“European Club”

In 1994, the “European Club” was established in the city centre of besieged Sarajevo. It was a space for students to meet and hang out, one of the rare places with electricity, there were international magazines to read,  it was possible to discuss, to listen to music and to organise different activities. The project was launched and coordinated by the French NGO DIA, which opened an office in Sarajevo during the war and which also launched in France the initiative “Students for Sarajevo”. Amra Pandžo (upper photo, in DIA’s office in 1994), a student from the University of Sarajevo, headed the “European Club”. The photo below, which is from 1995, shows some of the project’s employees and volunteers. These employees and volunteers were mainly young Bosnians; in the back row on the left is Eric Anglade, the director of DIA. In 1995, another “Euro Club” was opened in Dobrinja.

Nearly 30 years later, Amra Pandžo remembers: “European Club was my window to the free, normal, joyful world. Not just for me, but for young people of Sarajevo in general. We knew that we were alive when we would get there, and that life is not just about survival. There is music, art, culture. We would get back our dignity.”