Of the many news and personal photographs, international and local newspaper front pages, posters, and makeshift stoves and heaters that Sarajevans fashioned during the siege of Sarajevo—now displayed in the Historical Museum of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s permanent exhibition, Sarajevo Under Siege—one object stands out. It is a small blue-and-white striped handknit sweater that belonged to Nermin Divović, a Sarajevan killed by a sniper on November 18, 1994, when he was seven years old.1
Donated to the museum by Divović’s family, it lies stretched out under a glass case with a matter-of-fact caption printed on a rectangle of white paper resting atop. “Nermin Divović was a boy killed in 1994 by sniper fire, in the street Zmaja od Bosne,” it reads. “The bullet first passed through the body of the boy’s mother and then shot him in the head. Nermin’s sister, who was with them, escaped the bullet, because she was...
University of California Press