Day 6 (June 16, 2012) - Srebenica

The road to Srebenica was beautiful and familiarly long and windy. Spirits were high on the car ride there as we had woken up and were talking about how much fun the evening before was with meeting the social work students from the University of Sarajevo, however I think we all knew that our spirits would be somewhat diminished when we arrived at our destination.

In 1993, the United Nations declared Srebrenica a safe zone and many Bosnians sought refuge in the town from hostile acts of war. Under the safety of Dutch forces, Bosnian Muslims could seek refuge in an old battery factory. Conditions were cramped but many didn’t complain because they knew they were safe, despite Serb forces surrounding the town.

In July 1995, the Serbian Army attacked the town and more than 8,000 people were killed (mostly men and boys). It is said that NOT ONE Dutch soldier fought to protect the refugees, and no call for assistance was made. Men and women were separated and men and boys were taken away, killed, slaughtered and their remains were scattered over large areas to avoid later identification. Women were raped in front of UN forces and one woman reported seeing babies being shot. Bodies were placed in mass graves while other avoided being tortured and killed by killing themselves.

When were arrived in Srebenica, one side of the road was a large cemetery for all of the bodies found of the people who died during the massacre. I walked along the cemetery and noticed the tombstones of men and women who had died at 17-yeard old and 20-years old. Their adolescence had been taken by the war and their lives had really and truly ended before they began. A large circular plaque displayed the names of all of those who had died during the massacre. It reminded me of the Holocaust memorial in Boston with all of the numbers of those that had died in the concentration camps.

The Battery factory was on the other side of the street. Some of the rooms had been preserved and some of the building had been turned into a memorial museum. Right in the beginning of walking into the grounds of the factory, there was a sign written in Dutch that said “Warning. Wasps nest”. I stood there looking at it and then realized the irony in this warning sign. The Dutch had spray-painted a wall, protecting the Bosnians from a wasps nest, but when the town was invaded by the Serbs, they did nothing!!! These people had come to the town for protection and safety and the most that the Dutch did was warn them against wasps. I began to break down almost immediately. This sign was so infuriating in it’s irony that I became infuriated and upset myself. This was, however, only the beginning of the tears that I would shed.

We walked further to where the barracks were for the soldiers and there were still drawings and graffiti on the walls. It made me think about how some of these soldiers (men and women), were probably my age at the time. I wonder what thoughts were going through their minds when the Serbian Army surrounded them and what my own reaction would have been. The Dutch have never acknowledged their mistakes during this time, but they have donated sculptures to the location of the massacres. The UN has acknowledged their mistakes during this time but somehow it seems that it’s only a fracture of a consolation for the lives lost and still missing.

When we entered the memorial museum in the largest and emptiest space of the battery factory, there was an eeriness to it all. The walls held photographs and more detailed information about what happened in Srebenica. I stood back from everyone else, wanting to process everything on my own. Another section of the museum displayed items that were found in the mass graves and on other bodies that would later help family members and investigators to identify the bodies. We then watched a film that depicted interviews and a very emotional portrayal of the events that happened in this small mountain town that would finally get the attention of the media and the rest of the world.

The drive back to Sarajevo was long and almost immediately upon re-entering the bus some of the group began to talk about getting drunk and hooking up with guys and then bridesmaids dresses and how annoying it was to have a dress that you really would NEVER wear again. I became so annoyed that some of our group members had so easily been able to get back on the bus as if nothing had happened. I, on the other hand, was still processing what I had seen. Granted, I’ve had these same conversations with friends, perhaps not after visiting the site of mass genocide and a large cemetery, but I’ve had this conversation nonetheless. Somehow these first world conversations and gripes seemed really inappropriate and insensitive to the rest of the group (or really, maybe it was just me) who was still pretty emotional. Then I wondered if I had been that naïve or unaware of the other people around me when I was their age. Was it an age thing? Was it just how some of us process certain emotional situations and how we choose to handle it? Either way, it fueled my foul mood for the evening and I chose to kind of take the rest of the afternoon and evening to myself. 

Looks like almost an entire family was wiped out

This is only a fraction of the memorial with names on it

A photograph from the aftermath

The ironic warning sign

New gravestone coming in, meaning that even now they are identifying more people