Srebrenica

I saved this exhibit for last, and it was a smart thing to do. It brought all that I have done and learned together and was even able to fit it into a super modern context.

Srebrinca is a town in bosnia. In the Bosnian war, it was deemed a save zone by the UN, however a few years in, the Serbians were able to overtake (apparently the Dutch UN soldiers who were there left much evidence behind of racism which may be why they didn't act). Within a few days 8000 mostly men, Bosnian Muslims were ethnically cleansed from the earth.

The gallery was chilling, opening up with pictures of some of the annihilated. Then pictures of an international team going into eastern Bosnia to recover remains from the mass graves in an attempt to locate individuals. And then it ended with a film or two.

I started my trip reading Woman in Berlin, about a woman living for 2 months in occupied Berlin at the end of the war; existing in an Era where ration cards did not guarantee food and that seducing a Russian soldier to be your boyfriend provided some safety against random and violent rapes.  I then went to auschwitz-birkenau and saw the atrocities of the systematic elimination of an entire group of people; my people. Then onto warsaw(as in many places), where the jews were forced to live in a ghetto and not knowing if leaving or staying would ensure survival. Then onto the Balkans and seeing the destruction caused by the most recent wars, in which a power hungry Serbia started a war to keep other ethnic minorities in line and to protect the Serbians living in the areas that voted, democratically to leave Yugoslavia, with its seat in Serbia.

Yet with all the people I met (most of them in the service industry who may have a bias or want to soften things for tourists) they are not angry. They are not full of hate. This trip, although not intending started becoming a series of people's surviving, stories of resistance.

Now as I watch the newest season of orange is the new black, which seems to be showing much more the negative attitudes of the guards and watching both the terrorist attacks abroad and the killings happening in the US, the same themes seem to emerge. And unfortunately they all end in death and fear. Why?  Why do we do this? 

I think more people could benefit seeing the types of things I've seen(and to be clear, seen only not experienced, I can't even imagine) just in this trip alone. Maybe we can invite Trump over to the Balkans, or bring the privileged class of the US to a concentration camp. The cycle will repeat until we learn that no one is better than anyone else. And life is the most precious thing and no other person, or group has a right to take that life away.