In the hills of eastern Bosnia sits the small town of Srebrenica–once known for silver mines and health spas, now infamous for the genocide that occurred there during the Bosnian War. In July 1995, when the town fell to Serbian forces, 12,000 Muslim men and boys fled through the woods, seeking safe territory. Hunted for six days, more than 8000 were captured, killed at execution sites and later buried in mass graves. With harrowing personal narratives by survivors, this book provides eyewitness accounts of the Bosnian genocide, revealing stories of individual trauma, loss and resilience.
ABOUT AUTHORS
Ann Petrila is a professor of the practice and coordinator of Global Initiatives at the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work. Her areas of expertise include global cultural perspectives, trauma, and genocide. Every summer she leads an experiential Bosnia-based course and internship program for graduate students.
Hasan Hasanović survived the genocide in Srebrenica and is currently a curator and interpreter at the Srebrenica-Potocari Genocide Memorial Centre in Bosnia. He lectures around the world about genocide and the risks of revisionist history and denial.
When Zlata’s Diary was first published at the height of the Bosnian conflict, it became an international bestseller and was compared to The Diary of Anne Frank, both for the freshness of its voice and the grimness of the world it describes. It begins as the day-to-day record of the life of a typical eleven-year-old girl, preoccupied by piano lessons and birthday parties. But as war engulfs Sarajevo, Zlata becomes a witness to food shortages and the deaths of friends and learns to wait out bombardments in a neighbor’s cellar. Yet throughout she remains courageous and observant. The result is a book that has the power to move and instruct readers a world away.
ABOUT AUTHOR
Zlata Filipović was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She holds a BA in Human Sciences from Oxford University and an MPhil in International Peace Studies from Trinity College Dublin. She has spoken extensively at schools and universities around the world about her experiences and has worked on many occasions with different organisations such as the Anne Frank House, UN and UNICEF, also being a three-time member of UNESCO Jury for Children’s and Young People’s Literature Prize for Tolerance.
This volume explores intergenerational trauma among refugee communities displaced throughout the world. Chapter 10 focuses on Bosnian Americans. Considering patterns and findings across disciplines, cultural contexts, and methodologies, the volume addresses the way trauma is passed on generationally among populations characterized by a large exodus from various regions, and communities in which intergenerational trauma can be observed among second-generation youth. The volume is well suited for scholars across social sciences with interests in memory studies, political violence, and refugee and diaspora studies.
ABOUT AUTHORS
Laura Kromják is Assistant Professor in the Department of Global and Development Studies, Institute of Political and International Studies, ELTE Faculty of Social Sciences in Budapest, Hungary. She teaches migration, international development and European Union related subjects, and her regional focus is the Western Balkans. Her interests include trauma research, memory politics and reconciliation in post-conflict societies.
Ajlina Karamehić-Muratović is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at St. Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, where she teaches health-related and research methodology courses. Her interdisciplinary research is health- and community-focused, with an emphasis on issues facing refugees and immigrants. Her research interests also include mental health beliefs and stigma among Arab youth in the Middle East.
This book is the story of author’s experiences as a forensic technician, gathering evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo, from 1996 to 2002, during the most extensive international forensic investigation in history conducted by the United Nations. ‘Grave Faces’ is unique in that it’s the first book written by an experienced technician who was involved in what has emerged as the most extensive forensic investigation in history. The book is based on the author’s personal experiences recorded as his memoire. Author is asking universal questions of humanity trying to understand the level of cruelty and barbarity perpetrated against so many innocent civilian men, women and children in a war of aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Robert McNeil MBE, FAAPT is a Glasgow based painter, and now an Affiliate Artist for UNESCO’s Refugees Integration through Language and the Arts. The book “Grave Faces” detailing his experiences while gathering evidence of genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo. From 1996 until 2009, McNeil was invited to form part of National and International Forensic teams who were tasked with providing physical and scientific evidence of terrorist attacks in the UK and Ireland, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in war zones in the Balkans and in Africa. For his work, McNeil was awarded the British MBE by HRH Prince Charles in 1999.
For the first time in nearly two centuries, one ethnic group now constitutes an absolute majority of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s population: the Bosniaks. It is an unlikely development given that, scarcely thirty years ago, they were targeted for extermination and expulsion by Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic. Even as the Bosniak community fought to survive these atrocities, it simultaneously came under attack from militants led by Croatian president Franjo Tuđman, who attempted to partition Bosnia and Herzegovina between Zagreb and Belgrade.
The fate of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s peace and democracy rests on the Bosniaks’ shoulders–and with it, the stability of all Southeastern Europe.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jasmin Mujanović is a political scientist and policy specialist of southeast European and international affairs with a PhD from York University in Toronto. His career background is a unique blend of global academic and professional engagement, working as a scholar, policy analyst, consultant, researcher, and writer in both North America and Europe. He is an Advisory Board member of the Kulin Initiative and Advisory Council member of the Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations.
His research concentrates primarily on the politics of contemporary southeastern Europe, with a particular focus on the politics of the non-EU states of the Western Balkans.
First Nationalism Then Identity focuses on the case of Bosnian Muslims, a rare historic instance of a new nation emerging. Although for Bosnian Muslims the process of national emergence and the assertion of a new salient identity have been going on for over two decades, Mirsad Kriještorac is the first to explain the significance of the whole process and how the adoption of their new Bosniak identity occurred. He provides a historical overview of Yugoslav and Bosnian Slavic Muslims’ transformation into a full-fledged distinct and independent national group as well as addresses the important question in the field of nationalism studies about the relationship between and workings of nationalism and identity.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Mirsad Kriještorac holds a PhD in Political Science from Florida International University’s School of International and Public Affairs, Department of Politics and International Relations where he also teaches his senior level courses on Ethnicity and Nationalism and on International Protection of Human Rights. He holds an M.A. in Political Science and a B.A. in Journalism. Dr Krijestorac is now an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Broward College. His research interests include nationalism, identity, religion, conflict and peace studies in comparative politics and international relations. Mirsad’s main regional concentration is on SE Europe and the MENA region, while he is also following the ongoing changes in ethnic relations in the U.S.
The author vividly describes conditions in the prisoner camps of Dretelj, Heliodrom, Vojno, Central Prison, Basement of Technical College in Mostar, and other smaller private prisons, as well as how Bosniak people of the region were treated by the Croatian forces and their Croat neighbors. This book is based on the author’s personal experiences in those camps which he was taken to on July 1st, 1993, and then held in for 262 days as a captive, before he was finally released without any remorse by the captors. During the imprisonment Ramiz Tiro was tortured, humiliated, made to work unprotected at the front line, used as a human shield, and almost murdered. In the book, he has recounted a truthful account of events as he remembered experiencing them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ramiz Tiro was an ordinary Bosniak man from Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, when he was taken away from his apartment to Bosnian Croats’ “Herzeg-Bosna” concentration camp in Dretelj. He was held there along with thousands of other Bosniak civilians for days before he was transferred to other Croat-run concentration camps throughout the region of Herzegovina under Croatian control.
Less than two decades after the Yugoslav Wars ended, the edifice of parliamentary government in the Western Balkans is crumbling. There is a widely held assumption that institutional collapse will precipitate a new bout of ethnic conflict, but Mujanovic argues instead that the Balkans are on the cusp of a historic socio-political transformation. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, with a unique focus on local activist accounts, he argues that a period of genuine democratic transition is finally dawning, led by grassroots social movements, from Zagreb to Skopje. Rather than pursuing ethnic strife, these new Balkan revolutionaries are confronting the “ethnic entrepreneurs” cemented in power by the West in its efforts to stabilise the region since the mid-1990s. This compellingly argued book harnesses the explanatory power of the striking graffiti scrawled on the walls of the ransacked Bosnian presidency during violent anti-government protests in 2014: ‘if you sow hunger, you will reap fury’.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jasmin Mujanović is a political scientist and policy specialist of southeast European and international affairs with a PhD from York University in Toronto. His career background is a unique blend of global academic and professional engagement, working as a scholar, policy analyst, consultant, researcher, and writer in both North America and Europe.
In the 1990s, Bosnia and Herzegovina was rocked by brutal warfare and systematic genocide, leading to a mass exodus from the Balkan nation. Starting in 1993, thousands of these displaced Bosnians found a welcoming new home in an unexpected place: St. Louis, Missouri, where today the Bosnian population exceeds 60,000. Bosnian St. Louis tells the story of how these resettled immigrants took root in a new home and quickly reshaped the image of their adopted city.
Using first-hand accounts from members of St. Louis’s Bosnian community, Patrick McCarthy and Akif Cogo explore how an event of global significance became the lived reality of the refugees who came to St. Louis and who, in the ensuing years, have had a profound effect on the character of the city they now call home. The city’s resettled Bosnians quickly established themselves as a positive local presence, bringing with them tight-knit families, a strong work ethic, and a rich cultural heritage.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Patrick McCarthy has worked with the large Bosnian community in St. Louis for the past twenty years. He is associate dean of libraries at St. Louis University.
Akif Cogo is the historian and archivist for the St. Louis Bosnians Inc., a nonprofit organization he founded in 2011.
In May 1992, as Serb forces closed in on their village of Hambarine, the three Causevic brothers made the fateful decision to split up and go separate ways in the hope that at least one of them would survive. One brother, Mufid, perished in unknown circumstances, and his human remains have still not been identified. Another brother, Mesa, made it to Travnik, and perished fighting in the armed resistance against international aggression and genocide. The third brother, Mirsad, endured months of daily beatings and torture at the infamous White House in the Omarska concentration camp, as well as hardships at the Manjaca concentration camp, before his release was finally arranged by the International Red Cross. It is a story that must be told, as new details about the truth about the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina are still coming out after twenty-five years. Now, through Mirsad’s authentic witness account, the English speaking world will be able, in turn, to bear witness to the atrocities committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Serb forces, particularly in the villages and concentration camps in the area of Prijedor.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Mirsad Čaušević survived the impossible conditions imposed by the Serb aggression by virtue of his fierce determination, and that same iron will has enabled him to find the courage to share his story of suffering and unlikely survival with the world in his book, Death in the White House.
Derviš M. Korkut : A Biography : Rescuer of the Sarajevo Haggadah The year 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of Derviš M. Korkut’s death. A man who survived two empires, the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian, two king-doms, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Nazi-puppet Independent State of Croatia, and, finally, Communist Yugoslavia. Half a century after his death, a publication dedicated to the man behind the rescue of the Sarajevo Haggadah seems overdue. This book is a result of a research project which was carried out at the Institute for Islamic Tradition of Bosniaks. It is based on both the existing literature and archival materials.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Hikmet Karčić is a genocide scholar based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is a Researcher at the Institute for Islamic Tradition of Bosniaks (IITB) in Sarajevo and a Senior Fellow with the Center for Global Policy (CGP) in Washington, D.C. He was the 2017 Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation-Keene State College Global Fellow.
An epic middle-grade memoir about sisterhood and coming-of-age in the three years leading up to the Bosnian Genocide.
Three Summers is the story of five young cousins who grow closer than sisters as ethnic tensions escalate over three summers in 1980s Bosnia. They navigate the joys and pitfalls of adolescence on their family’s little island in the middle of the Una River. When finally confronted with the harsh truths of the adult world around them, their bond gives them the resilience to discover and hold fast to their true selves.
Written with incredible warmth and tenderness, Amra Sabic-El-Rayess takes readers on a journey that will break their hearts and put them back together again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Amra Šabić-El-Rayess is professor, author and activist who grew up in Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina. After surviving ethnic cleansing and 1,150 days under the Serbs’ military siege, she emigrated to the United States in 1996. By December 1999, she earned a BA in Economics from Brown University. Later, she obtained two Masters degrees and a Doctorate from Columbia University. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Practice at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Education, in the Education Policy and Social Analysis Department. Her scholarship focuses on mechanisms and factors that drive societies towards social disintegration and what role education can play in rebuilding decimated countries.
In July of 1995, the Bosnian Serb army destroyed Srebrenica and massacred over seven thousand men. Against all odds, Emir Suljagic survived. This is his moving testimony, dedicated to the memory of the victims of the genocide.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Emir Suljagić is a journalist, activist and the Director of the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial since 2019. Suljagić holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Hamburg. His most recent research focuses on the role the Bosnian Serb Assembly played in the process of socially constructing Bosniaks as “Turks” within the context of the genocidal policies pursued by agencies, institutions and organs under the assembly. Suljagić worked as an English interpreter for the United Nations in Srebrenica and began his career as a journalist working for the award-winning weekly Dani (Days). He worked as a correspondent for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting reporting from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Suljagić has published widely for The New York Times, the Boston Globe, AlJazeera, El Pais, Die Zeit, and Oslobođenje (Liberation) among others. Suljagić teaches International Relations at the International University of Sarajevo. His memoir Postcards from the Grave (2003) is the first account of a Srebrenica survivor to be published in English and was subsequently published in eight other languages.
Half a century after the Holocaust, on European soil, Bosnian Serbs orchestrated a system of concentration camps where they subjected their Bosniak Muslim and Bosnian Croat neighbors to torture, abuse, and killing. Foreign journalists exposed the horrors of the camps in the summer of 1992, sparking worldwide outrage. This exposure, however, did not stop the mass atrocities. Hikmet Karčić shows that the use of camps and detention facilities has been a ubiquitous practice in countless wars and genocides in order to achieve the wartime objectives of perpetrators. Although camps have been used for different strategic purposes, their essential functions are always the same: to inflict torture and lasting trauma on the victims.
Torture, Humiliate, Kill develops the author’s collective traumatization theory, which contends that the concentration camps set up by the Bosnian Serb authorities had the primary purpose of inflicting collective trauma on the non-Serb population of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Hikmet Karčić is a genocide scholar based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is a Researcher at the Institute for Islamic Tradition of Bosniaks (IITB) in Sarajevo and a Senior Fellow with the Center for Global Policy (CGP) in Washington, D.C. He was the 2017 Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation-Keene State College Global Fellow.
The Muslim Resolutions: Bosniak Responses to World War Two Atrocities in Bosnia and Herzegovina covers “the Muslims resolutions” in 1941, i.e., the Bosniak elites’ condemnation of the Nazi-puppet regime’s policies: using it as an opportunity for seeking Bosnia’s autonomy, hoping in this way to improve the country’s position and the security of their people. They did so through the resolutions included in this book, which were initiated and signed by members of the Bosniak establishment, the clergy and the judicial and economic elites, who sought to distance themselves from the Ustasha regime. In fact, most of the people to actually sign these resolutions were members of El-Hidaje, the Association of Muslim Clergy. The resolutions played a large role, not only during the war but in the post-war era too, as the struggle for Muslim identity and nationhood got underway. They are one of the few cases in the region, perhaps the only, of such atrocities being condemned and criticized by the elite of a “people without a state.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Hikmet Karčić is a genocide scholar based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is a Researcher at the Institute for Islamic Tradition of Bosniaks (IITB) in Sarajevo and a Senior Fellow with the Center for Global Policy (CGP) in Washington, D.C. He was the 2017 Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation-Keene State College Global Fellow.
The Cat I Never Named is a personal account of a Bosnian genocide survivor, whose family and friends were slaughtered because of their Muslim heritage during the Serbian siege on the city of Bihać. The memoir bravely wrestles with the rawness of human emotion in times of unembellished agony, exposing the ways war tests humanity. It is a witness of how dangerous visceral ethnic, racial, and religious hatred is. The critically acclaimed book explores ideas of populism, Islamophobia, and discrimination, and it covers themes related to narratives of hatred built around Muslim identities.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Amra Šabić-El-Rayess is professor, author and activist who grew up in Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina. After surviving ethnic cleansing and 1,150 days under the Serbs’ military siege, she emigrated to the United States in 1996. By December 1999, she earned a BA in Economics from Brown University. Later, she obtained two Masters degrees and a Doctorate from Columbia University. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Practice at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Education, in the Education Policy and Social Analysis Department. Her scholarship focuses on mechanisms and factors that drive societies towards social disintegration and what role education can play in rebuilding decimated countries.
This is a gripping, intense story of how a man had barely survived the Srebrenica genocide. The book dictates how he did so by drawing the strength to survive not only from his desire to be reunited with his Bosniak family, but also from the inspiration of his religious sensibility and his desire that the genocide be remembered and justice be served one day. Imagine your town instead of my town, Srebrenica; your people instead of my people, and your name instead of my name. Then form your own judgement and try to answer this question loudly and without fear, so that everyone hears: “What did THEY do to the innocent people of Srebrenica?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kadir Habibović was born on May 25, 1964 in Srebrenica. He worked in the Srebrenica bauxite mine until the aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina began. He managed to reach the free territory on July 27, 1995, after the fall of Srebrenica. In his book, he describes in detail the killing of his fellow citizens that he survived. Kadir left Bosnia and Herzegovina as a refugee and he now lives in northwestern Europe. His book is a result of his commitment to testify about an evil that the world must know about.
Written by award-winning author, Irfan Mirza, The History of Bosnia & Herzegovina 2nd ed. is a brilliant, enlightening book that traces the origins of the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the days of the first humans in Europe to the modern era. Thoughtfully written, this eloquent narrative presents a refreshing perspective on history, drawing on academic research from hundreds of sources and modern scientific analysis.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Irfan Mirza is a two-time international award winning writer, college lecturer, and Chair of Education at the Bosnian American Institute. He published his first book on Bosnia-Herzegovina at the start of the war in April 1992. From ’92 to ’94, he served as a humanitarian program director followed by becoming an advisor to the UN in Bosnia-Herzegovina. After nearly three decades of immersion in the Bosnian culture and four years of historical research, Irfan Mirza was able to compound his effort into a publicly-available book.