Do you think that showing shocking pictures unrelated with the story,
presenting killings as being committed only by Serbs, and narrating one sided lies from the lips of Muslim butchers, do public service? Several months after the war in Bosnia, American public continues to be fed with lies, just to create anti-Serbian hysteria in this country. Or is this just an entertainment?
Z.D.
Gaithersburg, MD
Dear FRONTLINE,
EXCELLENT. I really enjoyed this program. It presented the
civil war in Bosnia so poigniently and truly demonstrated
that the power of love knows no political, religious, or
nationality boundaries.
D. Kinnard
mtnlarl@ix.netcom.com
Dear FRONTLINE,
Your presentation was a real tear jerker. But it is not possible to
make a credible presentation on the detached basis of human love triumphant.
These people, and the hundreds of thousands of others who died, died
because of religious, not national differences.
The priest who could not offer prayers over the two lovers said it all.
His religious beliefs transcended his humanity. It is precisely that
sentiment that makes organized religion the curse of our race. Rather than
being the force for good that it assumes as its mantra, it has instead,
resulted in mankinds' self alienation.
Your downplay of the background neglects the negative role the Germans
played in the debacle. You evaded their pivotal premature recognition of the
country's breakup as a religious expression. Must we eternally pander to
selfish, "only me" religions?
Very truly yours,
G.W.
Dear FRONTLINE,
I saw your program that aired on Tuesday, June 11. My first reaction, is
"why." Of course there is no logic, there is no rationale. How does life go
on? I may a little naive having grown up in the United States, but how does
life go on in a war-torn area like that? How do they buy food? How do they
make money to pay for food? How do the phones continue to work? How do they
get water? I realize that the cultural boundaries surrounding them are great,
but why not at least try to leave? I life of some kind, any kind, in a
foreign land is better than the one that was illustrated on your program, is
it not? These feelings of nationalism that inspired the two sides to take
arms against one another disgusts me. What about "people-ism"? Do we have no
pride in being human? How can people behave like that? What inspires them to
treat another human being like that? The fact that this situation reeks like
Nazi Germany is obvious. Historically, the Soviet Union has supported the
Serbs, correct? How can any person with a conscious "allow" this to happen?
let alone an entire nation? I, as an American, sometimes feel badly that "we"
are sticking our noses in where I feel we have no business "nosing in" but of
all of the situations that we have been "crashers" to, should this not have
been the most noble? Why was nothing done? I realize that this sort of
intervention could have led to another world war, seeing that this situation
would be so similar to World War 1, but tact could have been exercised to do
something, could it not? Your program was very informative, although I cannot
truly say that I was happy that I saw it. The whole thing makes me sick. I
wonder if there is anything that can be done. I don't have a lot of money to
donate, or that kind of thing, but who can I write to, in order to get some
"real" action towards stopping these atrocities? Can anyone do anything
except say, "I'm glad it's not me"?
M.M.
Dear FRONTLINE,
Like the hope that Bosnian Serbs and Moslems can live in peace.
A sniper fires
Boshko and Admira die.
Like the hopes of the people of Sarajevo, they died together.
No reason , just madness--
why?
What is it exactly that our troops in the Dayton zones are supposed to do? What does enforcing the agreement mean to us Americans here and to the people in Bosnia? U.M.
Dear FRONTLINE,
The tragedy that is Sarajevo reminds not to forget what can always happen in
our mist. What casts a darker shadow over the horror is the loss of love of
these two innocents among innocents.
May they rest in peace, together.
EG
Dear FRONTLINE,
I watched your show tonight, on Public Television, Channel 6, in Parker,
Colorado, so that I could better understand the plight of my Yugoslavian
refugee friends who've made a new home in Denver. The four couples are
combinations of Serbs and Croats who were in the same position as these two
young lovers: no one would offer them safe haven as a unit. There are
several children, whose lives were also in danger, because their parents were
not both Serbian or both Croatian.
My friends have told me of this bridge. I thank you for giving me the footage to see it. And also to see their beautiful city gradually reduced to ruins. This helps me listen with a visual image that enhances my empathy.
Two of my friends, male Serbs, were in concentration camps run by the Muslims. They were only fed one slice of bread per day, and were beaten on a regular basis. This fact, the reality of Muslim run concentration camps, was not brought out in the presentation, though I was pleased to finally see a fairly balanced depiction of the Serbian point of view. It has been very difficult to read the news, which tends to be pro-Muslim, knowing that my friends suffered tremendously under the Muslims-- losing aunts, uncles, and cousins as well as in-laws to the Muslim forces, who dragged them from their homes and shot them in the street, point blank. These mixed-Yugoslav families lived outside of Sarajevo in the small town of Kakanj.
I wish that our country's media would stop painting one side as more right than the others, for all Yugoslavians have suffered greatly in this tragedy. Your story is one way for the American public to grasp the realities of the "common man" in Yugoslavia, who has not chosen this path, yet, suffers the damage inflicted.
My friends carried with them a vision of safe streets and non-prejudicial lands when they climbed off the plane in New York City, two years ago. They have become proud tax payers and even, in one case, a homeowner-- he saved money from his minimum wage job to pay the down payment. My prayer is that the United States will truly hold its peace and work out its ethnic hatred so that these hopeful refugees, and my own children as well, never suffer such a tragedy on our soil.
Thank you for this insightful, though painful piece. I wish I'd taped it!
Sincerely,
B.S.
Dear FRONTLINE,
This episode of "Frontline" was at once a beautiful love story and one of the
most heartbreaking things I have ever seen. It was difficult to watch, but
very informative and educational. Can there be a better illustration of the
senselessness of what happened in Sarajevo, or of war in general? I don't
think so.
Thank you for showing "Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo".
Sincerely,
D.L.K.
Dear FRONTLINE,
Excellent piece.
What horrors some people can do! what an EVIL "war".
Your piece, by focusing on these ethnically diff[erent] youths, was enormously compelling, symbolic, and important - in a terrible irony, perhaps it was good for the world to see them decomposing (forgive me) on the "neutral" zone of downtown Saraj[evo]... what a reminder of the nature of this barbarism called "war" - and of the relatively small number of people with advanced weapons and stunted moral development who affect such huge numbers of innocent others - perhaps their deaths were not completely in vain. D.S.
Dear FRONTLINE,
We are a group of 3 Bosnian and 1 American who watched with keen interest
your show tonite. We were amazed, shocked, hurt, and very much saddened by
what we never knew before, namely the story of these two young people. We
salute your efforts and the courageous reporting you have so well shown to us
and all others across America and we hope that the people of the world will
stop all this insanity and come to know love as Bosko and Admira knew it.
M.G.- USA
A.J.- Derventa, Bosnia
E.P.- Bosanski-Samac, Bosnia
H.P. - Bosanski-Samac, Bosnia
Dear FRONTLINE,
I just saw the June 11, 1996, rebroadcast of your program on "Romeo and
Juliet in Sarajevo" and was very moved. Over the years, I have watched
your show on and off, due to the fact that as a student, I haven't had
much time to watch TV. However, I have always believed your show to be
one of the best in television.
Tonight's show was specially moving because it reminded us of the horribly cruel war in Bosnia. There are so many of us who have forgotten the Holocaust and World War II, and also Sarajevo's crucial part in World War I, that I fear we might have already forgotten about Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia. In order to ensure that these events do not happen again, we must not forget.
Just yesterday a friend was telling me about the beautiful Sarajevo of the 1970's, wondering if it will ever recover its previous splendour. As I saw the graves in the sad city, I too wonder if it will. All I can say is that I hope we don't forget the lives of those two young lovers, who died because they wanted to escape a war and let their love fluorish.
Thanks for bringing us their story and don't letting us forget.
Sincerely,
N.S.
Dear FRONTLINE,
I am writing to thank you for presenting the eye-opening, tragic story of two
young people in love that lived in a place without love- Sarajevo during war.
Your presentation of the human side of a nation of civilians struggling for
peace against the will of their government, and the relationships of families
of "mixed" relationships taught us a universal lesson of love. Your program
was both educational and touching.
L. & C. S.
Dear FRONTLINE,
I just watched your special on the deaths of Boshko and Admira in Sarajevo
and I must say it was completely moving. As a military man, your story
brought out the other side of war that so few of us realize happens as a side
effect of the smart bombs and cleansed images the media has a tendency to
show. The tragic deaths of these two young people who struggled through the
siege of Sarajevo for so many months was profoundly and expertly presented in
your show and I soon found myself emotionally attached to their plight. I
applaud you for your outstanding work and I especially thought highly of the
metaphor relating them to Romeo and Juliet at the end. Hopefully others were
as moved as I was by your show and will realize the true ugliness of war and
the shame of our inability to act as the world leader and stop it.
K.A.C.
Captain, U.S. Army
Dear FRONTLINE,
I just caught the last half hour of your Frontline story, Sarajevo's Romeo
and Juliet. on Channel ll, Chicago, and am doing something I have never done
before--namely, responding to a TV special. However, I feel that what I saw
was something unique.
Frontline, and whoever was involved in this special, deserve as many bouquets
as possible. And, given the tortuous process of the Dayton Agreement and the
seeming unwillingness to bring war criminals to trial, your airing of this
story was perfect timing.
What I saw--I'm sorry to have missed the first half--rang true. You neither
glorified one side nor demonized another. Journalism on the Balkan war has
generally been so self-serving, so warped, and so supine that I was very
impressed to finally view something which calmly detailed facts, without
editorializing. I didn't recognize the names of any of the people
responsible for this excellent report, but whoever they are, they have
managed to avoid the excesses and prejudices so rife in other reportage.
Please accept my deepest compliments for a job superbly done.
B.P.M.
Dear FRONTLINE,
Last night (June 11) I watched your PBS special on NYC's chanel 13, from 9-10pm,
about Yugoslavia, and particularly, the tragic story of the two lovers who
were killed on the bridge in 'no-mans land' in Sarajevo: Boshko and Admira.
I really was incredibly moved by this documentary; it really hit home vis-a-vis the heinous and impossible-to-comprehend situation over there, unlike anything else I have seen or read.
THANK YOU for all your work on this important film. I am still wiping the
tears from my eyes.
J.L.
Dear FRONTLINE,
Thank you for bringing us this love story.
And for reminding us about the ugliness
which grows from hate.
Debbie Rice