To understand more about Joe Sacco’s graphic novel Safe area Gorazde: the War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-95, we need to learn a little more about Gorazde and the war in Bosnia. Gorazde was a so-called United Nations-designated safe area, which was nonetheless surrounded by Bosnian Serb troops and whose people were suffering desperately. The war was unusual in that so much of it was fought not by professional militias but by regular people taking up arms to protect their own homes and towns; the result was chaos, and civilians all around subjected to every conceivable form of abuse and atrocity. Sacco's book is filled with testimonials of Bosnian Muslims who remember years of peaceful multiethnic cohabitation in Gorazde that turned when the war broke out. They loved their Serb friends and neighbors and knew that they were loved in return.
"Before the war, everyone had everything, cars, food, and jobs. They had a good life... and then they started shooting. Never in my life will I understand why. They destroyed our lives, the Serbs, but also they destroyed their own lives."
What happened to this peace? What caused the Serbs, who for years had shared celebrations and gatherings with their Muslim friends and neighbors, suddenly start shooting them, torturing them, and executing them? Sacco shows how this intense hatred and violence was begun; this hatred was instigated by the fascist Chetniks. Sacco uses both words and pictures to describe this horrific incident:
"I was an eyewitness when the Chetniks brought two families -- both families had three kids -- and killed them behind the bridge.
"They cut their throats and pushed them in the river... The Guso and Sabanovic families.
"And I was an eyewitness when a Chetnik cut off the breast of one of the mothers, who was trying to protect her kids."
When I read this I could not help but vision women and children being slaughtered just for the fun of it, this vision angered me and scared me all at the same time. Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde is not a pleasant book. It shows and describes things most of us will never experience, things so brutal and cruel most of us cannot conceive of how they can happen.
"Before the war, everyone had everything, cars, food, and jobs. They had a good life... and then they started shooting. Never in my life will I understand why. They destroyed our lives, the Serbs, but also they destroyed their own lives."
What happened to this peace? What caused the Serbs, who for years had shared celebrations and gatherings with their Muslim friends and neighbors, suddenly start shooting them, torturing them, and executing them? Sacco shows how this intense hatred and violence was begun; this hatred was instigated by the fascist Chetniks. Sacco uses both words and pictures to describe this horrific incident:
"I was an eyewitness when the Chetniks brought two families -- both families had three kids -- and killed them behind the bridge.
"They cut their throats and pushed them in the river... The Guso and Sabanovic families.
"And I was an eyewitness when a Chetnik cut off the breast of one of the mothers, who was trying to protect her kids."
When I read this I could not help but vision women and children being slaughtered just for the fun of it, this vision angered me and scared me all at the same time. Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde is not a pleasant book. It shows and describes things most of us will never experience, things so brutal and cruel most of us cannot conceive of how they can happen.
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