Unfortunately, It Is True, Sarajevo Banishes

Ljiljana Zurovac, a distinguished journalist from Bosnia-Herzegovina, comments the news that eminent Croats are leaving Sarajevo.

This is an awfully sad and slashing for each true citizen in Sarajevo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, knowing that after the war Sarajevo still banishes its Christian intellectuals. As if a few people have left, as if a few died after the war. A critical mass of intellectuals and creative people were those who held the spirit of Sarajevo, they held the spirit which kept the positive energy up giving the strength for surviving and the will for living. They are no longer needed in this town.

Unfortunately, not only Professor Stojanov, and Gertruda Munitic, an opera diva, and again, they are not the last ones. During the war, in winter, Gertruda Munitc sang ‘Ave Maria’ in Cathedral in Sarajevo while grenades were exploding, we all stood in that Cathedral and we didn’t ask each other who you are or what your name is. We were happy that we were sill alive, that we were together, that we could recognise each other’s face. We were happy that the great diva Gertruda was with us. Her presence in the town, in that Cathedral which was a shelter to us, she was a light and a sign that we were people still, her voice that night was stronger and louder than horrible impacts… we cried out of happiness that we were together, that our spirit, the spirit of Sarajevo, was not killed and banished.

An icon through decades

In the same way that Ms. Gertruda gave us strength, she was an inspiration to good people to follow her example in helping children during the war and in the years after, which were hard. I can remember when she had a superhuman jump, grabbed a child and took it into a shelter in front of the National Theatre, just a few seconds before a grenade had fallen. Later, she found out that she had broken her leg. At that time, the diva Gertruda Munitic, stood on nobody’s way, not even to Amili Baksic who now speaks about her in very shameful words.

Gertruda Munitic was a leader of the repertoire of Opera in Sarajevo for decades. She was a trade mark for that scene and for that theatre. She was a promoter of classical music and opera in media; she made young people and others, who never thought that they could love opera, to become fond of it. And they did it because of her and her charm and enormously wide and open spirit, her gaiety, because of her charisma and a divine voice. It was sad to hear that nobody from that theatre invited her to a celebration of 60^th anniversary. The manager gave cheap and lame excuses that a special solo concert was prepared for her right after the celebration, so they didn’t want to bother her twice… and such nonsense. Pathetic, real pathetic.

Shame on Sarajevo 

Amila Baksic said a shameful sentence that Gertruda Munitic wanted to sing ‘Ave Maria’ in Zagreb ‘after all that Sarajevo gave to her’, what really means something else:

Diva Gertruda Munitic enriched Sarajevo with her personality and talent engagement and by living in Sarajevo for years. She gave to Sarajevo her positivity of life through her remarkable roles. She was unrivalled in her rule on the opera scene of the National Theatre in Sarajevo as well as her humanitarian work all these years after the war and during the war.

Diva Gertruda Munitic gave herself to Sarajevo. And Sarajevo at that time, our Sarajevo of creative spirit opened to man, gave her back love and acceptance. Luckily we have her as our citizen, neighbour, friend and a good soul.

This pathetic Sarajevo nowadays is more humiliated with its primitive mediocrity in the places which they do not deserve otherwise but with their petty political affiliations, which are planned and deliberated in low punches. They used all kinds of pressure making the rest of Sarajevo spirit to run away without looking back. Such as many have fled in this decade after the war has finished. Unfortunately, in the end it will banish those few who cannot believe that the mud is so deep, that there is no bottom to it. This primitive consciousness of today’s Sarajevo drags everything down that has had any value in this beautiful city, ever.

What an awful defeat of intellect and spirit! Shamefully allowed victory of primitivism.