Srebrenica

Srebrenica is a landscape of death and desolation. Mountains of sorrow surround it, overlooking mass graves of memories of the dead being dug out by the living. Broken skulls and bones buried under heaps of savagery that the war-ravaged scenery cannot hide. The living desperately trying to exhume their memories somebody snatched away from them to be trucked, blindfolded and shot. Trying to create their little landscape of peace and consolation. Someone took away their memories, their sons, their husbands and their brothers. Srebrenica at last is a safe area for them to mourn their haunting memories. No longer their home. It is a place that gunfires macabre images of men and boys being bussed to death, of people fleeing from death’s jaw. Saliha Osmanovic parting from her husband and her son Nermin who she would never see. Zumra Sehomerovic still feeling the trembling of her husband’s hand when he touched her left shoulder before he was separated from her. A mother still searching for her son Samir in vein. Samir waving his hand to her saying goodbye, big tears rolling down his face as they took him away. Hassan Nuhanovic, who lost his parents and brother, trying to make sense of the dimension of hate that took away his memories.
It was a summer of anguish and terror. After the fall of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995. A miniature Holocaust. It was a summer when life withered in that town. Will Srebrenica be the last incident of genocide? Weren’t we told that Holocaust would be the last one? Hope Srebrenica is the last one.