Jasna Levinger-Goy, Out of the Siege of Sarajevo (Pen & Sword, 2022)
In spring 1992, Jasna Levinger-Goy, a university lecturer became increasingly baffled by ethnic tensions in her hometown of Sarajevo that accelerated into a full-blown civil war. She lived through the hell of snipers and shelling before escaping to Belgrade then London and Cambridge, where she now lives. Out of the Siege of Sarajevo is the poignant and illuminating memoir of a woman searching for her lost identity.
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Levinger-Goy begins with a necessary overview of Sarajevo and her life in it before the civil war. While she saw the signs of that impending conflict, Levinger-Goy lived in denial, despite, or perhaps because of, her education and position as a professor. Then the shelling started, and she found herself having to survive amidst decreasing supplies and increasing danger. To her horror and bewilderment, Levinger-Goy came to accept that Sarajevo was under siege and the atrocities were piling up. Hunger and deprivation came with the shells, but Levinger-Goy, her family, and neighbours learned to survive. She describes her powerlessness and the randomness of death by shellfire or sniper bullet as she walked around town looking for milk and other supplies. She became a regular visitor to the local Jewish Community centre and people she knew dropped by her house just to talk. Finally, Levinger-Goy knew the time had come for her to leave. This was an ordeal in itself, but she found time to arrange a marriage with a man she was trying to help get out of the city. Then, in August 1992, Levinger-Goy boarded a bus with her parents and left.
After a harrowing bus journey, the family arrived in Pirovac where they could recuperate, and from there, they travelled to Belgrade. Settling down in a new city was not easy for a refugee, but Levinger-Goy kept going, finding work and fitting in as best she could in her desire to feel ‘normal’. Even though the complications continued, Levinger-Goy resumed her academic interests and things seemed to be going well. But all around her, the economy was collapsing, and refugees were scapegoated, yet she could not go back to Sarajevo. Levinger-Goy chose the UK, and she emigrated with her mother three years after the war came to Sarajevo. The settling in process began again, this time more successfully, though not without its obstacles. Levinger-Goy married a UK citizen and moved to Cambridge. When her husband died in 2000, she lapsed into depression from which she struggled to recover. Levinger-Goy finally returned to Sarajevo in 2004 but met with resentment and hatred for leaving; she has never gone back. Her memoir closes with an addendum on Yugoslavia in WWII, an update on all the people she mentions in the book, and an excerpt from a short story that illustrates some of the issues that linger in Sarajevo.
Memoirs are difficult to review because you are challenging the writer’s lived experiences. When they fail, they do so usually for fabrication, grandstanding, or too many errors. Sometimes, they are just boring. Levinger-Goy’s memoir is none of those. This is a well-written and touching account of a woman’s struggle to comprehend her ordeals, first under fire in Sarajevo then as a refugee. With Europe roiled once more by war and a seemingly constant refugee crisis, memoirs such as these are important guides to understanding. Only a monster could read this and not feel compassion for Levinger-Goy and those like her who have faced the worst humanity has to offer yet show resilience and fortitude in trying to rebuild their lives.
