In early June, 1992, the Serb gunners in the hills above Sarajevo were mounting some of their fiercest bombardments of the war. Among their targets was the National Museum of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The building, of course, had no military significance. But, in a war of "ethnic cleansing," the destruction of religious and cultural landmarks is a strategic imperative, and the museum was fair game. The country's leading repository of Bosnian anthropological and literary artifacts, it was home to the crown jewel of Balkan Judaica: the medieval Sephardic Passover prayerbook known as the Sarajevo Haggadah. Shortly after the museum was hit on June 6, a Sarajevo University professor, Enver Imamovic, and three government soldiers went to rescue the Haggadah. They ransacked the museum's upstairs offices and galleries for hours, but turned up nothing. Then the four men groped their way into the darkened basement where shells had punctured the pipes, covering the floor with two inches of water. Imamovic finally found the book near a door blocked by rubble. Had the Haggadah not been lying on a slope leading up to the exit stairs--or had its rescuers come upon it even a few hours later--it may have been damaged forever by the rising water. That was the last confirmed sighting of the Sarajevo Haggadah. It is now rumored to be in the underground vault of the Bosnian National Bank, which serves as both a bomb shelter and a well-hidden safehouse for cultural artifacts. But Bosnian officials dismiss queries about the whereabouts and condition of the Sarajevo Haggadah with curt references to "national security." President Alija Izetbegovic has offered only this cryptic comment: "There is an old Bosnian proverb," he says. "When the Jews leave a city, that means the city is finally dead." One of the few Jews remaining in Sarajevo is Ivan Ceresnjes, president of Sarajevo's tiny Jewish community. Ceresnjes has perhaps the strongest claim of anyone outside the government to see the Haggadah. Yet he, too, has been refused access. "I fear these are the last days of the Haggadah," he says. "I doubt it can survive in these conditions." Government stonewalling has led to speculation that the Haggadah has crumbled beyond repair for lack of proper care--or has been peddled on the black market in a desperate move to help finance the war. I confirmed that such a sale was entertained at least once. The potential buyer and a Central European academic told me they tried for weeks to buy the book from Bosnian officials in the fall of 1992. The proposed price was $1 million--no questions asked. The obvious implication was that the suitcase full of cash could be used to buy arms. But the deal fell through. For now, the book remains missing in action. In a way, it is a fitting fate for a document that recounts the ancient tale of a people's redemption after decades of tyranny and exile. "The Sarajevo Haggadah is one of the finest medieval illuminated manuscripts in existence and the most famous Passover Haggadah in the world," says Chimen Abramsky, an adviser on rare books to Sotheby's, who confirms that it could easily fetch $1 million on the auction block. The Haggadah's 142 vellum folios, made of bleached leather, are inscribed in gold and copper. They depict in shimmering detail the Creation, the exile of Adam and Eve from Eden and the Flood. Written in about 1350 in Catalonia, the fabled book was later taken out of Spain by Jews fleeing the Inquisition. The signature of a Jesuit censor on one of its pages confirms that it was in Rome in 1609. After that, it probably circulated among Jewish communities on the Dalmatian coast. About 100 years ago, says Eugen Werber, a professor at Belgrade University, an orphan boy from a family called Kohen sold it to the Jewish religious school in Sarajevo for twenty-five Austrian crowns. In 1894 the Austrian imperial artistic treasury purchased the Haggadah and put it in the National Museum in Sarajevo. When Nazi troops occupied Sarajevo in 1941, a Wehrmacht officer was ordered to seize the Haggadah from the National Museum, presumably to complement Hitler's collection of plundered art from Paris and Prague. The museum's director, Jozo Petrovic, confronted the Nazi soldier, calmly telling him that another officer had already confiscated the book. He unlocked his gallery so the German officer could see for himself--knowing that this brief stalling tactic had allowed Dervis Korkut, a scholar of Arabic, to sneak out with the Haggadah and bury it under an apple tree on Mount Bjelasnica. Having survived the Inquisition and the Holocaust, can the Sarajevo Haggadah survive today's war? Ivan Ceresnjes has suggested evacuating it for a traveling exhibition to raise money for Bosnia relief. He was rebuffed. Israeli authorities have asked the Bosnian government to let the book be taken from the war zone under United Nations escort, and thence to Israel where it can be restored and preserved. An Israeli emissary slipped into Sarajevo early last year to make this pitch, but the Bosnian government refused to receive him. The Israelis then asked the Cortauld Institute of Art at the University of London to intercede, but the institute said it lacked the funds for such a risky undertaking. The Haggadah's best hope appears to be Marian Wenzel, an American art historian in London. She is secretary-general of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Rescue Foundation, a private, u.n.-approved charity that salvages art, cultural relics and architectural treasures from Bosnia's wreckage. She is leading a brave campaign to coordinate safe passage to Sarajevo for Chazim Hadzimejlic, an expatriate Bosnian expert on restoring ancient manuscripts who currently works at the Art Institute of Istanbul. Although the mayor of Sarajevo, Tarik Kupusovic, has expressed his support for the project, the government hasn't followed up with a formal invitation. Officially, the custodian of the manuscript is Bosnia's minister of culture and education, Enes Karic. This is ominous news. Karic, a professor of Koranic studies, is a hard-line Muslim nationalist who has publicly criticized mixed marriages and secular education and is unlikely to have much interest in preserving the Jewish patrimony. But the Sarajevo Haggadah is more than just a Jewish treasure. It is also a Bosnian treasure, a symbol of the republic's rich heritage of cultural diversity. One small way to show that the war has not killed that heritage would be to guarantee the survival of the Haggadah. Thom Shanker is senior European correspondent for The Chicago Tribune.