Juan Goytisolo “Sarajevo notebook”

Translating texts and books written by authors from Bosnia and Herzegovina (see for example “War journal” by Zlatko Dizdarević) was one way to disseminate information about the war. Another was publishing texts and books written by authors from other European countries who came to BiH during the war. One example is Juan Goytisolo’s “Sarajevo notebook”. The Spanish author Goytisolo spent several weeks in Sarajevo in 1993 as correspondent for the journal “El Pais”. The reports he wrote became a powerful testimony about the violence perpetrated against the city and the resilience and resistance of Sarajevo’s inhabitants, and also a vigorous denunciation of the international community’s attitude.

When he visited the large improvised cemetery next to the Olympic Stadium, for example, he wrote that people of all religions were buried here, with different years of birth, but all with the same date of death, 1992 or 1993, “victims of one and the same barbarism“. And he continued: “This crowded collection of crosses and gravestones should be complemented by another monumental memorial. It should bear the date of the UN Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950, the UN Convention on Civil and Political Rights of 1966, the CSCE Charter of 1990 and the famous Geneva Convention, and underneath it should read: “Here lie the dignity of the European Community and the credibility of the United Nations, both of whom died in Sarajevo.“”

Goytisolo’s texts became an important and often quoted reference for others who shared his ideas. His reports were quickly gathered into a book that was translated into several other languages.