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About Aida Buturović and books.

The life of a person is more valuable than any book, and the life of books renders persons immortal.  

However, I also remember, i.e. see even now 
the bodies of books crackling

on a hot August day in 1992,

consumed by the flame of hate.

The bodies of dear books were disappearing in the hatred.

(an excerpt from a poem by Ferida Duraković ”Po našim glavama još padaju knjige u prahu”, 2013)

At the end of the 1970s, Aida Buturović[1] was studying general literature and philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo. Her study group colleague, Antonio Nino Žalica, remembers her as follows: ”Aida was an excellent student, probably the best of us. She was a beautiful and very intelligent young woman, extremely passionate about foreign languages and she also spoke fluently several of them. She translated from English, Spanish and French. I remember the last time I met her, several months before the war broke out, in front of the City Hall, where she used to work back then.”[2] In August 1992, she was 32 years old and worked as a librarian at the National Library at the Sarajevo City Hall.  

On the day when the building burned down, everyone was crying. Not just believers in culture, artists, librarians, architects, cellists, but everyone, absolutely everyone. As if the City Hall emanated something that went beyond the conscience and habit, some sort of magnificent energy that clouded all reason.
(Haris Imamović, ”Vedran i vatrogasci”, 2022, p. 29)

The Serb forces, led by Radovan Karadžić, who was later convicted of war crimes, started intensively shelling the City Hall at 09:00 on August 25. At the same time, they strategically shelled the fire station in Skenderija to prevent the firefighters from putting out the fire at the City Hall. However, the volunteer fire station from Vratnik sent its own firefighters. When they reached the City Hall, ”only the dome was burning, while a thick black smoke was coming out of it. Tongues of flames were slowly coming out of the highest windows, but the fire had not yet reached the largest part of the building. They started putting out the fire, and it went well until there was no more water. When they tried drawing water from Miljacka, which was only several meters away from the fire venue, they came under sniper fire coming from the hills.” Although they were working relentlessly under furious sniper and artillery fire, the firefighters managed to put out the fire after several hours and went back to the fire station. However, the shelling of the City Hall started again, and although the volunteer firefighters from Vratnik went back and joined their colleagues from Skenderija fire station, who were professional firefighters, ”it was no longer possible to control the fire and it was just a matter of moments before the whole building burned down.”[1] Numerous witnesses, as stated by Haris Imamović in his book, claimed that that the fire at the City Hall that the Sarajevo firefighters were fighting was caused by white phosphorus and thermite shells, which make it impossible to put out the fire using water. This means that they had no chance whatsoever since the very beginning.

”When, at a certain moment, it became clear that it was no longer possible to put out the fire, the feeling of helplessness engulfed them.” The firefighters also started saving the books. People who were working at the City Hall, citizens of Sarajevo, people who graduated thanks to the fact that they studied at the reading room of the library at the City Hall, but also those that had never before entered the reading room, professional and volunteer firefighters, and, among them, a certain Aida, they all tried to ”overcome the overall despair resulting from the destruction of one of the most important symbols of the city; they wanted to show that they would not stay passive and completely helpless onlookers; they wanted to do something that would prevent all hope from being gone immediately…”[2]

The City Hall burned down on the third day. Aida had still not come home, and her family did not know where she was. ”Aida Buturović was killed while going home after the book rescue action; it happened somewhere in Titova street, between the Presidency and Marijin Dvor; a shell exploded and a shrapnel hit her in the nape. The family found her body only days later at the morgue, where she was taken by some people, who happened to be nearby when she was killed.”[3]

Aida was a young woman who had a family, friends, her job, her colleagues, a fiancée, love, her favourite authors, music, places to go out, hobbies, translation, and she was also working on her doctoral thesis when the war started in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition to everything she was, Aida Buturović also became an inspiration, an eternal symbol of destruction of culture, knowledge and history, and a role model for courage, resistance and fight.

Two years ago, Faruk Vele, a journalist and editor, spoke with Amila Butorović, a Professor of History of Religion and Culture at the Department for Humanities of the York University in Toronto, who, among other things, wrote the following in a text about her sister Aida: ”In a way, she was fragile, since she showed empathy in case of any injustice, whether individual or collective, experiencing it in a much more intense manner than many others. On the other hand, she was fearless – I now know that she inherited this from our father who was a partisan and who fought for the ideals of justice. When she was killed, Aida was a firm supporter of these values. She was a citizen of the world, but also a citizen of Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. To my surprise, when she started working at the City Hall before the war, she told me: ”I am socialising with wonderful colleagues and books. I have my peace of mind.”, says Amila Buturović. ”Her version of my favourite saying that ‘when you put your finger in the sea, you are connected to the whole world’ was ‘when you read a book, you are connected to the whole world’. The fact that she died while books were burning is some sort of a cosmic vow, but also ironic and symbolic. It is impossible to ever disentangle the joint destiny of the City Hall as a library and Aida as its librarian.”[4]

Burning books, biblioclasm or libricide are terms describing an intentional destruction of the written cultural heritage of a community. In her book Burning books and leveling libraries – extremist violence and cultural destruction, Rebecca Knuth explains that contemporary biblioclasm is connected to authoritarian regimes.[5] The author gives some of the first examples of this destructive practice, such as the Chinese emperor Ch’in Shih-huang (259–210), who ordered burning of books and a massacre of scholars in the 3rd century B.C.; the largest library of the ancient world – the library in Alexandria, Egypt, which was opened in the 3rd century B.C. and was burned down several times,[6] and the destruction of the ”House of Wisdom”, the largest library in Bagdad, Iraq, in the 13th century.[7] It is assessed that around three million books and three hundred unique manuscripts of inestimable value, i.e. around 90% of books, were burned at the National Library.  

Selma Alispahić from the Department of Sociology of the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Sarajevo explains that books were most frequently burned during social conflicts, so that ”burning of libraries may be seen as a war strategy. When warfare is determined by the ambition to annihilate others, it is not sufficient to kill people and the community, since their spirit continues to live through customs, language, culture and art, which easily survive in books and can be resurrected.” She also specifies: ”Burning of books is an act of erasing narratives and testimonies that can contest new ideologies.” Burning of books and libraries means destroying something that belongs to everyone, destroying the accumulated human knowledge and experience.

The building of the City Hall in Sarajevo was reconstructed in 2014. However, ”the City Hall has never actually been given back to the citizens of Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Contrary to expectations, the original purpose and history of ownership, the administration of the City of Sarajevo moved in the City Hall after its reconstruction and opening and fully disposes of it. The use of the premises is fully and shamefully commercialised – the mayor disposes of the building and a company manages it.”[8]

In 2016 and 2017, an ”informal political organisation Jedan grad, jedna borba (One city, one fight) launched an initiative entitled People’s Library: the City Hall is Ours!” in order to stop the illegal transformation of the former National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina into a commercialised space that will become forever alienated from those it belongs to – citizens of Sarajevo and the whole country. The message for the city administration remains the same: ”The City Hall cannot be only the seat of the administration or a tourist attraction – the City Hall is a public good and belongs to everyone. For this reason, we request that the City Hall be opened for free visits for citizens at least once per week and that a reading room be opened at the City Hall that will be available to all visitors.”[9] Ferida Duraković was one of the public personalities that supported this initiative. When she wished to enter the City Hall in 2016 and read there together with around thirty people, she was unable to do so, unless she bought a ticket like any tourist. While still a student, Ferida spent her days at the reading room, and in August, she saved books from the burning City Hall together with other people, thus helping to save some books from destruction. In the opinion of a sociologist, Selma Alispahić, the purposes for which the premises of the City Hall are used today, ten years later, constitute a triumph of indifference.[10] This is also shown by a text on the official website of the City Hall: ”In the market of event management, the City Hall has been recognised as the most representative place for the organisation of scientific symposia, conferences, corpoorate[11] events, anniversaries, various promotions and business and tourist visits.” [12]

At the end of 2021, the Foundation CURE from Sarajevo submitted an initiative to the Committee for Education, Culture and Cultural and Historical Heritage of the Municipal Council of Stari Grad Municipality in Sarajevo to name the square across the City Hall after Aida Buturović.[13] However, in January 2022, the Municipal Council of Stari Grad Municipality in Sarajevo adopted a decision to officially name the new square across the City Hall the ”Square of the First Police Brigade”, in honour of more than 700 members of this brigade that defended the city at the very beginning of the siege of Sarajevo. In August 2022, the Mayor of Sarajevo, Benjamina Karić, announced that a commemorative plaque with Aida Buturović’s name would be placed there by the City of Sarajevo. As far as the author of this text is aware, such a commemorative plaque has not yet been placed there.

Aida Buturović and the burned books are interrelated, their destinies are intertwined, and the sociologist Selma Alispahić describes the whole subtlety and inevitability as follows: ”Death is an event in the history of life, and burning of books is the cancellation of history itself. The life of a person might be more valuable than all books, but the life of a book makes their immortal life possible.” Fellow librarians from the whole world consider Aida a true hero of her profession and are trying to preserve her memory.  

And the world would forget in the  
meantime – and this happens
in all wars – that monsters set a fire to a library
from time to time, and the Space carries the sound:

Manuscripts are not burning!
Manuscripts are not burning!
Manuscripts are not burning!

(The end of a poem by Ferida Duraković entitled ”Po našim glavama još padaju knjige u prahu”, 2013)

Jasmina Čaušević holds a BA degree in Literature and Language from the Faculty of Philosophy of Belgrade and she obtained an MA degree in Gender Studies from the University of Sarajevo in 2008.  

Literature

Website https://www.vijecnica.ba/bs/organizacija-dogadaja

[1] Source: Haris Imamović (2022). Vedran i vartrogasci. Zenica: Vrijeme, p. 55 – 57.

[2] Ibid, p. 29

[3] Haris Imamović, p. 33

[4] Source: Faruk Vele (2022). Aida Buturović, heroina koja je ostavila srce u Vijećnici: “Niko nije volio knjige kao ona”. Available at: https://radiosarajevo.ba/metromahala/lica/aida-buturovic-heroina-koja-je-ostavila-srce-u-vijecnici-niko-nije-volio-knjige-kao-ona/467032

[5] The mentioned author addresses this topic at length in her book published in 2003: Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century. London: Praeger.

[6] A new library was opened in Alexandria in 2002.   

[7] Rebecca Knuth (2006). Burning Books and Leveling Libraries – Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction. London: Praeger, p. 3

[8] Nidžara Ahmetašević, https://www.bilten.org/?p=16269

[9] Nidžara Ahmetašević, ibid.

[10] A phrase by Søren Aabye Kierkegaard from the work ”Philosophical Crumbs”, available at: https://pdfcoffee.com/seren-kjerkegor-filozofske-mrvice-pdf-free.html.   

[11] This word was written like this, i.e. incorrectly, in the text.  

[12] https://www.vijecnica.ba/bs/organizacija-dogadaja

[13] Stvaramo kulturu sjećanja na žene koje su pomjerale granice – Aida Buturović | Fondacija CURE

[1] Aida Buturović (1959 – 1992) worked as a librarian at the National Library at the Sarajevo City Hall. In the night between August 25 and 26, 1992, she was saving books from the burning City Hall, together with her colleagues and citizens that came to help. She was killed by a shell shrapnel that hit her directly in the nape while she was going home from the burned City Hall.

[2] https://azalica.wixsite.com/bookcase/single-post/2016/04/25/sje%C4%87anje-na-aidu-buturovi%C4%87-i-sini%C5%A1u-glava%C5%A1evi%C4%87a-no-more-heroes-any-more-no-more-heroes