"All over the city sheets of burned paper, fragile pages of gray ashes, 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 gray negative, until, as the heat dissipated, the page melted to dust in your hand." (Dr. Kemal Bakarsic, librarian of Bosnia's National Museum, describing the burning of the National and University Library, 25-27 August 1992).Beginning in April 1992, Serbian nationalist attacks on Bosnian cities and towns deliberately and successfully targeted national libraries, museums and archives, in the process wiping out nearly the entire written record of Bosnia's history.
Among the losses is Bosnia's National Library in Sarajevo, which also contained the university's holdings and the country's national archive of newspapers and periodicals. Prior to its destruction, the National Library held over 1.5 million volumes, including 155,000 manuscripts and rare books. It was bombarded for three days with incendiary grenades on August 25-27, 1992, and was reduced to ashes.
The National Library was housed in the old town hall known as Vijecnica, a graceful Moorish revival building constructed in the heart of the city during the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and inaugurated in 1896. In a Reuter report dated August 26, 1992, at the time the building was burning, Kurt Schork wrote: ``Its mix of imposing masonry and architectural frivolity captured the city's pre-war personality.''
Below are several links to photographs of the Vijecnica taken in May 1994---two years after its firebombing---by Dubravko Kakarigi. The accuracy of the Serb forces' artillery leaves no doubt that the destruction of the National Library was deliberate. Anyone wishing to see the evil of nationalism made flesh need look no further.
© Dubravko Kakarigi, 1994
