"There is no word for 'Closure' in Bosnia."

A Report on The Srebrenica Genocide Memorial: Public Debates in Sarajevo and Potočari

C. Martin Caver

5/29/10

When I entered the cavernous, rusting battery factory Potočari that now stands as a bleak cathedral of loss, I was struck by the two immense black boxes which sit in the middle of the factory floor. These giant black structures house the museum's film and narrative exhibits, but the image they conjure is more intense than their function. I couldn't help but imagine that here before my eyes was the nerve center of an evil pain still haunting the country. For many survivors of the war and its concomitant atrocities, the spectre of this pain hangs over much of the country, transforming it in perverse ways. Where a peaceful soccer field sits, survivors see death's shadow lurking like a thief. Where a grammar school stands, they see an abattoir.

On two separate occasions, in Sarajevo and at the memorial in Potočari, we listened to Hasan Nuhanović describe the searing pain still plaguing the country. "How can I begin to move on when the perpetrators who killed my family are walking the streets?" he told us. It is shocking to hear that so much remains unchanged since the Dayton Peace Accords were signed. After the bombs stopped, the wounds remain and persist to the present. Dayton brought a return to the semblance of normalcy but it did not bring healing. If anything it served to crystallize the country's fractures. The patient the doctors of Dayton treated is a fragile one. As the bandages begin to come off and first steps are attempted, we see she is unfit for discharge.

I asked Nuhanović about the memorial and cemetery, the place where he has commemorated and buried members of his own family after years of search and struggle. I wanted to know if this place, where people come to remember their loved ones and to put their remains to rest, could offer us any hope for a path out of the darkness, for a way to envision at least the potential of peace. For Nuhanović the question seemed absurd. He said "there is no word in our language for closure" and that he could not fathom how such a word could be appropriate to the situation of the survivors of the genocide. He does not think that anyone can find peace from the hollow comfort of the current circumstances.

Herein lies the Gordian knot of Bosnian progress as evident from the public debates sponsored by HIA. People cannot move on and heal without justice, but finding justice requires both a trust and sacrifice that few leaders are willing to discuss. An unquenchable fury is holding the country hostage, but this fury is not unreasonable. There is simply no blueprint for the future of Bosnia. Without such a blueprint the lingering fears, recriminations, and anger will be passed on to future generations until perhaps the miasma of hatred spills over its binds once again and violence erupts once more.

One thing that left me hopeful from this experience was the sentiments which seemed to resonate between Nuhanović and another speaker, Dirk Mulder of the Netherlands. As Director of Memorial Center Camp Westerbork he spoke about how, over a substantial period of time, Westerbork came to be seen as the symbol of the Dutch Holocaust. The process by which this camp moved from obscurity to prominence through consciousness-raising on the part of committed individuals should be a kindred movement to Nuhanović's and others' tireless efforts on the part of justice for Srebrenica. What resonates between the two is the promise of time, that time can act as a salve for present pains and as a still for the truths of history.

As Nuhanović finished speaking he began to talk about how his approach to the Genocide Memorial has changed over the years. In the early years he would fast on visits and was unable to really notice anything about the place except for the evil it represented for him. As time has passed he says that he is now able to recognize the flowers on the hills and the beauty returning, but that this has been a slow process, that "the recognition of life going on takes time." He says that forgiveness is not a meaningful vocabulary for the situation, but when faced with the image of Serbian children and his own, he agrees that we must work to build a country that all children will one day share peacefully together. We must hope in the promise of young love kindling under the Bridge of Mostar and in the nightclubs of Sarajevo. We must hope that all of Bosnia's children will grow to love one another in spite of the deeds inflicted and suffered by their parents.