Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1116234 in Books
• Published on: 1996-10
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 176 pages

Amazon.com
In The Tenth Circle of Hell, Rezak Hukanovic takes us inside the Bosnian prison camps to document the hell of war in the former Yugoslavia. Although he writes in the third person, Hukanovic's knowledge of the camps is firsthand; a radio announcer and journalist, he was taken from his home at gunpoint and placed in the Omarska and Manjaca camps, places where people were beaten solely because of their ethnic background. What's so chilling about this book is not only the brutality of the camps, but also that such a situation occurred so very recently.

From Publishers Weekly
The horrors undergone by narrator Djemo (actually journalist Hukanovic, who inexplicably chooses to write in the third person here), a Muslim resident of Prijedor, in the death camps of Omarska and Manjaca, where Serbians carried out part of their "ethnic cleansing" of Bosnia, make for harrowing reading. But the sadism was the more unbearable for the victims, he writes, because it came at the hands of those they knew, people with whom they had worked and played soccer, drunk at neighborhood bars and in wedding parties. Even more depressing to Hukanovic was the realization that the torturers and murderers enjoyed their work. After almost a year, Hukanovic was released, went to Norway and now is headquartered in Germany. He sums up his experiences thus: "Oh Lord, may you never forgive them!"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, Anna Husarska
Mr. Hukanovic certainly deserves a place next to others who have written memorably about similar subjects [including] Primo Levi ...

Customer Reviews

What I learned from the memoir.
Hukanovic's memoir is a first hand account of the war in Bosnia--focusing mostly on the brutal concentration camps where many Croats and Muslims died. Hukanovic is a journalist from Prijedor who spent six months in two different concentration camps. When written in 1993, it seems that his main goal was to end all doubt that atrocities were being committed necessitating the call for international intervention.

The memoir had two significant omissions used for the purpose historical commentary. First was the omission of the commonly used first person. He stated that this omission was intended partly out of disbelief and partly out of a purposeful detachment to the graphic and sometimes creative atrocities he witnessed. Also, the ethnicity of Hukanovic was mysteriously never mentioned as a way to further emphasizing the unity of the different ethnicities of Bosnia. As a whole, a reader can fuse the accounts in this memoir in order to shed more light on the history of the Bosnian War.

The memoir described the three ethnic groups living in complete harmony before the war that would eventually disrupt this ethnic symbiosis. Hukanovic gave one account of a Serb named Mrdja who was about to kill a Muslim prisoner named Dado. In this account, right before Mrdja pulled the trigger he heard another Serbian soldier yell "not him, please!" This soldier, who was not named, and Dado worked together in a café before the war (104). This story, and many others presented in the memoir, discredits the myth that Balkan conflicts are inevitable ethnic hostilities stemming from a long history of intolerance and hate.

Overall, the book was insightful and written well. Hukanovic has a way with writing making the book enjoyable despite being difficult to hear at times. I would recommend this book to those interested in knowing more about the Bosnian War.

Holocaust of the '90s
I am no learned professional. I am no literary master. I am an average guy, with average intelligence, average imagination - just an average joe. I have however taken an interest in the history of humanity's crimes against itself and it fills me with dread.

And so I read this book. If anyone ever wondered if humanity has learnt its lessons from the horrors of WW1 and WW2, then they are sorely mistaken. We haven't even learnt from the brutalities of the dark ages yet. The crimes committed against completely innocent people by these Serb monsters draw back to the times of Ivan the Terrible and his Oprichnia. It is barbaric and horrific to its most base level. The sufferings of these innocent people are like nothing you would witness from the most vile horror movie - in fact, many of these Serb paramilitaries (ie average joes with guns, imaginations and complete & total immunity from justice) waltzed around like the Rambos and Terminators of our film world.

Back to the book. Mr Hukanovic's story tells of a civilian, caught up in onslaught of enemy forces, captured and taken to concentration camps to 'suffer their fate'. The fact this hero to humanity survived when his family and friends were butchered is a testament to his strength. I wonder if many other people would have the strength to relive their nightmares and put their stories to print. I hope for humanity's sake, they can.

Now there is a school of thought that suggests that personal memoirs can be tainted by the writers emotions, could be exaggerated and distorted. And when witness to such horrors, one could see how easily someone could be emotive on this subject. However, Rezak, as much as he can, keeps his levelheadedness thoughout this book. He doesn't stray into emotive hyperbole, he doesn't try to stir the heart strings, he just tells it how it was. The fantastic thing is that unlike most memoirists, he describes each detail as it occured. Similar to 'Man is Wolf to Man' by Joseph Bardach, he explains it matter of factly. Obviously, there will be emotion, there has to be, but it is tempered with excellence by his journalistic reporting intuition.

Rezak Hukanovic lived through the most horrific torture any human being could live through. He has written a book so shattering to humanity that it must be read, it must be consumed by EVERYBODY.

These events, if we do not learn from them, will happen again. And don't give me this rubbish that 'certain' ethnicities are 'fated' to brutalise each other. That is just an excuse for us to turn a blind eye. Please, let us not repeat the ineptitude of the UN security forces in Bosnia, please let us not give up repairing Iraq and Afghanistan after our 'intrusions'.

Like respondants have said before, we should not turn our back on the suffering of innocents. Our governments SHOULD be doing something valid and worthwhile, but they must tell us so. If we have to send troops to foreign nations for humanitarian reasons, to stop genocidal murder, then tell us so. Humanity cannot stand idley by while murderous governments stir up their populations with unbridled hatred of their neighbours.

Mr Hukanovic is a hero. Let his book be never forgotten. Let the slaughter of Bosnia never be forgotton. I do not care what religion anyone adhere's to, every SINGLE human being has a right NOT to be subjected to these horrors.

"No comment"
Dear Friends, imagine for one minute if you wake up one morning and find out that your childhood friends,your neighbours have turned into beasts and that you're the haunted one. Imagine for one minute that you have been a professor to a stupid student and now this stupid student has your life in his hands; imagine that you have been a judge who convicted a criminal and this very same criminal is a guard of yours and is your judge now!
Imagine the worst hell yet there'll be nothing as scary and terrifying than the memoirs of this remarkable man who has been at one of tens (if not hundreds) of death camps of Bosnia.

Prijedor,may 30 1992, a sunny day. D is having his morning coffee as usual but the unexpected is soon to happen and D is taken away by serb terrorists, once his neighbours and friends.
Soon,D's son, a teenager, and lots of D's cousin and friends join him in the place where they were gathering the peaceful enemies of terror. After they get maltreated in so many ways, the serb terrorists decide to send them to an administrative building in Omarska, in which place thousands join D's fate.
They are to see a living hell with their own eyes, and even though their imagination in regards of their fate was quite rich, the unexpectable kept coming from serb terrorists, the runners of this death camp.
The introduction :

1. The prisoners in the hands of terrorists, are left without food for four days then...

2. Later, when they were fed, they were allowed to eat not longer
than two minutes as they were beaten at the meantime...

3. The serb terrorists, called out the names of prisoners, chose them like if they were soccer balls, and played and kicked them all over without any mercy...

4. The prisoners were so thirsty and the serb terrorists refused to give them water to drink so the solution to this was : ......
(Goodness me)....People wetted their lips with their urine, some even drank it.

5. The serb students (now terrorists) called out the names of prisoner teachers and... The serb convicted criminals called out the names of presidents of justice and judges...then....

6. One of the favorite "game" serb terrorists enjoyed was getting an old man have sexual intercourse with a much younger lady. As a honourable man, he refused but died with dignity. Then the serb terrorists chose two man to bite two other men's genitals and they did...

And so so many horrible stories that will make you shiver just by reading it.
We Albanians have a saying "A human being is as strong as steel yet as weak as glass". In this case, the author of this very important book must be as strong as steel to go through all that hell and still remain a normal person. I mean what would you do, if you were him??? I am terrified at the thought.
Anyways, even though serbs are very familiar to me for the crimes they did in my country Kosova who is safe thanks to U.S.A.
now - I found one more reason to despise them for as long as I live, and I'll make sure my descendants will despise them too forever. I mean, the serbs horrible crimes in Croatia,Bosnia and Kosova, must have made them immortal beasts and they will always remain like that in all our minds. "We will never forget and I hope the world will never forget either" - because what can you really expect from a lifetime neigbour and friend who has the ability to turn into a beast to you in a matter of minutes, and refuses to see you like a neighbour or a friend, let alone a fellow human being like they were supposed to be!