The ‘general’ is gone and the streets of Sarajevo from last night they will be more melancholy and less secure; especially those of Baščaršija, the district Mussulman of the multicultural and interethnic city par excellence (at least until the Serbian siege started in 1992) where Jovan Divjak lived. The head of the Yugoslav army, a true myth for Sarajevese and Bosnians, died at 84, struck down by a serious illness. His choice, back in 1992, to remain at the helm of the Jna, the Yugoslav army, or at least what was left of it, in defense of the capital Bosnian turned it into authentic hero.
Of Serbian origin, loved and respected by Bosnians, Savage he has always been considered a traitor by Serbia and from the Serbs of Bosnia, at least the most avid nationalists, precisely because of his role as defender of the city during the endless siege that began in these days 29 years ago. For more than three years Sarajevo came under artillery fire from Belgrade and of Pale (the town where Radovan Karadzic had stared at the farce-parliament of the Republic of Serbia) which killed over 12,000 people.
The dramatic images of ordinary people killed by sniper, the Serbian snipers, the hell of the bombs on Again, the market in the heart of Sarajevo, they outraged the world. Jovan Divjak, before the radical Bosnian nationalist drift, he defended the city and the people have never forgotten this. ‘Cika Jovo’, ‘Uncle Jovan’, as the inhabitants of Sarajevo have always called him. “Walking with him in the city center was impossible: ‘Cika Jovo how are you?’, ‘Cika Jovo, so much health’, people simply loved him, stopped him, shook his hand, offered him a drink because he was an important character and loved by all; he shielded himself and smiled at everyone because he was a very humble person who did not want to make his role weigh. For the Bosnians he was as popular as Tito had been for the Yugoslavs, he was a prominent figure, he gave security ”.
Azra Nuhefendic, Bosnian journalist and writer, daughter of partisan Muslims, lives in Trieste since 1995, right from the end of the conflict in Bosnia: “Attention, what brave people like Commander Divjak fought was a war of Serbian aggression in all respects – specifies the Nuhefendic -. It is convenient for Serbian deniers to pass it off as ‘conflict or civil war’. For this Savage he remained in defense of the city, because the right was on that side, despite his Serbian origins. He has done so much for Sarajevo and this people have never forgotten. Sarajevo and the Bosnia without the general Savage they will be worse and less safe places, with one less hope of bringing them back to the times before the war, when there was no distinction between ethnic groups. There will be more economic and intellectual poverty, less tolerance and less education for the children and young people who Divjak cared most about ”.
The dream of Jovan Savage was to do the pedagogue; the affairs of life then forced him to choose the career military that since 1969, when he joined theAccademia as a cadet, in 1991 they saw him engaged in Jna (Jugoslovenska narodna armija, the Yugoslav People’s Army) on several fronts. The war of Bosnia he has produced, among other damages, thousands of orphaned children of war and he has worked and acted on this for the rest of his life, from 1994 to today.
In that same year he founded the association Ogbh (Education Builds Bosnia and Herzegovina, Education builds Bosnia) to welcome more Young people left without a family, then extending aid to poor children, Roma and so on. Many groups of students welcomed, even from Italy, for meetings during which the commander Savage told the younger generations what happened in those dark years a Sarajevo and in the rest of the Bosnia, battered and divided by the violence and expansionist aims of Belgrade e Zagreb.
Luckily Savage has sown well in recent years and now a group of people will carry on the work of the association following a traced path. In addition to career in the army and its predisposition for the pedagogical sphere, Jovan Savage he was a man of culture, an intellectual: “He was passionate about theater, ballet, poetry. Jovan Savage was an actor (he starred in the movie Come of Sergio Castellitto based on the novel by Margaret Mazzantini, and in many documentaries on the subject, ed), a skilled screenwriter, in short, he was an eclectic character, a visionary in his own way. There is a detail that describes it well: the balcony flowery of his home, unmistakable and known by all ”.
To remember this insight into the life of the Sarajevo hero is Luca Leone, expert writer and editor of Balkans. In 2007 we owe to him the publication in Italian of the book written by Divjak ‘Sarajevo mon amour’ for Infinito Edizioni: “It is one of the leading titles of our publishing house – adds Leone, author of a dozen texts dedicated to Bosnia -. Recently he also wrote a beautiful text for the preface of a book of mine dedicated to the chords of Dayton. After hearing so much about him, at the beginning of the third millennium I was lucky enough to meet him in person. He was in a hurry, they were waiting for him at our embassy in Sarajevo for the ceremony on June 2; we stopped to talk and went on for almost two hours and in fact he arrived very late for that diplomatic appointment. Ours was one electrocution, from that moment the meetings increased to then arrive at the publication of his book with us for the Italian market. Thanks to a translator, me and Savage we were able to overcome the language barrier: he spoke excellent French, I spoke other languages and I always refused to learn Serbo-Croatian. I remember meeting in front of a bottle of Brandy (a spirit similar to brandy and vodka, ed) in the morning, his sympathy and a unique sweetness. In short, an extraordinary man who will be missed more and more in a corrupt country corroded by nationalisms. Do you think on the front Covid the first vaccines in Bosnia they arrived no more than two weeks ago. While the Serbia becomes the example of Europe for the vaccination campaign, in Bosnia less than 100,000 doses have arrived and most of it thanks to donations. The long-term effects of the war are increasingly damaging ”.
March 3, 2011 Jovan Divjak was arrested in Vienna on behalf of the Serbia for alleged war crimes that occurred during the war of Bosnia. The Austrian court denied extradition to Belgrade for lack of evidence and because a trial in Serbia it wouldn’t have been fair. Savage he had lost his beloved wife Vera in 2017 and leaves two children: one lives in United States, the other a London.