We Jews are part of the Bosnian people

The following article, entitled “Sarajevo is hit by overnight shelling,” first appeared in The Prescott
Courier on 16 September 1992.
By: George Jahn
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina – Scattered fighting was reported overnight in Bosnia, but people
ventured out today despite at last four eruption of shelling in the besieged capital.
A group of about 100 ill people, half of them from Sarajevo’s 850-member Jewish community, left in a
convoy of three buses bound for Split on the Croatian coast. David Kamdi, deputy head of the local
Jewish community, said the convoy had guarantees of safe passage.
“There was a lot of crying this morning,” Kamdi said, and the Jews on the buses vowed to return to
Sarajevo. “We Jews are part of the Bosnian people. We will never leave,” Kamdi said.
Downtown Sarajevo had been pounded Monday from Serb artillery positions monitored by U.N.
troops. It was the worst shelling in a week, and the city appeared almost deserted Tuesday as people
stayed indoors.
But today residents ventured forth – even though government defense officials reported occasional
shelling overnight in surrounding suburbs. Bosnian state radio also reported heavy Serb-Croat fighting
around Brcko, a town near the northern border with Croatia. The radio said Serb shells also were
hitting the government strongholds of Tuzla, in northeastern Bosnia, Gradacac, in the north, and Bihac,
northwest of Sarajevo.
A Dutch train was to pick up 500 Bosnian refugees today from neighboring Croatia, where some
50,000 Bosnian refugees are living illegally in the capital, Zagreb, alone. The Netherlands has been
sending a train weekly since Sept. 2 to take 500 people on each trip to refuge in Holland.
More than 10,000 people have been killed, and more than one million displaced – more refugees than
Europe has seen since World War II.
In New York, U.S.. and European Community speakers told the U.N. General Assembly’s opening
session they objected to Serb-led Yugoslavia’s participation in the United Nations system, and that they
would seek suspension of the federation, which now consists only of Serbia and Montenegro. Serb
forces have been blamed for instigating much of the fighting in Bosnia.
Yugoslavia’s ambassador, Dragomir Djokic, took the floor to object, saying suspension could
jeopardize international peace efforts.
The matter was to be decided by the 15-member Security Council later this week.