The thousands of pairs of shoes that will be placed along the streets of Sarajevo on April 5th will symbolize the footsteps of the Sarajevo citizens killed during the siege and will be of great importance for the families of those killed and the culture of memory.
The Sarajevo Memorial Center, in cooperation with the City of Sarajevo, has started implementing the “Memory Trail” project with the aim of honoring all citizens who were killed during the siege.
From this center, they set up shoes in Ferhadija Street and invited the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), as well as the diaspora, to donate shoes for the exhibition that will be displayed on the streets from the Square of Children of Sarajevo to Bascarsija on April 5th. Each pair of shoes will symbolize the steps of the murdered Sarajevo citizens, who will be honored in this way.
Ahmed Kulanic, the director of the Sarajevo Memorial Center, states the importance of this project for all citizens of Sarajevo, but also for the whole of BiH.
“In addition to paying tribute to those killed, with the ‘MemoryTrail‘ project we want to point out the importance of the heroic fight in the defense of the capital, the miracle of the Bosnian resistance and the anti-fascist idea and heritage of this city and country. Our goal is to bring back the memory of the complete history that the capital lived through during the siege that lasted 1425 days, through the memory of those killed,” he says.
Kulanic states that the idea was to set up a unique memorial on the Day of the Siege of Sarajevo to remember all the victims and honor them.
“We are satisfied with the response of the citizens so far, but on this occasion we invite them to get even more involved in the project – show solidarity and contribute by donating shoes, so that together on April 5th, we could honor all those killed during the siege of Sarajevo with dignity,” he urged.
Citizens can donate shoes at 11 locations in the territory of all municipalities in Canton Sarajevo (CS), and all information about the locations and the project can be found on the official website and social networks of the Sarajevo Memorial Center.
The contribution will be made, as he himself says, by the president of the Association of Parents of Murdered Children of the Siege of Sarajevo in 1992-1995, Fikret Grabovica, who pointed out that this project is significant because of all the citizens who survived the hell in Sarajevo during the 1425 days of the siege.
“It will be especially significant for those who lost their loved ones, whose closest family members were killed. To us parents who have lost our youngest. Because of the children who were brutally killed,” he says.
As announced by the Memorial Center, after the completion of the project, the shoes will be preserved permanently as part of the “Memory Trail” in the Memorial Forest, which will be built in the coming period at the Hrasnicki Stan location on Mount Igman.
Sarajevo civilians, as determined by the verdicts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), were attacked by sniper and artillery missiles while they were cultivating their gardens, shopping at the market or cleaning the city streets. They were shot at while attending funerals, in ambulances, trams, buses or on bicycles.
According to the verdicts in The Hague, the former political and military leaders of Republika Srpska (RS) – Radovan Karadzicand Ratko Mladic, and the former commander of the Sarajevo-Romanian Corps of the Army of RS Stanislav Galic – were sentenced to life sentences for the campaign of terror against civilians – sniper and artillery attacks. The former commander of the Sarajevo-Romania Corps, Dragomir Milosevic, was sentenced to 29 years in prison for terrorizing civilians in Sarajevo.
During the 44-month siege of the capital of BiH, according to the association’s data, more than 11,000 inhabitants were killed, of which around 1,600 were children, Detektor writes.
E.Dz.
