War Childhood Museum

Last updated
War Childhood Museum
War Childhood Museum.jpg
War Childhood Museum
Established2017
LocationLogavina 32, Sarajevo
Coordinates 43°51′43″N18°25′43″E / 43.861991°N 18.428524°E / 43.861991; 18.428524
Type History museum
FounderJasminko Halilovic
Website museum.warchildhood.com

The War Childhood Museum (Bosnian: Muzej ratnog djetinjstva) is a historical museum in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina that opened in January 2017. The museum presents the experiences of children who lived through the war in Bosnia, told through objects, video testimonies, and excerpts from oral histories. The 2018 Council of Europe Museum Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the museum industry, was awarded to the War Childhood Museum as part of the 2018 European Museum of the Year Award. [1] [2]

The project began in 2010 when Jasminko Halilovic, a Sarajevan entrepreneur, activist, and "war child," used an online platform to collect short recollections of young adults who had been children during the Bosnian war. Over 1,000 young adults submitted their memories. Halilovic assembled these recollections into a book which was published in 2013. The book has subsequently been translated into German and Japanese. [3]

As Halilovic began corresponding with the young adults who submitted memories, he realized that many of the former "war children" still had specific objects that they connected with their memories. [4] He began working with a team of other young professionals to develop a museum collection, eventually collecting over 3,000 objects and over 60 oral history testimonies. [5]

In May 2016, the War Childhood Museum held its first, temporary exhibition at the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina. [6] Further exhibitions followed in the cities of Zenica and Visoko. [7] In January 2017, the museum’s permanent exhibition opened on Logavina Street in Sarajevo.

The museum’s collections feature diaries, toys, photographs, items of clothing, and a variety of other objects donated by war survivors. [8] All the items are presented alongside first-person recollections from the individual who donated them. In addition to the items, visitors can listen to testimonies and read snippets from oral history interviews. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarajevo</span> Capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Sarajevo is the capital and largest city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a population of 275,524 in its administrative limits. The Sarajevo metropolitan area including Sarajevo Canton, East Sarajevo and nearby municipalities is home to 555,210 inhabitants. Located within the greater Sarajevo valley of Bosnia, it is surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of the Balkans, a region of Southern Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bosnian War</span> 1992–1995 armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Bosnian War was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. The war is commonly seen as having started on 6 April 1992, following a number of earlier violent incidents. The war ended on 14 December 1995 when the Dayton accords were signed. The main belligerents were the forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, those of Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia and Republika Srpska, proto-states led and supplied by Croatia and Serbia, respectively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarajevo Haggadah</span> Illuminated Jewish Passover service book

The Sarajevo Haggadah is an illuminated manuscript that contains the illustrated traditional text of the Passover Haggadah which accompanies the Passover Seder. It is one of the oldest Sephardic Haggadahs in the world, originating in Barcelona around 1350. The Haggadah is owned by the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. Its monetary value is undetermined, but a museum in Spain required that it be insured for $7 million before it could be transported to an exhibition there in 1992.

The 1992 Yugoslav People's Army column incident in Sarajevo occurred on 3 May 1992 in Dobrovoljačka Street, Sarajevo, when members of the Bosnian army (ARBiH) attacked a convoy of the Yugoslav army (JNA) troops that were exiting the city of Sarajevo according to the withdrawal agreement.

Emir Suljagić is a Bosnian journalist and politician who is currently the Director of the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial. He served as Minister of Education of Sarajevo Canton from 13 January 2011 until 29 February 2012 and was also Deputy minister of Defense from 31 March 2015 to 10 December 2015.

Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) is the Serbian non-governmental organisation with offices in Belgrade, Serbia, and Pristina, Kosovo. It was founded in 1992 by Nataša Kandić to document human rights violations across the former Yugoslavia in armed conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and, later, Kosovo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trial of Ratko Mladić</span> 2011–2017 war crimes trial at The Hague, Netherlands, concerning the Bosnian War

The Prosecutor v. Ratko Mladić was a war crimes trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, Netherlands, concerning crimes committed during the Bosnian War by Ratko Mladić in his role as a general in the Yugoslav People's Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Šejla Kamerić</span> Bosnian photographer

Šejla Kamerić is a Bosnian visual artist.

The Youth Initiative for Human Rights or YIHR is a network of autonomous non-governmental organization active in Serbia, Kosovo, Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is focused on building connections and establishing cooperation between young people from different ethnic groups in Balkans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina</span>

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network Bosnia and Herzegovina is a non-profit organization based in Sarajevo that reports on war crimes trials before the courts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. BIRN BiH is a member of the BIRN network, which includes BIRN Hub, BIRN Ltd, BIRN Kosovo, BIRN Macedonia, and BIRN Serbia.

Anur Hadžiomerspahić, also known as Anur, was an artist and graphic designer from Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was notable for being the first Bosnian artist to show their work in the central pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

The Sandžak faction or Sandžak lobby, known in Bosnian as Sandžaklije, was one of the two main divisions of the Bosnian government and the ruling Party of Democratic Action (SDA) during the Bosnian War. It was made up of military hardliners and settlers (migrants) from Sandžak, a region divided between SR Serbia and SR Montenegro. Commander Sefer Halilović and politician Ejup Ganić belonged to the faction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Post-Conflict Research Center</span>

The Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC) is a Sarajevo-based non-governmental organization, which aims to nurture an enabling environment for sustainable peace and facilitate the restoration of inter-ethnic relationships in Bosnia-Herzegovina. PCRC's expertise consists of innovative multimedia projects and creative educational curricula that engage youth in fostering long-lasting tolerance, mutual understanding, and social activism in the Western Balkans region. The Center’s overall mission is to build a robust network empowering youth with transferable skills and resources to spread an all-encompassing culture of peace among the many ethnic groups composing the country. PCRC’s overall strategy encompasses six core areas of operation: creative multimedia, preventing genocide, mass atrocities & violent extremism, peace education, transitional justice, post-conflict research and consultancy.

Around 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, 1 March 1992, a Bosnian Serb wedding procession in Sarajevo's old Muslim quarter of Baščaršija was attacked, resulting in the death of the father of the groom, Nikola Gardović, and the wounding of a Serbian Orthodox priest. The attack took place on the last day of a controversial referendum on Bosnia and Herzegovina's independence from Yugoslavia, in the early stages of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Wars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Childhood in war</span> Impact of warfare on children

Childhood in war refers to children who have been affected, impaired or even injured during and in the aftermath of armed conflicts. Wars affect all areas of involved persons' life, including physical and mental-emotional integrity, social relations with the family and the community, as well as housing. More often than not, these experiences affect a child's further development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siege of Goražde</span>

The siege of Goražde refers to engagements during the Bosnian War (1992–95) in and around the town of Goražde in eastern Bosnia.

Silos was a concentration camp operated by the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) during the Bosnian War. Centered around a windowless grain silo, it was used to detain Bosnian Serb, and to a lesser extent Bosnian Croat, civilians between 1992 and 1996. The camp was located in the village of Tarčin, near the town of Hadžići, 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) west of Sarajevo. Inmates were subjected to beatings, given little food and kept in unsanitary conditions. Five-hundred Bosnian Serb and ninety Bosnian Croat civilians were detained at the camp; twenty-four prisoners lost their lives.

Adela Jušić is a Bosnian contemporary visual artist. She was born in Sarajevo. She is known for her socially engaged art on the subject of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the role of partisan women during the Second World War in Yugoslavia. She has exhibited her works in more than 100 international exhibitions including: Frestas – Trienal de Artes, The Women's Room, Balkan Artist Guild (London), Manifesta 8. (Murcia), ISCP, Videonale (Bonn), Image Counter Image (München). Jušić is a cofounder of the Association for Art and Culture Crvena. Adela Jušić is one of the creators of the online archive of the antifascist struggle of women in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia. She lives and works in Sarajevo.

Events in the year 2018 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

References

  1. "Council of Europe Museum Prize 2018". European Museum Forum. Retrieved 17 May 2018.
  2. "War Childhood Museum, Sarajevo, wins 2018 Museum Prize". European Museum Forum. January 2018. Retrieved 17 May 2018.
  3. Sheehan, Dan (December 2015). "Jasminko Halilovic: Children of War". Guernica Magazine. Retrieved 5 February 2017.
  4. Toe, Rodolfo (May 11, 2016). "Sarajevo Museum to Preserve Wartime Childhood Memories". Balkan Transitional Justice. Balkan Insight.
  5. Rose, Eleanor (January 1, 2017). "Bosnia's War Childhood Museum Finally Opens". Balkan Transitional Justice. Balkan Insight. Retrieved 5 February 2017.
  6. Toe, Rodolfo. "Sarajevo Museum to Preserve Wartime Childhood Memories". Balkan Transitional Justice. Balkan Insight. Retrieved 5 February 2017.
  7. Ruvic, Dado (July 8, 2016). "Bosnian museum of wartime childhood helps heal trauma". Reuters. Retrieved 5 February 2017.
  8. "War Childhood Museum". 2015–2020. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
  9. Rose, Eleanor (January 30, 2017). "Bosnia's War Childhood Museum Finally Opens". Balkan Transitional Justice. Retrieved 5 February 2017.