Out of Sight

Two months after it was housed in a high-tech room, the Sarajevo Haggadah remains largely inaccessible to the general public. by Viola G. Gienger 26 February 2003 SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina--The permanent exhibition of a precious 14th-century Jewish manuscript that opened ceremoniously in December appears to be suffering from a sort of philanthropic version of hit-and-run, an occasional hazard of international aid.

The UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina threw a reception in the National Museum on 2 December complete with a children’s choir, a chamber orchestra, and an hors d’oeuvre buffet. It marked the completion of an elegant $120,000 climate-controlled room to house the Sarajevo Haggadah and similar artifacts relating to the country’s main religions--Islam, Orthodoxy, and Catholicism.

The idea was to display the pieces as public tributes to survival, restoration, and multi-ethnic tolerance. The Haggadah’s journey--which began when Sephardic Jews fled the Inquisition, leaving medieval Spain for Italy and, at some point, crossing the Adriatic Sea to Bosnia--is a vibrant, triumphant tale that continues to fascinate researchers and ordinary people worldwide. The document was rescued yet again during the three-and-a-half-year war in Bosnia that ended seven years ago.

But two months after the opening ceremony, the exhibit, located in an upper corner of the war-scarred museum, remains closed to the general public. The high-tech alarm system malfunctions regularly and the museum has no technician on staff. Nor does it have qualified guards to monitor the room and ensure that no one disturbs the unsecured display cases that house other items. And the administration scrambles to raise enough money or defer enough bills to cover its costs every month.

Heating alone costs about 15,000 euros a month. The antiquated system that serves the museum’s 24,000 square meters dates from the communist era, when the “central” in central heating meant that the local government controlled thermostats. So even on cold days, staff in museum offices can only prop open the windows because it’s too warm. But an uninterrupted supply of heat is even more important now because of the Haggadah exhibit’s climate-controlled system. When the heat came on on 13 December, it was only the second winter since the war that the heating has functioned, save for a few days in April 1997 when Pope John Paul II visited.

‘IT’S A SCANDAL’

The quandary of how to maintain a modern, high-tech exhibit in a bare-bones museum in a country where most concern focuses on the latest intractable political crisis or the 40 percent unemployment crystallizes many of the problems of development efforts in Bosnia. Two months after the celebratory opening, the UN mission has packed up and gone, and cash-strapped local authorities are arguing over who holds responsibility for upkeep. It is a story of conflicting laws, international agencies that are eager to leave, local capacity that is not always robust enough to take over, and basic problems such as words getting lost in translation.

“It’s a scandal,” says the museum’s interim director, Dzenana Buturovic. “A museum should be a public institution.”

But the closest that most visitors can get to the historic documents in the Haggadah display is a broad, solid-glass door that blocks the entrance to the room. It is opened only for special delegations and the rare major event such as museum day earlier this month, which drew some 500 visitors. And because of continuing concerns about security, the Haggadah on display is usually a copy, except on special occasions. Ordinary visitors are simply told that the exhibit is closed.

“For instance, several days ago, we had a visit of donors from Sweden about whom we care very much--they are giving us a lot of money; these works around us are here with their money--and we wanted to show them the Haggadah,” Buturovic said. “But we had technical problems, so when we went inside the room, the door closed and we were trapped inside.”

The Sarajevo Haggadah exhibit was a pet project of Jacques Klein, the UN’s special representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Approached by Jakob Finci, president of the Jewish Community of Bosnia in Sarajevo, Klein latched onto the symbolic value of the Haggadah’s survival--not only on its journey from Spain to Sarajevo, but also in the turmoil of two world wars and the most recent conflict in Bosnia, which killed some 230,000 people. He hoped it could represent and inspire the kind of multiculturalism that existed in Bosnia for hundreds of years before the recent war.

Klein arranged for a $50,000 donation from the UN Trust Fund, helped attract other donations, and worked with agencies to bring in foreign experts to evaluate the document and conduct what restoration needed to be done.

The UN drafted a memorandum of understanding between it, the Jewish Community, and the Education and Culture Ministry of the federation entity, the majority Bosniak (Muslim) and Croat half of Bosnia. The museum was not a party to the agreement, nor was it involved in drafting or reviewing it, according to Finci and Buturovic. The ministry was to represent the museum’s interest, according to those involved.

The agreement called for the UN to contribute $50,000 and manage the construction project, while the Jewish community was to raise most of the rest of the money and the ministry was to contribute $10,000 and take responsibility for continuing costs and maintenance, including utilities.

PASSING THE BUCK

But the ministry’s responsibility for the museum, it turns out, is only tangential--“almost nothing,” Deputy Minister Dubravko Lovrenovic said. “The federation ministry has responsibility only for coordinating among the [10 county-like] cantons, because each canton has its own ministry for education, culture, and sport.

“This is not up to us,” Lovrenovic said.

And since the museum is considered a national museum, the institution’s administration, along with the Sarajevo canton and federation authorities, contends that it is now a state institution. The museum’s board of directors, in fact, has selected a new director and is awaiting the approval of the state Council of Ministers.

Yet neither Sarajevo canton nor any state-level agency is a signatory to the agreement.

Kirsten Haupt, spokesperson for the former UN mission and the remaining UN liaison office, said she couldn’t imagine that the UN staff would have arranged the agreement with a ministry that didn’t have direct responsibility. But all of the UN staff who handled the project have left the country and are no longer responsible for it, she said. The mission handed over its primary tasks--training and supporting development of police forces in Bosnia--to the European Union on 31 December, and Klein left the country at the end of January.

“It’s really up to the museum,” Haupt said. “I don’t think there’s much we can do.”

The federation ministry resisted the agreement at first, said Vladimir Komanovic, adviser to Minister Mujo Demirovic, who signed the memorandum. It worried about focusing so much attention on one artifact among the museum’s collection of over a million items, and it felt the state should take responsibility because the Haggadah is considered a national artifact not belonging only to the federation. But Klein insisted, Komanovic said, going first to the state-level prime minister, who pressed the federation president, who in turn cajoled Demirovic.

When the museum finally received a copy of the memorandum, it was in English, despite the UN’s legion of translators. Just last week, the museum realized that the translation it had made omitted the reference to utilities, so administrators didn’t know until then that the agreement held the federation ministry responsible for electricity and heating for the exhibit.

The ministry did contribute to the museum’s costs last year. The federation overall provided about 35 percent of the museum’s revenue of 288,000 euros, with Sarajevo canton providing most of the rest. The museum raised about 26,000 euros from renting out space, sales of publications, and donations and another 27,000 from private companies to help pay the heating bill.

Swedish donors and others, including Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and Cultural Heritage without Borders, have provided equipment and are restoring the classical exterior of the most damaged of the four buildings.

But the museum fell 60,000 euros short of the cash it needed for operations, forcing the administration to cut its 65 employees’ already reduced salaries in half for the last five months of the year, a situation that continues today. As a result, Buturovic is receiving just 210 euros a month during the salary chill, and the museum’s library director is receiving just 125 euros per month.

Last week, Buturovic held a press conference in hopes of drawing attention to the plight of the cultural institution and preventing a cutoff of its heating supply, which was threatened in a 6 February letter from the government agency that controls such services for the museum.

In another element typical of postwar, transitional development in Bosnia, everybody owes everybody. While the museum owes back pay to its employees and another down payment to guarantee a steady supply of heat, several state-level agencies owe the museum some 157,000 euros for using its space for meetings and its quiet courtyard garden for receptions, Buturovic said.

But the problem isn’t only money. Museum staff have been worried about their ability to secure the Haggadah exhibit. “They were not ready to take over such a sophisticated security system,” Finci said. Buturovic said the museum never received copies of construction, installation, or maintenance contracts for the alarm system because the UN dealt directly with the contractors.

Finci doesn’t blame the UN, though.

“It was a huge help from the international community to provide all this money to set up the exhibit, and I think the operating costs should be the responsibility of local institutions,” Finci said.

In such a state of flux, however, the question is, which institutions? And when that question is resolved, where will the money come from to cover even the basics?

“The problem is that we are just shifting responsibility from one to the other, and it’s not clear at the end of the day who will take responsibility,” Finci said. “It’s something that probably is wrong, but it is the Bosnian reality.”