 DID YOU KNOW? |
 THE SARAJEVO TUNNEL |
That a town of more than hundreds of thousands inhabitants is able to survive 1.000 days of the total blockade has proved the courage Sarajevo and its inhabitants. With courage indeed, devotion and an exceptional ingenuity and along with great sacrifices Sarajevo has stayed a free town, and the ways of surviving, offering resistance and supplying the town will stay in the history. One of the biggest actions, which during the whole blockade of the town contributed to the fact that the inhabitants of Sarajevo survived and that the town could be supplied with the indispensable war material, was the "tunnel operation" that lasted till the very end of the blockade of Sarajevo.
In this very difficult situation and with the total blockade of the town it was highly necessary to bring electricity, fuel, and not to mention arms and munitions in the city. In December 1992, the BiH Army issued an order to build a tunnel under the airport runaway, with the view of connecting the besieged with the free territories. Along with the unfavorable weather conditions, the lack of tools and permanent shelling, the first excavations began on January 1993. The works were making progress very slowly and with frequent interruptions, so that from January 1993, they began with twenty-four-hour-work in three shifts. A big problem was the underground water that had to be most frequently thrown out manually. After several months of brutal struggle with the misfortunes that accompanied the construction in July 1993, two diggers, digging from the two opposite directions, offered a hand each other, the hand of hope, the hand of victory. A total of 2.800 m3 of ground was excavated, and 170 m3 of wood and 45 tons of iron building materials were built in. The tunnel was 800 meters long with the average height of 1.5 meter and average width of 1 meter. Because of the permanent shelling, the tunnel was installed with a pipeline that was used for the delivery of oil to the town, and then the mail-cables were also laid on, and thanks to donations from Germany electro-cables were placed down so that Sarajevo could have a minimum of electricity and telephone lines. During the blockade of a thousand of days, the tunnel was both the hope and salvation. Food, military material, fuel and medical material used to be delivered through it as well as the most severely wounded persons. The tunnel has become a symbol of resistance.
| NO MAN's LAND |
Danes Atonic, born in Zeneca in 1969 finished the civil engineering school and the music school. Graduated from the Academy of performing arts, dept. of intermedia directing, he is the director of the several times awarded film "No Man's Land", which won the Best Screenplay at Cannes, The Golden Globe and recently, an Oscar.
| The NOBEL PRIZE |
Ivo Andric was born on October 10, 1892 in Dolac, near Travnik. It was at that time the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He died on March 13, 1975, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
Ivo Andric was the Nobel Prize World Investment News Ltdr for Literature in 1961 with The Bridge Still Stands. His works have been translated and published in most of the languages.
| Vladimir Prelog was born in Sarajevo in 1906 and he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry on 1975. He moved from Sarajevo with his parents when he was eleven.
Sarajevo was the host of the 14th Winter Olympic Games
In 1984 Sarajevo became a synonym of overcoming barriers burdening the modern world. A city of friendship, a city of peace, and a city of many cultures and traditions, Sarajevo was the host of the 14th Winter Olympic Games. These games were one of many highlights in its history. Sarajevo is a city with a rich but tragic recent past and a challenging future. When the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina started in 1992. Sarajevo found itself at the epicentre of massive destructions.
A large part of what had been created in the previous decades was destroyed. Six years after the war much has been rebuilt. The ultimate symbol of BiH's vitality would be the Olympic Committee's decision to choose this city as the host for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. This would epitomize the reconstruction efforts and highlight the endurance of the human spirit. |
