Welcome to the THIRD Newsletter of The Community of Bosnia Foundation, formed to support a culturally pluralistic, multireligious Bosnia-Herzegovina and assist Bosnians in Tangible ways.
COMMUNITY OF BOSNIA FOUNDATION director Andras Riedlmayer presented his slide-lecture before Congress at a hearing of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe on April 4, 1995. For the full text of Riedlmayer's testimony and the pictures of the places and things mentioned in this report, please press the image below
COB director Andras Riedlmayer has worked to bring to the world's attention the systematic annihilation of culture that is a part of "ethnic cleansing." It was Riedlmayer's leadership in drafting full-page advertisements in the New York Times on this issue that first brought him to the attention of COB. Since then Riedlmayer has worked closely with us to develop a slide-show lecture which he has presented around the country. Last year, DUTV in Philadelphia agreed to produce this lecture professionally on videocassette. The video, Killing Memory: Bosnia's Cultural Heritage and Its Destruction,is a major contribution to the presentation of Bosnian history and culture, and to an understanding of the program known as "ethnic cleansing." We are now making the video available to scholars, libraries, and people worldwide.
On August 27, 1992, the Serb army commanded by
General
Ratko Mladic deliberately targeted the National Library in Sarajevo,
destroying
both the building (a superb example of Austrian neo-Moorish
architecture) and the priceless collection that included over 1.2
million volumes. COB director Andras Riedlmayer has been involved in
efforts to help restore the library, meeting with its director, and
working on ways to get books and materials in through the UN blockade
(the UN refuses to allow books into Sarajevo).
Riedlmayer believes the destruction of the
National Library may be the largest single book-burning episode in
human history. 
But it is only one part of a systematic program. On May 17, 1992,
General Mladic targeted the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo, the
largest collection of Islamic and Jewish manuscripts in S.E. Europe.
Over 5000 priceless manuscripts, in Slavonic, Serbo-Croatian, Hebrew,
Persian, Arabic, and Turkish went up in flames. Mladic's forces then
targeted for destruction the National Museum.
The Sarajevo Haggadah, a 13th-14th-century work brought to
Bosnia by Jewish refugees from Spain in the 15th century, was saved
in WWII by a Muslim curator who hid it from the Nazi officer who
demanded it be turned over. In 1992, it was saved again during the
shelling of the National Museum by an interreligious group of museum
workers, including a Muslim, a Serb, and a Croat. 
The Haggadah has survived three historic
"ethnic cleansings": the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492,
the Holocaust, and the "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia. The
Haggadah is a symbol of cultural resistance to "ethnic
cleansing." On Passover, 1995, it was ceremonially opened for the
third time in Sarajevo in a service conducted by the Jewish religious
leaders of Sarajevo and attended by the various members of the
Bosnian government (Muslim, Jewish, Serb, and Croat).
Destruction of culture is a central component of
"ethnic cleansing." The ultranationalist Serb forces of General
Mladic have shelled the major libraries, manuscript collections,
museums, and other cultural institutions in Sarajevo, Mostar, and
other besieged cities. The Croat defense force (HVO) has shelled
cultural institutions in Mostar, Maglaj, and other cities under
siege. 
Behind Serb and HVO lines, the destruction is even more systematic.
HVO forces expelled Serbs and Muslims, and dynamited the
centuries-old mosques in Stolac and Pocitelj, two of the more ancient
and beautiful towns in Herzegovina. 
Serb
nationalist forces have annihilated the traces of non-Serb culture
throughout the 70% of Bosnia they occupy. Most Catholic churches and
all mosques (over 600) have been dynamited or vandalized, including
masterworks of South Slavic culture such as the 16th-century
Ferhadija Mosque in Banja Luka and the 16th-century "Colored Mosque"
in Foca. Graveyards, birth-records, work-records, and other traces of
the people "cleansed" have been destroyed.
After all the mosques in the formerly Muslim-majority city of Zvornik were systematically destroyed, the warlord Branko Grujic declared: "There never were any mosques in Zvornik." Then, after all the non-Serb population of Zvornik had been killed or expelled, Grujic commissioned a new Orthodox church to celebrate the 100%-Serb Zvornik.
The video Killing
Memory: Bosnia's Cultural Heritage and Its
Destruction works on several levels.
It is a lucid introduction to the history and culture of
Bosnia-Herzegovina; an indictment of the cultural eradication carried
out by nationalist militias; and an act of resistance to the attempt
to "kill memory" by destroying evidence of the past. For information
on obtaining a copy of "Killing Memory," see the last page of this
Newsletter
In August of 1992, Aida Buturovic, a PhD candidate at the
University of Sarajevo and a librarian at the National Library,
volunteered to save manuscripts from the library as General Ratko
Mladic's Serb army shelled it for three days. Aida did not make it
home. The Community of Bosnia dedicates its activities to Aida
Buturovic.
COB has cooperated in securing several new scholarships including those to Haverford College (2 scholarships), St. Joseph's University, The University of Oregon, The University of Pennsylvania, The Philadelphia College of Pharmacology, Friends Central High School near Philadelphia and Germantown Friends High School in Philadelphia. When added to the scholarships we helped obtain last year, the monetary worth of the scholarships approaches two million dollars. But the worth of the scholarships goes far beyond monetary measures. A scholarship breaks the isolation of victims of ethnic cleansing, reconnects them to the world community, helps prepare a new generation of future leaders for Bosnia, and thwarts the design of "ethnic cleansers" to destroy survivors' futures by destroying records of their past.
When I ask Bosnian refugees what is the most important contribution we can make, they reply: education for someone in their family. Securing a scholarship demands extensive work: we alert those at the institution involved (president, provost, dean, financial aid director, admissions director) to the situation of Bosnian students (their teachers may have been killed, their transcripts destroyed, etc.). We translate dossiers and work to fill in gaps from destruction of records and deaths of recommenders. We also spend time and care in the very intricate task of securing student-visas, a task made difficult by U.S. visa law when it comes to displaced persons.
Ruth Gruber's book Haven describes the arrival in New York of 1000 refugees from Nazi persecution. The contributions they went on to make to humanity are beyond any statistical probability; they had been given a new opportunity and did not waste a particle of it. Our Bosnian students show the same commitment. We hope you will read the descriptions below for what they show about the kind of students we support, and the personal light they shed on the Bosnian tragedy.
Below is an update on some of the scholarships that The Community of Bosnia has helped obtain. All scholarships are for four years. We have had to urge colleges and universities to be flexible with demands for standardized test scores and spiffy dossiers; students in situations of genocide and "ethnic cleansing" do not have opportunities to prepare for and to take standardized tests! We have encountered some skepticism and inflexibility. Those institutions which were willing to be understanding of the Bosnians' situation have been rewarded. The students have received consistently positive valuations and high grades. Their contributions to their local collegiate communities cannot be quantified.
DZEVAD S: to Swarthmore College. After a full year of work by Dzevad, Bonnie and Nancy Hall, COB, and supporters at Swarthmore, Dzevad is preparing to enter Swarthmore in the fall of 1995. Dzevad is from the Northeast Bosnian city of Bijeljina which was taken over at the beginning of the Bosnian genocide by the paramilitary forces of Arkan (Zeljko Raznjatovic). In the fall of 1994, Dzevad's relatives were victims of "ethnic cleansing." COB will be working with Dzevad and the International Red Cross to see if they have survived and if so, what we can do to support them. Steve Sowards at Swarthmore's McCabe Library has been a particularly strong supporter of COB's activities in the area.
AIDA P: to Bryn Mawr College. Aida's town of Stolac was attacked first by the Serb army, then by the Croat nationalist militia (HVO). Her family was saved when a Croat neighbor courageously shielded them in his home. Aida has finished her first year at Bryn Mawr and has become a cherished member of the Bryn Mawr-Haverford Community. Her brother and father, who were held in HVO concentration camps are now free. Aida's mother is living in Croatia as a refugee. Gunther Meier and David Pincus, a member of COB's advisory board, have helped sponsor Aida.
IRVANA K: to Villanova University. Irvana is from Prijedor. Her father was last seen being taken away to Omarska death camp. Irvana has a full-tuition scholarship to Villanova, with the understanding that The Community of Bosnia will raise all living expenses. Irvana is living at the home of Haverford College Professor Sid Waldman and his wife, Kay Reed, on the Haverford campus, and commuting down the road to Villanova. The Community of Bosnia has set up an Irvana Kapetanovic Educational Fund which is supported by Haverford and Villanova students, faculty, staff, and the local community.
ALMA H: to Duke University. Alma is from Visoko. Alma has excelled at Duke in her first semester and has become an important contributor to awareness of the Bosnian situation through her frequent talks and public appearances. Her scholarship was secured with the cooperation of Professors Claudia Koonz and Miriam Cooke, and graduate student Seemi Bushra Ghazi.
SULJO L: to West Chester University. Suljo is from Petrovac, near Bihac, one of the UN-declared "safe havens" which is being shelled by Bosnian Serb nationalist artillery and which has been cut off from UN relief supplies. It took COB and the FOR/Jerrahi program four tries, but we kept at it and managed to get Suljo a student-visa. Professor Lawrence Davidson of West Chester University helped obtain the scholarship and set up a support group for Suljo.
ISMIR T: to Goldey Beacom College. Ismir is from Banja Luka, the site of some of the most brutal "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia for the past three years. Ismir has experience in computers and as an English translator and interpreter for ZENA BIH (Association of Women from Bosnia-Herzegovina), and attended the Human Rights World Conference in Vienna in 1993. He is a straight 'A' student now and involved in the Delaware Coalition for Bosnia, a group of concerned people in the Wilmington area who are helping support Ismir's education.
ANESA and LEJLA H from Sarajevo are attending nearby Rosemont College. Tuition scholarships for Anesa and Lejla were obtained through the efforts of Brother Marko Orsolic of Sarajevo and Professor Paul Mojzes of Rosemont College. COB will be helping Anesa and Lejla start a newsletter for Bosnian students in the U.S. Another student from Sarajevo, Sejla H, is attending Cabrini College.
TAHIJA V: to The University of Pennsylvania. Tahija received a scholarship at Penn in cooperation with FOR, and through the efforts of Jonathan Segal, Eric Meyers, and The University of Pennsylvania Coalition for Peace in Bosnia. While waiting in Zagreb for a student-visa, Tahija experienced the shelling of the city, even as her mother was wounded in a recent attack on civilians in Sarajevo.
VANJA F: to Haverford College. Vanja is now a refugee in California living with his father, Mirza Filipovic. Vanja has received a scholarship to Haverford. He is now working with COB to help translate the memoirs of a Bosnian concentration camp survivor. Mirza had edited books and Bosnian art and architecture while in Sarajevo. He will be working with COB to make Bosnian artistic and cultural heritage more widely accessible in the U.S.
KSENIJA T: to Haverford College. Ksenija came to the U.S. with her mother at the beginning of the siege of Sarajevo. She was an honors commencement speaker at her high school graduation. Her father was wounded in 1992 and spent three years in Sarajevo before joining his family in the U.S.
AMRA T: to Saint Joseph's University. Amra is from Banja Luka. She has attempted to attend college three times only to be thwarted by the "ethnic cleansing" of the universities she was attending. She was referred to COB by refugee workers Amy Weisman (Bryn Mawr '94) and Elissa Helms who worked with her in Croatia. Through the efforts of Scott and Linda Myers and COB, she has received a full scholarship to St. Joseph's University.
AZRA AND AMINA K: to Germantown Friends and Friends Central High Schools. Azra and Amina are twins from Tuzla . Through the efforts of COB members Deborah Osborne Daily and Helene Pollock, Germantown Friends and Friends Central are offering scholarships to these remarkable young women. As they were leaving for Zagreb to apply for their student-visas, the Serb army shelled a student gathering-place in Tuzla, killing 71 children and wounding more than 150. Fortunately Amina and Azra were not harmed. As I write this note, they are on their way to Philadelphia.
MIDHAT D: to Lane Community College and The University of Oregon. Midhat, from Gracanica, was an architecture student at the University of Sarajevo. He has worked with Norwegian humanitarian organizations in Bosnia and Croatia, and will be studying architecture and industrial design. COB cooperated with FOR, Faris Cassell and others in supporting the scholarship.
IRIS K: to Brown University. Iris spent two years in New York completing high school after escaping from her besieged city of Prijedor. She recently completed a showing of contemporary dress designs based on traditional Bosnian patterns. Her scholarship was supported by Professor Susan Slyomovics and Brown University students.
ALMA H: to The Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. Alma, of Sarajevo, spent time in exile in Britain before coming to the the U.S. Amra is an excellent student of science and math, as well as a skilled musician. COB cooperated with Professors Paul Mojzes and Jim Johnson in supporting Alma's scholarship application.
Vedran Smailovic is the only surviving member of his Sarajevo String Quartet. As a protest against the war on culture, Smailovic has suited up and given solo concerts in the burned-out shell of the National Library, and in center city streets during shellings. COB members Dana Garber and Siobhan Brackon were instrumental in arranging a major event in New York City to commemorate the 1000th day of siege in Sarajevo. They brought Smailovic in from London and helped arranged concerts for him at St. John the Divine and the Statue of Liberty. The concerts generated world-wide publicity and helped bring together the New York City Bosnian and Bosnian-support community.
Haverford's Curt Cacioppo and Geoffrey Michaels have performed a series of three Beethoven for Bosnia Concerts: The Complete Sonatas for Violin and Piano. These concerts have raised almost $4,000 for our Bosnian Student Fund. In his "liner-notes" Geoffrey Michaels speaks of the Spring Sonata, performed on Feb. 19, 1995, at Haverford and remarks on the anomaly that although it is called the "Spring" Sonata, Sonata No. 5 in F Major, Op. 24 actually contains some very somber moments. As I listened to this spellbinding performance, I was overwhelmed at the ability of great art to reach into the tragic and, without trivializing it or explaining it away, to somehow integrate it into our lives, feelings, and thoughts. And as Cacioppo and Michaels played the 2nd movement of Beethoven's Sonata no. 7 in C Minor, Op. 30, No. 2, I heard a sound that comes as close as any to being adequate as an elegy to the Bosnian people¹s loss over the past three years.
Haverford Choir Director Marian Dolan is also helping remember Bosnians through music. She organized a chorale at First Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr for the evening of April 2, 1995, which included music for global, national, city, community, family, and individual peace.
The last concert of Beethoven for Bosnia was held on May 7, 1995. After the final performance by Maestros Cacciopo and Michaels, The Community of Bosnia held a reception for local Bosnians and their supporters.
COB Director Amila Buturovic, of Sarajevo, spent the spring semester of 1994 as a visiting instructor in Haverford College's Department of Religion. She is now Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at York University in Canada. Amila has given four lectures this year: "Incarcerated Souls: Nationalist Quest and the Anguish of Salvation in Bosnian Islam," "The Ethnos of Bosnian Islam," "Bosnian Love-Lyric," and "Bogomils in the Poetry of Mak Dizdar."
Buturovic's essay "Incarcerated Souls" offers a reading of Bosnian author Mesa Selimovic's work Dervish and Death (Dervis i smrt) as an exploration of the dilemmas of Bosnian Muslim identity. It is forthcoming in the journal Edebiyat. Her essay on "The Ethnos of Bosnian Islam" offers a lucid historical analysis of the vulnerability of Bosnian Muslim political identity within the context of resurgent Croatian and Serbian nationalisms. The essay appears in the August 1995 issue of Cultural Survival dedicated to Eastern Europe. Also forthcoming in Edebiyat is Buturovic's translation of the Bosnian writer Camil Sijaric's short story "Neither a Church nor a Mosque."
Foca (pronounced Fó-cha, accent on first syllable) was located on the Drina river to the east of its more famous sister-city, Visegrad. Foca was known in pre-Ottoman times as a trading center on the route between Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and Constantinople. The Ottomans adorned it with magnificent mosques and public monuments. Foca's Colored Mosque (Aladza dzamija), built in 1551, was one of the masterworks of European architecture. In 1992 militias from Serbia and Montenegro "cleansed" Foca of all its Muslim inhabitants, set up rape-camps and killing-centers, and dynamited, systematically, all traces of Bosnian Muslim culture. They then renamed the city, "purified" of dissident Serbs and all non-Serb inhabitants, "Srbinje."
The Community of Bosnia has adopted Foca as its sister-community. Over the past two years we have gathered thousands of pages of scholarly material on Foca, including writings, etchings, and photographs.
Professor Lucius Outlaw is helping us plan the recording of information on Foca survivors and casualties, suspects in the war-crimes at Foca, and listings of monuments. We are in contact with the organization documenting war-crimes material for the UN War Crimes Commission. We are working to further contacts with and among the Focaci to prepare film and book presentations on the heritage of Foca and its people. This spring, Haverford College students Asim Rehman, Nehad Chowdury, and David Canes passed out ribbons and the names of Foca victims of "ethnic cleansing."
A 41-year-old Bosnian Muslim woman witnessed the execution of a Serbian civilian by Serbian soldiers in Sarajevo. At about 7 am on May 9 or 10, military units wearing the insignias of Serbian Chetniks and the Yugoslav army entered the area (near Sarajevo airport) and ordered all its residents out of the cellars in which they had taken refuge. Once outside, Serbs were told to stand in one place and Muslims in another. One Serb, a 50-year-old man known as "Ljubo," refused to be separated from his Muslim neighbors, with whom he apparently had lived peacefully for many years. His refusal to be separated from his neighbors enraged the Serbian soldiers. They dragged him to the ground, and five or six beat him until he was dead (4th U.S. State Dept. Report on War-Crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina submitted to the UN War Crimes Tribunal). Generic Blame and Moral Equalizing.
The War-Crimes Testimony and Human Rights Reports show that, while atrocities have been committed by all sides and while civilians on all sides have suffered (as in most wars), the "ethnic cleansing" atrocities have been carried out primarily by regular and irregular militias loyal to the Serb governments. There has been a tendency to identify these radical Serb nationalist forces as "the Serbs," neglecting the fact that the first people selected for killing are frequently Serbs who refuse to collaborate in killing non-Serb neighbors.
Those Serbs who oppose "ethnic cleansing" have been ignored by Western diplomats who lavish attention on Radovan Karadzic, the president of the self-declared "Serb Republic" headquartered in the stronghold of Pale, not far from Sarajevo. The generic use of terms like "the Serbs" to refer to followers of the Pale regime reinforces the position of the Pale extremists who declare that any Serb who resists "ethnic cleansing" is not a "true Serb."
There are two common ways of misrepresenting the Bosnian conflict. The first is the demonization of all Serbs for the actions of the Serb governments in Pale and Belgrade, particularly by attributing the Pale-based atrocities to "the Serbs." The second is a moral equalizing ("blame on all sides") language that ultimately blames the victims and ignores the fact that the Pale government (backed by Belgrade) has committed the overwhelming majority of "ethnic cleansing" atrocities.
Unspeakability and Turning Away:
The testimony cited above goes on to depict the fate of the Muslims taken away after "Ljubo" was killed, including the gang-rape, torture, and murder of a young girl in front of her father. The War Crimes Testimony and Human Rights Reports demonstrate that such acts are part of a concerted program to annihilate the morale, culture, and lives of non-Serb inhabitants of Bosnia and of Serbs who do not support the ideology of ethnic purification.
Such acts are unspeakable. They cannot even be named without obscenity. One reason they are allowed to occur is the natural human reaction to turn away from such obscenity; yet the only authentic response is to confront it.
The reports of the UN War Crimes Commission and Tribunal show that the Pale regime has engaged in "genocide," systematic destruction of a people "because of ethnic, religious, or racial identity." The genocide has occurred in front of NATO, the largest military alliance in history, even though all NATO nations are signatories to the 1948 Geneva Convention that solemnly binds signatories not only to prevent genocide, but to punish it. Throughout the 70% of Bosnia controlled by Pale, dissident Serbs and non-Serbs have been killed or expelled, and the few that remain are--even as this article is being written--being taken away to a fate that will likely resemble the unspeakable fate of the others that fills the war crimes testimonies.
We continue to demand our leaders confront this reality and we continue our own acts of solidarity with the peoples victimized by "ethnic cleansing." The adjacent box lists ways of acting effectively to support Bosnians.
Definition Who is a Bosnian? A Bosnian is any resident of Bosnia--Muslim, Serb, Croat, Jewish, Gypsy, or other--who desires to live in a nation where people of different cultural and religious identities live together in peace.
Walter J. Lee has joined The Community of Bosnia Foundation as our coordinator. He will be working primarily in Michael Sells' office (Gest 201, 610/896-1027, tel.: 215/545-5149 (H)) in organizing support for Bosnian students and developing the foundation. Walter comes to us from the Children of the World Organization, where he worked in support of Romanian Orphans, and from The University of Pennsylvania's Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, where he worked in grant-writing and other areas to develop the East Asian Studies program. The foundation received a grant from the Threshold Foundation to enable it to find Walter.
Carin M. Companick joins The Community of Bosnia Foundation this summer as assistant coordinator. Carin will assist in developing the foundation as well as serving as student liaison to the Haverford Student Community.
The COB Newsletter is written by Michael Sells and designed by Walter Lee and Michael Sells. Special thanks to Carin Companick and Dan Gillis for their editorial help.
The Community of Bosnia, a public, non-profit foundation
incorporated in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, federal tax-exempt
and tax-deductible status granted 3/15/94. Directors (unpaid): Amila
Buturovic, York University, Ontario; Laurie Hart, Haverford College;
Janet Marcus, PhD. Haverford, PA; Andras Riedlmayer, Fine Arts
Library, Harvard University; Michael Sells, Haverford College. Board
of Advisors (unpaid) Mark Auslander, Haverford, PA; Roy Gutman, New
York Newsday (Winner of 1993 Pulitzer Prize), David Pincus, Board of
Overseers, CARE; Irvin Schick, MIT; Ann Lesch, Villanova University;
Lucius Outlaw, Haverford College; Barbara Wall, Director, Center for
Peace and Social Justice, Villanova University; John Whitehead,
Chairman, International Rescue Committee (IRC), former Undersecretary
of State.
Activities: *Support for Multicultural, Multireligious, and Democratic Bosnia-Herzegovina, *Support for Bosnian Students and Scholars, *Preservation of Bosnia's Endangered Cultural Heritage, *War-Crimes Testimonies and Documentation, *Education (Films, Books, Bibliographies, Speaking Engagements) on Bosnia, Its Heritage, and the Attack against It; *Support for Bosnian Refugees, *Opposition to Ethnonationalist and Religious Extremism.
I wish to join or renew my membership in The Community of
Bosnia Foundation with a 1995 contribution of:
$10 (student) ______ $25______ $35______ $50______ $100______ $1000______ Other_____
Name________________________________
Address_________________________________________
Contributions can be made payable to the Community of Bosnia
Foundation. All contributions are tax-deductible to the extent
allowed by law. Miling address: The Community of Bosnia, c/o
Michael Sells, Department of Religion, Haverford College, Haverford,
PA 19041-1392. Phone: 610-896-1027. Email: msells@haverford.edu
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