Srebrenica
This day was easily the most emotionally tolling, as we stopped in Srebrenica on our way to Belgrade. It was going to be a sad day to begin with, as genocide memorials always are, but it did not help that the night before was the night we went to Cheers with the Bosnian students and many of us were hungover for the first half of the day. Being stuck on a bus with a hangover and 27 other people is not a good way to spend the morning. When I was on birthright, they told us the only night we were not allowed to drink was the night before we went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum outside of Jerusalem. While everyone understood back then the reasoning behind it, it hits home even further why they tell you not to drink before a genocide memorial after having done it… Besides this, the day was as fitting for a memorial as it could possibly be. Dark gray skies dropping a cold wet rain that left all of us cold and shivering, regardless of having a rain jacket or how many layers you put on.
Srebrenica is one thing that no one on our trip knew about prior to this visit. A very very simplified story of what happened is as follows;
In 1991 during the war, Srebrenica was besieged by the Chetniks and was finally declared a safe zone by the UN 1993. 400 Dutch peacekeepers were brought in to protect the town and met with significant resistance when they took away the weapons of the Bosniaks. By taking captives, the Chetniks were able to make the airstrikes stop and slowly advance on the city. On 6 July 1995, the Chetniks advanced towards Srebrenica, and the Dutch peacekeepers did not fire a single shot to try to stop them, so the city was taken by Milosevic and his generals. The residents and the refugees that flocked to Srebrenica as one of the last safe zones in the area were gathered in the square and through the next few days, the boys and men were separated from the women and children and killed. Several thousand tried fleeing on foot towards the nearest free city, but this was a several days walk and were ambushed so not many survived. Our guide was one of the survivors from this march. The massacre which took place from 11-13 July killed more than 8,000 men and boys and threw their bodies in mass graves.
This massacre seemed much more real than anything else you hear about in class or in the movies. Srebrenica is not something that is readily discussed in history classes and is still a sore point for many people in the Balkans. Unlike in Berlin where there are memorials to the Holocaust, WWII and war crimes nearly every other block, many people in this region still deny the role that the Bosnian Serbs played, so there is no chance for closure. One of the other biggest differences between hearing our guide Hassan speak of his experiences and hearing Holocaust survivors tell their tale is the age different. Holocaust survivors are often sage like due to their old age and are the survivors from a seemingly different time. Hassan was a teenager during the massacre, making him younger than my parents. This is the hardest reality for me that something that happened so recently, in my short lifetime, is virtually unknown to many. In this massacre, the women and children were left alive, leaving them longing for their loved ones whose fate was unknown but assumed dead. The torture of uncertainty, leaving the slightest once of hope that just maybe your husband or child survived, is one of the worst forms of torture. We watched a short video further detailing the events that happened and that interviewed mothers and wives, hoping their loved ones survived but knowing in the back of their mind what their ultimate fate was. Watching live footage of the bombings and some of the events that occurred seemed almost unreal since this type of footage is not often released or for public viewing in the US.
After the memorial, we made our way into the town of Srebrenica for a homemade lunch. It was an all you can eat buffet which was certainly welcomed since we were all cold, wet and hungry. We managed to stuff all of our faces since it was the first meal other than breakfast where we could choose our portions and our eyes were definitely bigger than our stomachs.
The rest of the day was spent driving to Belgrade, which should not have taken that long but took the remainder of the afternoon because the roads were not overly great. The drive to Srebrenica that was beautiful and mountainous gave way to flat countryside with a stop at the boarder so we could show our passports, interrupting everyones bus ride naps. We finally made it to Belgrade in time for a late dinner. Several of us made our way to the Pedestrian Street after exchanging our currency for the fourth time and ate at Vapianos, a brilliantly designed European chain of Italian restaurants. They give you a card and order individually at the counter based on what type of dish you want- pasta, pizza, salad, etc. This worked great since there was a group of 9 of us and did not exactly want to wait a long time for our food.
Srebrenica is one thing that no one on our trip knew about prior to this visit. A very very simplified story of what happened is as follows;
In 1991 during the war, Srebrenica was besieged by the Chetniks and was finally declared a safe zone by the UN 1993. 400 Dutch peacekeepers were brought in to protect the town and met with significant resistance when they took away the weapons of the Bosniaks. By taking captives, the Chetniks were able to make the airstrikes stop and slowly advance on the city. On 6 July 1995, the Chetniks advanced towards Srebrenica, and the Dutch peacekeepers did not fire a single shot to try to stop them, so the city was taken by Milosevic and his generals. The residents and the refugees that flocked to Srebrenica as one of the last safe zones in the area were gathered in the square and through the next few days, the boys and men were separated from the women and children and killed. Several thousand tried fleeing on foot towards the nearest free city, but this was a several days walk and were ambushed so not many survived. Our guide was one of the survivors from this march. The massacre which took place from 11-13 July killed more than 8,000 men and boys and threw their bodies in mass graves.
This massacre seemed much more real than anything else you hear about in class or in the movies. Srebrenica is not something that is readily discussed in history classes and is still a sore point for many people in the Balkans. Unlike in Berlin where there are memorials to the Holocaust, WWII and war crimes nearly every other block, many people in this region still deny the role that the Bosnian Serbs played, so there is no chance for closure. One of the other biggest differences between hearing our guide Hassan speak of his experiences and hearing Holocaust survivors tell their tale is the age different. Holocaust survivors are often sage like due to their old age and are the survivors from a seemingly different time. Hassan was a teenager during the massacre, making him younger than my parents. This is the hardest reality for me that something that happened so recently, in my short lifetime, is virtually unknown to many. In this massacre, the women and children were left alive, leaving them longing for their loved ones whose fate was unknown but assumed dead. The torture of uncertainty, leaving the slightest once of hope that just maybe your husband or child survived, is one of the worst forms of torture. We watched a short video further detailing the events that happened and that interviewed mothers and wives, hoping their loved ones survived but knowing in the back of their mind what their ultimate fate was. Watching live footage of the bombings and some of the events that occurred seemed almost unreal since this type of footage is not often released or for public viewing in the US.
The rest of the day was spent driving to Belgrade, which should not have taken that long but took the remainder of the afternoon because the roads were not overly great. The drive to Srebrenica that was beautiful and mountainous gave way to flat countryside with a stop at the boarder so we could show our passports, interrupting everyones bus ride naps. We finally made it to Belgrade in time for a late dinner. Several of us made our way to the Pedestrian Street after exchanging our currency for the fourth time and ate at Vapianos, a brilliantly designed European chain of Italian restaurants. They give you a card and order individually at the counter based on what type of dish you want- pasta, pizza, salad, etc. This worked great since there was a group of 9 of us and did not exactly want to wait a long time for our food.
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