The Bosnian Genocide: Europe’s Only Genocide Since WWII

"Never again.. except for all the times it will happen again. But after those... never again!"

I'm Bosnian, and the worst thing about this war and genocide is about how fresh it all is. My mother's best friend is a woman who came from a Srebrenica concentration camp. She was there when she was only 17, and while she never tells anything, she's a skinny woman with a ton of health problems, most of which center around PTSD and female reproductive organs. She says often "whatever I've lived through, it would have been fine if any of my brothers or my parents survived". Another mom's friend is from Brcko, a small city northeast of Bosnia. She was in a concentration camp too, and, same as the previous one, has a ton of similar health problems. At least she has her brother alive, she says. Neither of them can have children. You will notice that most of the victims of the genocide are men, and it might confuse you. Indeed, most men killed, especially in Srebrenica, were young, capable men. These men, however, were wholly unprepared, had no weapons, and were indeed civillians. As to why mostly men were targeted? Well, see, in Bosnia and Serbia alike, back in the 80s and 90s, the family line would continue by the male children, while girls would be married off into another family line- and when she does marry, she takes the surname of the new family, and completely moves into that family, calling her husband's parents her own (yes this is patriarchy at its finest, and it's changing a lot nowadays, but back then this was the case in most families). "Purity" before marriage was a big concept as well. So basically the plan was: kill off all the men and boys so the family line doesn't continue, assaulting girls for the fun of it, but also if she becomes pregnant, how great, she'll bear a Serbian child. Boys as young as 12 were killed, and many were saved only because their mothers managed to pass them off as girls somehow. "Pure" girls also were preferred by the soldiers, so they favored unmarried women. Women typically married at the age of 17-20 back then, especially in more rural places. There are only rare accounts of what women went through in this war, because of the shame culture- and when I say rare, I only ever heard of 3-4 from the entire country. One thing that Simon didn't mention is how, after the Srebrenica genocide in particular, there was a huge action by Serb military forces to cover up their traces, so they took some trucks and tried to scatter around the mass grave sites, to make the bodies more difficult to find. Years later, when the excavations started to give the victims a proper religious burial, bones of one individual person would be found in multiple mass graves. Some people would be buried with only a few bones, the rest of the body never found. I'd still like to point out, as a Bosnian, I feel like it's a responsibility of mine as well, that very little of what modern day Serbia and Bosnian Serbs are is responsible for this. Yes, there are still plenty of criminals who were never convicted, but outside of that, Serbia is a beautiful country and Serbs are generally hospitable people. It feels like whenever we talk about this, we have to preface that there is a difference between violent criminals and normal people who live in Serbia today, but this has to be mentioned and repeated. Serbia does not equal evil.

I was born in Srebrenica in 1994. The majority of my male family members were killed, including my father, grandfather, and three uncles. Even those who survived are still scarred to this day. The life was never the same for them, and it will never be.

I saw it. Smelled it. My first deployment was to Bosnia in 1994. I've seen everything evil humans will do to. eachother. I've been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since. But my experiences in Bosnia has scarred me forever.

Yugoslavia was such a shock in a modern Europe. The events that occurred were unthinkable only a couple years prior. I mean Sarajevo held the Olympics less the 8 years before it was besieged for years.

Simon, I was in Bosnia for a year with the U.S. Army at the end of the war. I saw the brutalism first hand. You are right, people are not taught what happened. I tell anyone who will listen.

A friend of mine lived through it. She’s one of the kindest souls I know despite the horror. So much respect for her and her people.

The Serbs are still gonna reject the fact that this happened

I grew up in St Louis. We have a massive Bosnian population. Grew up hearing stories from my friends about the war.

My dad was being loaded onto one of those school buses when one of the guards told him not to get on. It was his childhood best friend. he spent about 6 months in one of the camps until the UN came and liberated them. He was 6'5" and weighed 46kg when he was rescued. His family all escaped physically intact but still has the psychological scars to this day. I'm glad to see a video about this because not many people know about this horror. He is currently raising money for Ukraine and Palestine because he knows genocide first hand. If this video upset you then please do the same.

"You wont be needing them anymore" sending chills down my spine

I've know a number of Bosnians who made it to my country during and after the war. One of the craziest things is that a lot of the enemies were their former neighbours and friends. How can you ever feel safe again anywhere or trust anyone after that?

I was born during the tail end of this war. My father was an officer, therefore not only responsible for many soldiers, but also my mother and their family. My parents brought me into this world despite the risks, and thankfully most of us survived. The Dayton Accords were signed shortly after my first birthday, and we were eventually able to resettle in the US, where a relative happened to already be living. My parents & other family members, friends, and many others within our local diaspora all wished to move on from the war, as it had irrevocably changed their lives. They always did their best to not only shield me and others of my generation from the horror and their trauma, but also preserving our culture/traditions as we navigated a strange new world. In fact, in the years since our cultural identity has never been stronger, and we've never forgotten what brought us to this point. Fortunately, most of us have since become citizens in our respective new home countries and have been able to forge brand new lives out of our shared suffering. I've been fortunate enough to visit my homeland multiple times throughout my life so far, and from what I've seen I'm happy to report that, while not perfect, things have been steadily improving over the past few decades. It's easy to forget that whenever war breaks out, the people who suffer the most are civilians, just like you. Having almost everything you know and love taken from you is something no one should have to live through. When I was a kid, I once naively hoped that that was going to be the last war in human history, because I fundamentally couldn't understand why someone would choose to kill others based largely on arbitrary factors, regardless of their justification. I still don't.

I had a coworker about 10 years back who actually lived thru this and spent almost a year in a refugee camp. said he was lucky to be alive and happy to be in America.

Amazing how an individual killing an individual will get them life in prison but this guy only got 40 years for killing over 30k

Rest in peace to those that passed away. We must work to end genocides and never forget the genocides that are happening and have happened.

Days and weeks after the genocide, I still remember occasionally people showing up from the woods with horrific stories of how Serbian army hunted them like animals. You cannot even describe horror in their eyes. Not to mention stories of women who suffered in concentration camps, soldiers teasing them which one of their children they will kill next. There are 1st class nazis still in power in Serbia today, and EU makes deals with them. It is such a disgusting state of the affairs.

Literally trying to finish writing a final about this today, thank you so much.

I’m Dutch. Had to stay in a homeless shelter for a while. Here I met a Bosnian Muslim. I got to know him by playing basketball, he wanted to be a pro when he was young, but was recruited into a death squad. His hands never stopped shaking because of how much he used his automatic weapon, even 20 years later. He was an intimidating guy, I was only 19, but he turned out to be one of the only people that actually helped me get out of the situation. His stories were brutal and the frankness of how he told them disturbed me even more. This war was one of the most awful ever, neighbour fighting neighbour overnight

I was 3 years old when I became a refugee, my cousin and I together with our mothers had to flee during the night on a boat piloted by our grandpa, while our fathers stayed behind to defend the town.