"Angels on the sideline
Baffled and confused
Father blessed them all with reason
And this is what they choose"
Baffled and confused
Father blessed them all with reason
And this is what they choose"
~Tool, Right in Two
Back in Beograd as of an hour ago. Today we visited Srebrenica, where, beginning on July 11th, 1995, over 8000 Bosniak men of "military age" were separated from their loved ones by Serb paramilitary forces and summarily executed while inept UN troops looked on. The massacre lasted eleven days, but that means nothing to a town and people still haunted by the ghosts of what happened there.
There's a memorial/cemetery and awareness center at the site of the genocide, divided by a road that runs to the heart of the town two kilometers away. We disembarked to bitter wind and silent air. To the left stood the dilapidated factory where the men were systematically separated from their families. To the right stretched a sea of white granite tombstones, perfectly similar to one another save for the names etched in Latin and Arabic scripts. A dog with a twisted front leg loped up to us, sniffing around our group.
We were given rein to walk among the stones. I've walked through grave sites before, and the difference in this one to most others I've visited--prior knowledge of its history aside--was the utter and complete uniformity, how every row blended together into one repeating pattern, without a break. I realized, as I read name after name on these unchanging slabs, that this kind of uniformity can only happen when they're all erected at the same time. The cemetery of a peaceful community will be haphazard, chaotic, the graves as varied as the lives that ended six feet beneath their visages. When eight-thousand people die in eleven days, they are filed away and duly marked in a ledger; nothing else can logistically be done, and so they have been robbed of their voice, their individuality, their identity, in this way as well.
We moved into a room containing a photographic exhibit at the cemetery gates. The room was stark, white, and subterranean--it felt as though I was entering one of the thousands of graves between which I had walked. The images were screams without voices; they implied horrors too visceral to display, spoke words too maddening to whisper. I can't say that any one picture hit me the hardest, but two stick in my mind. One presents a forensic specialist exhuming one of the primary mass grave sites in 2002. The scientist's hand, encased in a spotless rubber glove, tenderly grasps that of a corpse, its extremity rotted through, as they begin the process of victim identification. The other image is a large expanse of eastern Bosnian forest doubtlessly nearby, with an observer captured in the very bottom edge of the photograph. The only thing that can be seen of the observer is the text on the back of his billed cap: "United States of America".
We emerged from the gallery and crossed the road, entering the factory where thousands of Bosniaks were kept by the Dutch UN forces, who eventually caved to the pressure of Serb paramilitary commander Ratko Mladić and relinquished the civilians. The entrance to this section of the memorial was secured by a large iron padlock and rusted chain. Our guide opened it and led us inside.
The warehouse itself was barren, echoing. The majority of it seemed unchanged from the events of seventeen years ago. Snow melt dripped from the gutted ceiling onto the concrete floor below, pounding out an even time like an inexorable drum. The light scarcely touched the extreme corners of the warehouse, and one dark cube in the center housed an exhibit. I went there first.
Within were the personal stories of about a dozen Srebrenica victims, and a picture and personal effect (such as a comb, or a handkerchief) belonging to each one. This, above all else, hammered home the humanity of these people--the senseless, wasteful murder of these perfectly imperfect lives. The exhibit told of people who worked hard and loved one another, but also of those who had given up, or left their families, or wasted their talent. Those slaughtered at Srebrenica were not angels, just human beings, the same as any of us.
Towards the end of it we saw the warehouse in which the culpable Dutch battalion was based. The wall was covered in graffiti insulting Bosnian women, bemoaning how much they hated to be stationed there, describing their apathy at the entire situation. In another room, beneath a pencil sketch of a naked woman, was a bumper sticker with the words "Love is all you need". Maybe it was, but I don't think so.
We left Srebrenica after several hours. The road that runs through it runs through half a hundred other towns that Srebrenica was once identical to.
"Srebrenica" does different things to different people in this part of the world. It chases smiles away from some, weights the words that come from others. It ignites anger frequently enough, either from eternally wounded Bosniaks or viciously unrepentant Četniks. I do not have the right to feel either of their anger (nor do I want to feel that of the latter), but I can only hope that the word "Srebrenica" becomes a reminder to the rest of us of two more words that once carried weight: "never again". There is no excuse for our inaction, no exception that differentiates that failure from this one, no saving grace that washes their blood from the hands of the free world. I can't feel anything but disgust at the idea that 8,373 men, women, and children were slaughtered because we forgot those words, and can only pray that we remember them before the next Srebrenica.
"I dream of my father, but not often enough." ~Child of a victim of the Srebrenica genocide
Back in Beograd as of an hour ago. Today we visited Srebrenica, where, beginning on July 11th, 1995, over 8000 Bosniak men of "military age" were separated from their loved ones by Serb paramilitary forces and summarily executed while inept UN troops looked on. The massacre lasted eleven days, but that means nothing to a town and people still haunted by the ghosts of what happened there.
There's a memorial/cemetery and awareness center at the site of the genocide, divided by a road that runs to the heart of the town two kilometers away. We disembarked to bitter wind and silent air. To the left stood the dilapidated factory where the men were systematically separated from their families. To the right stretched a sea of white granite tombstones, perfectly similar to one another save for the names etched in Latin and Arabic scripts. A dog with a twisted front leg loped up to us, sniffing around our group.
We were given rein to walk among the stones. I've walked through grave sites before, and the difference in this one to most others I've visited--prior knowledge of its history aside--was the utter and complete uniformity, how every row blended together into one repeating pattern, without a break. I realized, as I read name after name on these unchanging slabs, that this kind of uniformity can only happen when they're all erected at the same time. The cemetery of a peaceful community will be haphazard, chaotic, the graves as varied as the lives that ended six feet beneath their visages. When eight-thousand people die in eleven days, they are filed away and duly marked in a ledger; nothing else can logistically be done, and so they have been robbed of their voice, their individuality, their identity, in this way as well.
We moved into a room containing a photographic exhibit at the cemetery gates. The room was stark, white, and subterranean--it felt as though I was entering one of the thousands of graves between which I had walked. The images were screams without voices; they implied horrors too visceral to display, spoke words too maddening to whisper. I can't say that any one picture hit me the hardest, but two stick in my mind. One presents a forensic specialist exhuming one of the primary mass grave sites in 2002. The scientist's hand, encased in a spotless rubber glove, tenderly grasps that of a corpse, its extremity rotted through, as they begin the process of victim identification. The other image is a large expanse of eastern Bosnian forest doubtlessly nearby, with an observer captured in the very bottom edge of the photograph. The only thing that can be seen of the observer is the text on the back of his billed cap: "United States of America".
We emerged from the gallery and crossed the road, entering the factory where thousands of Bosniaks were kept by the Dutch UN forces, who eventually caved to the pressure of Serb paramilitary commander Ratko Mladić and relinquished the civilians. The entrance to this section of the memorial was secured by a large iron padlock and rusted chain. Our guide opened it and led us inside.
The warehouse itself was barren, echoing. The majority of it seemed unchanged from the events of seventeen years ago. Snow melt dripped from the gutted ceiling onto the concrete floor below, pounding out an even time like an inexorable drum. The light scarcely touched the extreme corners of the warehouse, and one dark cube in the center housed an exhibit. I went there first.
Within were the personal stories of about a dozen Srebrenica victims, and a picture and personal effect (such as a comb, or a handkerchief) belonging to each one. This, above all else, hammered home the humanity of these people--the senseless, wasteful murder of these perfectly imperfect lives. The exhibit told of people who worked hard and loved one another, but also of those who had given up, or left their families, or wasted their talent. Those slaughtered at Srebrenica were not angels, just human beings, the same as any of us.
Towards the end of it we saw the warehouse in which the culpable Dutch battalion was based. The wall was covered in graffiti insulting Bosnian women, bemoaning how much they hated to be stationed there, describing their apathy at the entire situation. In another room, beneath a pencil sketch of a naked woman, was a bumper sticker with the words "Love is all you need". Maybe it was, but I don't think so.
We left Srebrenica after several hours. The road that runs through it runs through half a hundred other towns that Srebrenica was once identical to.
"Srebrenica" does different things to different people in this part of the world. It chases smiles away from some, weights the words that come from others. It ignites anger frequently enough, either from eternally wounded Bosniaks or viciously unrepentant Četniks. I do not have the right to feel either of their anger (nor do I want to feel that of the latter), but I can only hope that the word "Srebrenica" becomes a reminder to the rest of us of two more words that once carried weight: "never again". There is no excuse for our inaction, no exception that differentiates that failure from this one, no saving grace that washes their blood from the hands of the free world. I can't feel anything but disgust at the idea that 8,373 men, women, and children were slaughtered because we forgot those words, and can only pray that we remember them before the next Srebrenica.
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