Heartbreaking Photos of a Bosnian Soldier Who Cries When He Returned to His Village Where He Discovered His Family Was Executed by the Serbs

Senad Medanovic, sole survivor of a massacre, finding his home in ruins after the Bosnian army recaptured his village from Serb forces. He is standing on what is believed to be a mass grave of sixty-­nine people, including his family. Bosnia, 1995.

Senad Medanovic, a Bosnian soldier and former factory worker returns to his home in the village of Prhovo. 42 members of his immediate and extended family were killed here. 53 of the villager bodies were found in 2 mass graves. One right next to his house where he grieves. September of 1995. When he was 22 years old, on June 1, 1992 a battalion sized element of Serbian soldiers and Serbian Paramilitaries entered the town.

Medanovic had heard stories about them and fled to the woods into the undergrowth. his family did not believe the stories to be true. He watched as they came in and began to round up and shoot the civilians.

When he saw the killing started he ran further into the woods. He was captured 6 days later wondering through the Grmec plains. He was taken to Manjaca POW camp. There he found his brother and 10 others from his village. They told him what had happened, his mother and most of his family had been killed. They told him the location of where the mass grave was. 17 months later he was exchanged for Serbian prisoners were he began to fight.

3 years later, he stands where the war started for him. His home. The blue shirt he found belongs to his little cousin that was killed that day.

He found his smashed fathers and grandfathers head stones that died before the war and attempted to fix them “Can you read their names now? Can you see who was buried here?”

Welcome to Hell, Sarajevo, 1992

“It’s just extraordinary, watching people’s psychological preparation before crossing this 50 meters of open ground thinking they’re going to die. Lovers hold hands and dash across together; the men have this macho thing, walking upright and waving to the Serbs in the hills; some proud women march across in defiance; but other people spend literally minutes just psyching themselves up before they run, heads down. And the old people, of course. So many old people have died here because they just can’t move fast enough. More than anywhere I’ve been, this is a sniper’s war.” – This is the photographer Tom Stoddart describing what has become known as “Sniper Alley,” the most dangerous stretch of street in Sarajevo.

A woman hurries past graffiti in the area known as “Sniper Alley” in Sarajevo’s main thoroughfare, during the siege in 1992. (Photo © Tom Stoddart / Getty Images)

Stoddart spent two and a half weeks in the city, finding out and photographing how ordinary people were managing to exist in the war that has made this one of the most dangerous cities in the world.

He flew to Split, bought a car and drove to Ilidja, the last Serb-held suburb outside Sarajevo, from which he made the hair-raising run along the airport road into the city.

“‘Don’t go there, the Muslims will eat you’ - the soldiers tell you things like that. You just drive as fast as you can. Plenty of people have been killed in the crossfire along this road. We heard that the Serb soldiers get a dollars 500 bounty for hitting a journalist.”

At the entrance to the city is a wall inscribed with graffiti: “Welcome to hell.”

Incredible Photos of the Siege of Sarajevo by Tom Stoddart

The people of Sarajevo endured the longest siege Europe has witnessed since the end of the Second World War. For 47 months families were held hostage in their own city without food, medicine, electricity or running water, by Bosnian Serb gunmen who had been their neighbors until this civil war erupted in the spring of 1992.

By the time their suffering ended in February 1996, more than 10,600 Sarajevans had been killed. Another 56,000 people were wounded, many of them maimed or invalided for life. More than 1,600 children died and 15,000 were wounded.

Sarajevo had emerged from Marshall Tito’s Communist rule with optimism and hope, but its mainly Muslim population watched with trepidation as the former Yugoslavia tore itself apart with ethnic hatred and war. The turning point for Sarajevo came in March 1992 when Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence, and on April 6, thousands of peace protestors took to the streets of the capital to march to the Parliament building.

Shots rang out and the siege of Sarajevo had begun. All roads into the city were blockaded and the airport closed as the Bosnian Serbs sealed off the city from the outside world. From now on this would become a fight for survival.

Daring to go out in search of bread or water could cost your life. Everyone, even the very young, knew the only way they dare venture outdoors was to run for their lives between makeshift barricades trying to elude the snipers. All the city’s parks were stripped of trees for firewood then turned into cemeteries. The graveyards soon overflowed and ornamental gardens where courting couples once walked became burial grounds.

In July 1991, Tom Stoddart travelled to Sarajevo to document the civil war that was engulfing Yugoslavia. The work from Sarajevo was published across the world. Returning a year later for The Sunday Times Magazine, Tom was seriously injured in heavy fighting around the Bosnian Parliament buildings.

Sarajevans run for cover during shooting in ‘Sniper Alley’, 1992

A child and puppy in the shattered landscape of Sarajevo. The girl in this picture was identified after the war as Merima Jakupovic with her puppy Smoki, 1992

A gravedigger at work in Sarajevo's Lion Cemetery. Prior to the war, lovers met and people walked their dogs here. In 1992 an average of 12 citizens a day were being buried there

A woman hurries past graffiti in the area known as 'Sniper Alley' in Sarajevo's main thoroughfare, during the siege in 1992

A young widow grieves over the coffin of her husband during his burial in the Lion Cemetery, Sarajevo, 1992

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25 Eerie Vintage Photographs Capture Muslim Women Wearing Dark Face Veils on the Streets of Sarajevo

In Bosnia-Herzegovina the niqab is called “feredza.” During Ottoman times some Bosnian women used to wear them, before communism banned it.

A niqab is a garment of clothing that covers the face, worn by some Muslim women as a part of a particular interpretation of hijab (modest dress). According to the majority of Muslim scholars and Islamic schools of thought, face veiling is not a requirement of Islam; however a minority of Muslim scholars, particularly among the Salafi movement, assert that women are required to cover their faces in public. Those Muslim women who wear the niqab do so in places where they may encounter non-mahram (non-related) men.

These photographs were taken in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina from the 1920s to the 1940s, when niqab used to be the norm there.

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The Last Photos of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and His Wife Sophie in Sarajevo Moments Before Their Assassination, 1914

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie on June 28, 1914, is widely seen as the central, precipitating event of the First World War: the spark that lit the conflagration.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand with his wife on the day they were assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, June 28, 1914.

In the summer of 1914, Franz Ferdinand and wife Sophie accepted an invitation to visit the capital of Bosnia, Sarajevo. He had been informed of terrorist activity conducted by the nationalist organization the “Black Hand,” but ignored the warnings. On the morning of June 28, 1914, the Royal couple arrived by train and a six-car motorcade drove them to city hall for an official reception. The Archduke and his wife were in the second car with the top rolled back in order to give the crowds a good view.

At 10:10 a.m., as the motorcade passed the central police station, a Black Hand agent, Nedjelko Cabrinovic, hurled a hand grenade at the archduke’s car. The driver accelerated when he saw the flying object, and the bomb exploded underneath the wheel of the next car, injuring two of its occupants along with a dozen spectators. Franz Ferdinand is reputed to have shouted in anger to local officials, “So, you welcome your guests with bombs?!” He also reportedly stated, “What is the good of your speeches? I come to Sarajevo on a visit, and I get bombs thrown at me. It is outrageous.”

On the route back to the palace, the Archduke’s driver took a wrong turn into a side street, where 19-year-old nationalist Gavrilo Princip was waiting. As the car backed up, Princip approached and fired his gun, striking Sophie in the abdomen and the archduke in the neck. Both died before reaching the hospital.

Assassination illustrated in the Italian newspaper Domenica del Corriere, 12 July 1914 by Achille Beltrame.

At trial, it was noted that the three assassins from Belgrade tried to take all blame on themselves. Nedeljko Čabrinović claimed the idea of killing Franz Ferdinand came from a newspaper clipping he received in the mail at the end of March announcing Franz Ferdinand’s planned visit to Sarajevo. He then showed the newspaper clipping to Princip and the next day they agreed they would kill Franz Ferdinand. Princip explained to the court he had already read about Franz Ferdinand’s upcoming visit in German papers. Princip went on to testify that, at about the time of Easter (19 April), he wrote an allegorical letter to Ilić informing him of the plan to kill Franz Ferdinand. Trifko Grabež testified that he and Princip, also at about the time of Easter, agreed between them to make an assassination of either Governor Potiorek or Franz Ferdinand and a little later settled on Franz Ferdinand. The defendants refused or were unable to provide details under examination.

On 26 March, Danilo Ilić and Muhamed Mehmedbašić had already agreed to kill Franz Ferdinand based on instructions from Belgrade predating the newspaper clipping and the discussions amongst the three assassins in Belgrade.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand gave the hardliners in Austria-Hungary the opportunity to take action against Serbia and put an end to their fight for independence. In July 1914, the situation escalated. After demanding impossible reparations and failing to receive them, Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia. As was expected, the complex web of alliances was activated as Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary, Germany declared war on Russia, and France and Britain declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary. World War I had begun.

The Archduke and Duchess in the car, the morning they were killed. Sarajevo, June 28, 1914..

The Archduke and his wife emerging from the Sarajevo Town Hall to board their car on the morning the were killed.

The Archduke and his wife leaving the train in Sarajevo, June 28, 1914.

This picture is often said to depict the arrest of Gavrilo Princip, although several scholars say that it depicts the arrest of Ferdinand Behr, a bystander who was initially suspected of involvement in the assassination.

Gavrilo Pricip is arrested moments after the assassination.

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25 Color Photos That Capture Street Scenes of Mostar, Bosnia in the 1980s

Mostar is a city and municipality in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is the most important city in the Herzegovina region, and is its cultural capital, and the center of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton of the Federation.

Mostar is situated on the Neretva River and is the fifth-largest city in the country. Mostar was named after the bridge keepers (mostari) who in the medieval times guarded the Stari Most (Old Bridge) over the Neretva. The Old Bridge, built by the Ottomans in the 16th century, is one of Bosnia and Herzegovina's most recognizable landmarks, and is considered one of the most exemplary pieces of Islamic architecture in the Balkans.

Take a look at these color photos to see what Mostar looked like in the 1980s.

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