Prisoners' messages on pieces of clothes written for future generations

During the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina, some 200,000 military and civilian prisoners went through the concentration camps. About 30,000 of them were killed, while the others were freed after having underwent horrific torturing.

While in the camps, the prisoners were looking for ways to leave their messages about when they had been brought to the camp and how much time they had spent there.

In the Museum of Crimes against Humanity and Genocide in Ferhadija Street in Sarajevo, one of the exponats is a shirt of a former prisoner of HVO's concentration camps in Herzegovina. On this shirt, he wrote the names of all the prisoners who were at the camp at the time.

This prisoner went through the concentration camps – Gabela, Silos and Ljubuski. Yet, he managed to survive.

- People tried to create a variety of evidence about the tortures they had gone through during their time in the camps. Some of them did not believe they would survive, Nermina Ljutic, Museum curator says.

- Sometimes they left their messages on a piece of paper, or the wall of the concentration camp, other times on pieces of their clothes such as this one, she adds.

Prisoners' writings made during their time at the camps, were often used as the evidence of the Prosecution before the International Tribunal for War Crimes in Den Haag.

There were 650 concentration camps during the conflict in BiH. The most of them were situated on the military held territories of then non-constitutional Republika Srpska