch of the flag. Then we were taken to the tailor's and we had to sew it together with those Filipino women. And so the official opening in June of 1992, was the first time in history that the flag of BH was blowing in the wind at a sports competition. And in November of 1992 we participated in the European championship in Debrecen. For a long time the three of us were trying to decide whether to even go or not. How to finance our trip. You can't ask anyone for money when people there don't have enough to eat, and still you're asking to go play in some competition. We decided that since the organizers were paying for the hotel rooms, that we just travel there at our own expense. Well, things started off on a pretty bad foot because the radiator in our room exploded, destroying everything that we were able to take out of the city. But it ended up magnificently - I won the silver medal on the first board at the European Championship. And based on that performance I was chosen as the best in women’s sports. Later it continued to be extremely difficult to get out of Sarajevo in order to go to tournaments, through the tunnel, over Igman. I remember, for example, the Chess Olympics in Moscow, when our men’s team took the silver medal. Just the trip out of Sarajevo was both wonderful and terrifying, because I started at midnight, through the tunnel. I had no idea where I was supposed to go. Not even through the trenches. I was lucky, though, because a young man, a soldier helped me. He pushed me through on one of those carts. You know, like a real queen, and not just a chess queen. Then over Igman at 20 degrees below zero, one part you have to go by foot, and then later on hitchhike. Later I tried to explain to reporters, foreign reporters of course, how that whole journey out of Sarajevo actually looked. I don’t think they were ever able to comprehend it. I repeated that story many times. I tried to re-create the atmosphere in the tunnel, with the tracks and those little cars that ran on them, and then those journalists would say, ‘You left Sarajevo by metro.’ And that’s the way it was during the war. We had to prepare ourselves under tough conditions, without electricity, but at the same time, I found my salvation in those chess pieces.” - Vesna Mišanović, Chess Player

Now...

Lost hope?

“First, thank you very much for this conversation and for this question. So, what has changed from that long ago in 1992 to today, what has remained the same? I think it remains the same that we have wonderful athletes, we have young people who are incredible, who invest so much in themselves, to achieve top results, to represent this country in the best light. I will only mention a few and I apologize in advance if I forget someone. I will, of course, mention Lana Pudar, I will mention Lejla Njemčević, I will mention Alen Ramić, Amel Tuka or recently Ismail Barlov who really delighted the whole of Paris and all of us who watched it. So, we still have a generation of phenomenal athletes, we still have a generation of phenomenal coaches who are able to support these children. Unfortunately, we still have the same situation as then, that in principle the biggest part of what happens is individual support, parents who stand behind their children, who want these children to succeed, coaches who give their time and energy to that sport and very few individuals who really love the sport as it is.
What we had then, we believed then that, when the madness of 1992, 1993, 1994, and partly in 1995 is over, that we would have a country that would support sports much more, that would support young people much more so they can show what they are capable of. And I think, at least among us, the older ones, and I believe also among these children, that this hope is no longer there. And it is a great pity that there are still some people in sports who are not ready for the same sacrifice and hard work as some athletes.
Of course, what has also changed is ourselves, not only that some years are behind us, but what I see is that we have become different personalities through all that we have been through. I hope that, at least as far as I'm concerned, there have been a lot of positive changes in terms of empathy towards other people, in terms of a great desire to help those people who are currently in a difficult position, regardless of which part of the world they come from. And that is perhaps one positive experience that came out of many negative experiences during the war, that we became, in a way, better personalities. Thank you very much for this conversation." - Vesna Caselotti, Chess Player, Global Head of Corporate Software (automotive industry), author of children's books