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Jews Join Mourning Over Srebrenica Massacre

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy Nees

SREBRENICA, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA (Worthy News) – Tens of thousands of mourners from around Bosnia and abroad gathered in the town of Srebrenica on Tuesday for the annual commemoration of the 1995 massacre here, Europe’s worst atrocity since World War Two.

They also tried to give a dignified burial to the victims unearthed from mass graves and only recently identified through DNA analysis.
 Twenty-eight years after they were murdered in Europe’s only acknowledged genocide since the Holocaust, 27 men, and three teenage boys were laid to rest Tuesday at a vast and ever-expanding memorial cemetery just outside Srebrenica, in eastern Bosnia.

They joined more than 6,600 massacre victims already reburied there. The Srebrenica killings of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Serb forces taking over Srebrenica were the bloody crescendo of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war. Outnumbered Dutch United Nations peacekeepers failed to protect them, an issue and open wound that eventually led to the downfall of the Dutch government.

Fighting broke after the breakup of Yugoslavia unleashed nationalist passions and territorial ambitions that set Bosnian Serbs against the country’s two other main ethnic populations — the Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks.

Ahead of Tuesday’s commemoration, Jews and Muslims came together in Bosnia to discuss ways of using their shared pain to help rid the world of hate and bigotry.

The carnage was declared a genocide by two U.N. courts.

“It is absolutely critical for the future of both the Jewish people and the (Muslim) Bosniak people for us to join forces in remembrance to make sure that these types of atrocities not be allowed to occur in the future,” said Menachem Rosensaft, the general counsel of the World Jewish Congress (WJC).

PROTECTING JEWS

Founded in 1936, the WJC is the leading international organization connecting and protecting Jewish communities in more than 100 countries.

Rosensaft led a delegation of Jewish scholars and young diplomats attending a conference co-organized by the WJC and the Srebrenica Memorial Center. They made clear they wanted to cooperate in preserving the collective memory of genocide victims.

Jewish and Muslim representatives wanted to confront denial of genocide and the Holocaust, or Shoah, in which six million Jews died besides others the Nazis didn’t like.

In Srebrenica, relatives expressed hope the memories of their murdered loved ones will live forever.

Relatives of the victims can bury only partial remains as they are typically found scattered over several different mass graves, sometimes miles (kilometers) apart.

Such was the case of Mirsada Merdzic, who buried her father on Tuesday. “Only a very few bones of his were retrieved because he had been found (in a mass grave) near the Drina River,” she said while huddling next to a casket shrouded in a green burial cloth. “Maybe the river washed him away.”


Selma Ramic reburied a handful of her father’s bones several years ago but still returns to the town for the anniversary to honor others who shared his fate. “One photo is the only thing I have left of my father, but I have love for him in my heart,” said Ramic. “He still lives in us. He will live on as long as we are alive.”