On the eve of the 28th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, which is recognized as the only genocide committed in Europe since the Holocaust, Jews and Muslims gathered in Bosnia on Monday to discuss how they may use their common suffering to fight prejudice and discrimination.
Following the capture of the eastern town by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995, more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, the majority of whom were Muslims, perished.
Two U.N. Agencies have classified the massacre as a genocide. courts. For the sake of both the Jewish and Muslim Bosniak people’s futures, it is imperative that we work together in memory to ensure that future instances of similar horrors are prevented.
The World Jewish Congress, often known as the WJC, was established in 1936 and is the top organization for bridging and defending Jewish communities around the world in more than 100 nations.
At the conference on preserving the collective memory of genocide victims and combating Holocaust and genocide denial, which was jointly organized by the WJC and the Srebrenica Memorial Center, Rosensaft was in charge of a group of Jewish academics and young diplomats.
The day-long conference provided a venue for the two communities to discuss coping with the trauma of falling victim to the gravest act of intolerance.
It was conducted in Srebrenica as part of this year’s anniversary celebrations.
This followed Yugoslavia’s disintegration, which sparked nationalistic fervor and territorial aspirations that pitted Bosnian Serbs against the nation’s two other major ethnic groups, Croats and Bosniaks.
Bosnian Serbs invaded a U.N.-guarded safe haven at Srebrenica in July 1995.
They drove Muslim Bosniak men and boys away from their wives, mothers, and sisters before pursuing and killing them in the nearby forests.
In order to conceal the evidence of their war crimes, the culprits then plowed the bodies of their victims into hastily constructed mass graves, which they afterwards dug up using bulldozers.
Even while the bodies of the massacre victims are still being uncovered from mass graves and identified through DNA testing, Serb leaders in Bosnia and neighboring Serbia continue to deny that genocide occurred at Srebrenica.
On July 11, the day the killings started in 1995, newly identified victims are reinterred at a sizable memorial cemetery outside the eastern town. More than 30 additional people’s bones will be buried on Tuesday.
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