Bosnia & Herzegovina: Trauma & Healing

[Excerpted from, Europe, South & East: Stories across Cultures ?2023]

I knew that Bosnia would be an emotional challenge.

Through the Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian War of 1992-1995, when I was already an adult and a peace activist in New York, I was truly appalled by the news. My own country, and the West in general, did little if anything to intervene – to bring the ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, and massacres of hundreds of thousands, to a halt. It was all too familiar; had we learned nothing, just half a century earlier? The US finally intervened in 1995, but for so many, it was far too late.

Sarajevo does not forget.

I went there in September 2018 to learn more.

In a nondescript building was my oh-so-lovely 2-storey apartment. Faruk, the 23-year-old man whose family owns the place, upon hearing of my research interests, spoke for an hour about his country's history both glorious and traumatic, politics and imminent election, and future prospects – a priceless, spontaneous interview. "I was born after the war ended," he began, "but I must never forget those who died to bring independence to my country." So different from Serbia, with its official stance of forgetting the past.

I’d taken a local bus from the airport to my Sarajevo apartment, the bus stop a 15-minute walk from the airport through lovely suburban neighborhood, the bus then poking its way about for 45 minutes, as they do. I sat with a fat grandma who showed me how to validate my ticket (a bit different from other systems I've used), then watched 3 boisterous Romani kids at play, 2 teenage girls and 1 young (10-ish) boy, likely siblings – and observed the unhappy reactions of other passengers near them. Give me the public transit, as I often say, and I will begin to tell the (local) story.

At the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide, numerous artifacts and details of that war were on display. It is exceedingly complex, and still unresolved between Bosnia and Serbia 23 years later. Of the many horrors presented, the Hotel Vilina Vlas in Visegrad, perhaps the most well-known of the infamous rape camps and where at least 200 Bosniak women and girls were held, was among the worst.

Other especially difficult viewing was Gallery 11-07-95, with its spotlight on the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre, including numerous photographs. The term ‘Bosniak genocide’, a concept which Serbia vehemently disputes, may refer either to the whole of the period in which Bosniak Muslims were targeted, or to this specific massacre of more than 8,000 men and boys.

As I brought to the counter of my local grocery a hard white farmer's cheese, eggplant, tomatoes, onions, garlic, a handful of 6 brown eggs, and a local wine, the woman-likely-owner (she was about my age, perhaps 50s), in a moment of recognition and sisterhood, said in her lovely, accented English: "Oh – you are making a dinner." The use of English indicated her understanding that I was a visitor; yet, I was buying ingredients rather than a ready-made meal, and in that simple exchange, I felt seen.

The War Childhood Museum, its permanent exhibit on the surface one of ordinary artifacts – toys, swings, bicycles, dolls – also felt devastating. The story of war everywhere, it highlighted the most normal experiences of those who were children during the war ... in tribute to the many who did not survive, and the rest whose childhoods were traumatized and lives severely impacted.

"Sarajevo Under Siege" at the Bosnia & Herzegovina History Museum depicted the city's residents who, in addition to the trauma of warfare, were without electricity, water, or heating for 1,335 days. As I looked through a window into the museum’s back garden, however, I was struck by the fact that children were climbing on old war vehicles, including army tanks, now gathering rust and happy children – and it seemed to me to be one of the better ways to move past a traumatic history.

In a site of a different sort, Vijecnica, or City Hall, c. 1891, was bombed and burnt during the war, as a result of which the majority of its library's 1.5 million books were lost, including more than 155,000 rare books and manuscripts. It was only in 2014 that the building had been reopened, with a sign on its exterior: “Do not forget, remember and warn!”

Even the National Gallery had plenty of art related to that period – including a startling photograph of a Serbian poster from that time which described Bosniak women and girls in the most vile and derogatory terms.

A century ago, Sarajevo was the site – and I stood at that precise spot – where, in 1914 when part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian gunman – sparking World War I. The cascade of events to follow throughout the 20th century, with its early pandemic, Great Depression, World War II and multiple other heinous wars, constituted multilayered trauma, and it began here. In a domino effect, that shot led to the war in this land some 8 decades later.

Part of that was due to the breakup, by the end of World War I, of rival empires Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman, the cultural influence of both evident in Bosnia to this day. The Bosnian War was more directly due to the dissolution of Yugoslavia, with its de facto capital in Belgrade. And so many other factors.

"...from the Balkans to Scandinavia, from the US to Israel, from central Africa to India, a new Dark Age is looming, with ethnic and religious passions exploding and Enlightenment values receding. These passions were lurking in the background all the time, but what is new is the outright shamelessness of their display." In my pre-trip research of Bosnia, I'd come across a 2014 editorial in The Guardian on the Bosnian demonstrations of that period, that could have been written – is even more relevant – today; though it begins and ends with the story of Bosnia, it speaks to alarming trends throughout Europe – and the world.

Sarajevo remembers its pain, and seeks recognition and restitution still.

History repeats, and repeats.

Europe, South & East: Stories across Cultures, by Anne Hilty, ?2023