Throughout the time spent in Serbia as well as Bosnia-Herzegovina, I was lucky enough to witness some of the most beautiful landscapes that I have ever laid my eyes on. Underneath this layer of beauty, there existed a history of pain and loss, one that still survives within the community. In an incredible town located in the west of Bosnia-Herzegovina called Mostar, there was a museum dedicated to the victims of the genocide that was committed against non-Serbs living in the country during the 90s. In a room of the Museum, covered in small notes written by the people who visited, there was a television playing a film of personal experiences of the people who lived through the war. The things that I saw absolutely shocked and disgusted me. Bodies flung about the streets. Mothers. Fathers. Siblings. People that had been loved and had love to give. Dead in the streets with no respect shown to their existence. I saw skulls flattened, teenagers’ internal organs. Things that I thought I would never have to bear witness to. I was overwhelmed with feelings of sadness, but also this unsettling feeling of a sort of survivor’s guilt. A guilt that swelled the more I considered the fact that my birthplace awards me a security that would not be awarded to others with the same dreams and desires as me.
On one of the handwritten notes pasted across the wall, I noticed one that read, “man’s inhumanity towards man knows no bounds. May God protect us from ourselves,” and it shook me to my very core. As time has passed and I have had the time to reflect upon what I saw, I realized that our propensity to be inhumane is directly combated by human being’s undeniable ability for humanity.
I learned that snipers from the Serbian army would camp out in these mountains, and shoot civilians in the streets, especially in the beautiful city of Sarajevo. Then it hit me. These mountain ranges that struck me with their unfathomable beauty, used to be the exact location where Serbian snipers would hide out and shoot at unsuspecting civilians. In the documentary playing on a television inside the Museum of War and Genocide Victims, They explained that the people crossing the streets would have approximately 20 seconds in between rounds. The natural beauty that I frequently took for granted was once a constant threat, a possibility for death. The people of Mostar and Sarajevo show an extreme resilience that I have never experienced before.
The history of this war is something shamefully neglected in American education. We have so much to learn from this war, and nationalism’s potential to inspire hatred and warfare. With my time in these cities, I felt so much love and respect from the communities living there. They do not neglect this history, it still clearly weighs very heavily on the national consciousness, but I think the people of Bosnia Herzegovina know that the worst is behind them.