Joe Sacco's Safe Area Gorazde By Joe Sacco

The first book, or should I say graphic comic, “Safe Area Gorazde” By Joe Sacco. He tells a story, in graphic detail, of his experience visiting a Muslim territory during the Bosnian War. Catastrophically, this story is based on testimonies of someone who lived through the war in Gorazde. It is said to be an area where Bosnian Muslims are able to take refuge to avoid the ethnic cleansing committed by the Serbian army. The area of Gorazde is anything but protected which Sacco establishes throughout the graphic novel by calling out the UN and the US who are able to and responsible for protecting the residents of such territories, but instead turn their backs on the war saying “we must have patients” said UN sectary, and that they don’t have a dog in this fight. “…the U.N. extended safe area status to other Bosnian enclaves, including Gorazde. But the U.N. had yet to work out what the concept meant”. On one hand the U.N. had obligated itself, presumably, to keep the safe areas safe; on the other hand, the safe areas implicitly formalized Serb gain and the concentration of Muslims into what President Clinton warned would become “shooting galleries” Sacco says (Sacco, 148). These so called “safe” areas are completely abandoned by the authorities who promise to watch over them, despite being some of the top most dangerous in the world. The entire world seems to turn their back on the brutalities going on in Bosnia. The destruction of the nation, senseless killing of men, brutal raping of women, and even the murder and neglect of even children. The residents have nowhere to go, get thrown out of their homes, have no hope, and little or no access to basic necessities, such as clean water, food, and health care. These circumstances and the...

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...remove for the earth.

The circumstances between Germany and Bosnia are quite different, however, there is a strong resemblance as well. It is highly unlikely that another Holocaust would ever occur again as long as the memory of the catastrophe is not forgotten. Even though world powers took forever to step in, it was due to the holocaust that anything was ever done.

Another area of this paper I want to mention is the lack of help Bosnians received during this war torn time. The U.N. did not want to intervene till, in my opinion, it was too late. This is touched upon in each of the materials covered. 1993, the United Nations (UN) Security Council declared that Sarajevo, Gorazde, Srebrenica and other Muslim enclaves were to be safe areas, protected by a contingent of UN peacekeepers, which we read about in “Safe Area Gorazde” which we know that was a joke in its self