Generation of Lived History

The war does not end with the cessation of the conflict. Survivors continue to carry it deep inside them. The way post-war society relates to war affects individuals and shapes transgenerational memory.

How has the generation that lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region during the wars in the former Yugoslavia – and especially during the genocide in Srebrenica – experienced and shaped this history in the past 30 years: through personal memories, reflections, but also through narratives in the media, films, books, textbooks and rituals of remembrance?

"Thanks to the powerful campaign of the last 30 years, the citizens of Serbia can calmly forget everything they knew about the genocide, ignoring the media, intellectuals, NGOs that talk about it all the time. It is a devastating realization that, despite all the data and judgments of international courts, a large number of citizens refuse to accept the facts. So, the facts don't speak."

"There is no dispute that this generation has dominated the creation of public narratives in the past 30 years, in the sense that personal or family experiences were much more important than scientific research, critical thinking, and especially self-criticism."

"The generation that survived the war, and especially the genocide in Srebrenica, did not get a chance to heal collectively. There was no national catharsis, no true transitional justice. There were judgments from The Hague that some celebrated as justice and others welcomed as an insult. And instead of learning from the past, we used it as political ammunition. Schools are divided, textbooks write different truths, and children from the same city live in parallel worlds."

"In these 30 years, the generation that survived those years, myself included, carried that history through media, books, testimonies, and every attempt to keep the truth from being buried along with the victims. But the fight was not equal. Political narratives often covered the truth with silence, relativisation, or outright denial. That is why transgenerational memory has become a terrain of resistance, a way to convey the truth, not to remain closed in archives or documents that no one reads."

"On the one hand, an attempt is being made to build a culture that stands against systemic oblivion and erasure. On the other hand, there is the planned oblivion and negation, which have become a kind of political platform in certain parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina."

"The latest and post-war reality teaches us that the predominant attitude of the generation in question, towards the events of the past war, is primarily based on its own experiences and the experiences of the environment in which that time left its traces."

"Legal recognition of these facts has not led to social consensus and revisionist narratives dominate the region. The result is that we live in parallel realities, and this selective, revisionist practice is our everyday life."

"With the end of the conflict, the war does not stop, but it changes the physical state and intensity: rigid and violent war dynamics are transposed into more liquid forms that remain present in various spheres of our life."

"The generation that lived through the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region during the 1990s bears deep consequences of the conflicts that have developed over the last three decades, both on a personal, social and cultural level. This generation is not only a witness to the war, but also an active bearer of lived history. These are experiences that did not end with a peace agreement, but continued through everyday life.”

"The war left indelible and deep traces in the individual and collective memory of generations that were participants in unfortunate events. Unfortunately, the war did not end with the end of the armed conflict, but continued with no less dangerous means, which did not take lives, but destroyed many lives."

"For the last 30 years, this generation has transformed their trauma and experiences, consciously and unconsciously, into testimonies that shape our collective memory. Through personal memories and family stories, these intimate fragments of the past have become one of the aspects of informal education about what was experienced for those who have not witnessed it."

"The generation of lived history today lives between two realities: its own wounds and the public denial of those wounds. And between that gap - the silence yawns. Or worse - manipulation."

"I would dare say, maximum falsification for the purpose of victimization. An ever-weakening creative charge, no political imagination, and the critical shift was more present during the war and immediately after than now."

"My generation, which started high school at the beginning of the war in Croatia, in the then still whole Bosnia, and graduated at the end of the war in something called 'RS down to 49%', found itself in a new shock-normality in which the issue of victory or defeat remained foggy over our heads. Who is the victim and who is the criminal, who is the winner and who is the loser, who fought a morally justified war, who did not. These are the first questions when it comes to the balance of a war."

"There is an almost completely accepted consensus among scientists that individual and collective memories are less understood as spontaneous, natural or sacrosanct acts, and more as social and cultural constructs that change over time and have their own history."

"Over the past thirty years, generations that came of age in the 90s or were born in the countries of the former SFRY (without Bosnia and Herzegovina) formed opinions and attitudes about the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as about the genocide in Srebrenica, mainly based on media writings, feature or documentary films, available books and textbooks, direct testimonies of victims, rituals of remembrance..."

"About this war, in contrast to the memory of the NOB, there is an insistence on the memory of the victim itself. Namely, the memory of the Second World War was created through the perspective of the victors. After this war, in the nineties, the one who was the biggest victim is still a victim in peace."

"There is a whole range of historians, artists, writers, scientists, academics, journalists, NGOs, public figures who speak and write the truth about war, crimes and suffering, naming the culprits, calling things by their real names. Unfortunately, all of them, that is, all of us, are a margin in a society still ruled by the same ideology of nationalism that led to the war, and even the same actors who were part of a joint criminal enterprise in the 1990s are in power."

"Generation, region and history are the determining factors for the answer. I am writing as a member of the generation born in the SFRY in 1962 in Zagreb to a father originally from Kolašin, Montenegro and a mother from Banja Luka from a marriage between an Orthodox father and a Catholic mother. I completed my primary and secondary education in Titograd, and studied acting in Belgrade. In the 1990s, I was in Belgrade at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Department of Acting, as an assistant, and in 1998 I moved to Podgorica, where I still live today. The culture of Yugoslavia also shaped me and the spirit of the idea of equality. The years of changing the social system, and soon after, the years of war and destruction, the killing of civilians and demonstrations of nationalist power, completely destroyed the trust in the society in which I had lived until then."

"As for the genocide in Srebrenica, it historically remains the biggest taboo in Serbia. I was born in 1984 and was in the first grade of elementary school when the war started in Croatia. My father was sent to Vukovar. He never told me about it. In that sense, in the circle of the family, I was condemned to silence. I believe that in other families, difficult stories from the war remain one of the few sources of knowledge about the war."

"These are generations that have not overcome the so-called social and cultural trauma. Cultural trauma is constantly reproduced through everything mentioned in the question, from which, in the natural course of things, we come to deeper segregation in society."

"I live in Serbia. The majority position was and remains the negation of the genocide in Srebrenica. The prevailing attitude, which is persistently repeated and aggressively imposed by the government, is that a bigcrime 'occurred' in Srebrenica, but that this crime was not genocide. An organized social oblivion was planned and implemented. The regime believes that social oblivion here will lead to general oblivion."

"Generational experience has shaped the relationship to that period primarily in literature. Moreover, it is precisely thanks to war traumas that Bosnian-Herzegovinian literature has never been stronger, more extensive and more diverse. Specifically in this field, it is self-renewing, because the new generations, who were children then, also publish novels with the memory of the war."

"Unfortunately, the memories of the events of thirty years ago are fading more and more and would disappear into the oblivion of history if it were not for current events in the region. The old spirit of bigotry and intolerance is coming out of the bottle again."