Generation Born into History

Thirty years later, we are once again witnessing the shaping of history amidst political manipulations of narratives. That is why transgenerational memory is required to carry a culture of remembrance and responsibility to the truth – in the name of future generations who must learn how peace is built and preserved.

How does a generation born in the year of the Srebrenica genocide today understand this history? And how did growing up in this heritage shape their sense of identity, memory, and responsibility?

"We were born in ruins, among people who did not know whether they were crying more because of what they had lost or because of what they had become. As the last shells fell and Srebrenica counted their dead, we were entered into birth certificates – as if we had not come into the world, but into a historical file."

"The generation born in 1995, the year of the genocide, grew up in silence, fragments and attempts to understand what happened, and what it means for their identity. For many, history did not come in the form of lessons in schools, but through family stories, gaps, unanswered questions, and a sense of responsibility they did not choose. Their maturity today is reflected in the fact that, although they have not witnessed war, they become witnesses of memory."

"From this distance, Srebrenica can also be read as an example of a crime without punishment, a space that constitutes part of the memory of BiH citizens, but in no way becomes a common memory that would enable the prevention of similar events in the future."

"Today's generations, depending on the place of growing up, upbringing and schooling, have mostly a) less and less interest in events from the war years on the territory of the former Yugoslavia and b) living in different environments, have different narratives formed through official public interpretations, media and textbooks on this occasion."

"Research shows that transgenerational memory in BiH functions through the complex dynamics of formal education, family socialization and political discourse. The generation born in 1995 did not experience the war, but grew up with the legacy of the war. Their understanding of the past largely depends on what environment they grew up in, how history was presented to them, who their teachers, parents were, what media they followed. Many are still surrounded by symbols that glorify the perpetrators of crime and deny the facts established by the courts."

"Post-Dayton generations, although they did not directly experience war dramas, were indirectly marked by their tragedy in the 1990s. The wartime legacy that galvanized various identities and other determinants by establishing barriers between them, (un)consciously and (in)directly affected the lives of young generations."

"Transgenerational memory is not an automatic process, but a space of struggle between forgetting and remembering and between truth and manipulation. That is why this generation has a key role to play. It stands between the past she did not choose and the future she must build, aware that peace is not implied, but constantly preserved through responsibility, knowledge and resistance to lies."

"A generation born in 1995 carries the legacy of war through an emotional, political, and educational narrative. Their understanding of history is directly influenced by their parents, school, society, and the media. If the truth were the most important, then the memory of the genocide in Srebrenica should be the same for everyone, however, the attitude towards this tragedy largely depends on their nationality."

"We can hardly look at this generation through a unique prism. I often see different experiences that I could group into those in which the war narrative has become a part of personal identity, and others who are trying at all costs to free themselves from the 'burden' of the past because they perceive returning to war topics as fatigue. Somehow, it seems to me that the sense of responsibility of that generation born in 1995 and immediately after, moves between the duties of remembering the past and building the future."

"Born in 1995, they are not only children of war — they are also children of the truth that no one wanted to tell them. If we talk about Serbia or the Republika Srpska, for example, they grew up in a country and entity in which crime was institutionalized as heroism, and the victim was crossed out with a rubber band of revisionism. But precisely because of this, this generation is now increasingly digging beneath the surface, searching for answers in documents, judgments, stories of their parents — but also in silence, which often speaks more than noise."

"Numerous studies have shown the impact on the child's psyche and the structure of the personality of organized violence, wars, deaths of soldiers and brutal injustices and crimes against parents, from the earliest formative age. In this vacuum of their own memory, these generations are condemned to the memory of the family, and perhaps more often than not to the stories of peers and (semi)official narratives from religious communities, the media, virtual space and politics."

"Although they generally do not know the past, and they fear the future, this generation is much more significantly influenced by the political memory (or memory "from above") anchored in political institutions, which strives for long-term duration. This brings us to one of the key problems in dealing with the past - the culture of memory versus the politics of history."

"The problem is how to remember the genocide without falling into narcissistic self-mourning, closing ourselves in the cult of the victim. On the other hand, the international community says that we need to overcome the story of the war and think about the future, and this discourse is very superficial, banal. This same international community constantly keeps us in conflict, and then talks about peace."

"The generation that was born in Serbia in the year of the genocide in Srebrenica has a big problem to find out what happened at all, to come up with elementary facts about the past. The entire social, media, political, educational sphere has created a huge wall that prevents young people from getting to the truth. The society has done everything to shape the identities of young people in a nationalistic spirit, based on the denial of crime and truth, to erase all memory of crimes and genocide, to destroy any sense of responsibility in both perpetrators and inspirators, let alone those who were born during or after the war."

"Although 'media isolation' has long disappeared, because all information is available on various channels and platforms, at the time when that generation entered puberty, policies driven by state - local and party interests in new and clearly defined mono-national states marginalized 'their own' crimes."

"As far as I can understand, young people in Serbia identify with the greats of Serbian history in the fields of politics, science, literature. The narrative of the glorious ancestors who indebted us and whose endowment should be preserved prevails. Knowledge of the infamous and dishonourable moments of Serbian history is undesirable and therefore little present. Also, transgenerational compassion among young people in Serbia is much more pronounced when we talk about the NATO bombing of Serbia. However, I believe that young people are much more open to other young people from the regions, precisely because they do not have the experience of war, and because they understand that political leaders manipulate collective sentiment."

"The new generations in BiH are, at the level of symbolic capital, deeply attached to their history and it forms an important part of their identity. Responsibility for society and the state is a completely different topic and this is lacking in Bosnia and Herzegovina at all levels. The infrastructure of a knowledge-based society must be created and left to the young people, who, in an exclusive sense, can speak of the future and prosperity."

"Thirty years later, we are once again witnessing the shaping of history amid political manipulation of competing narratives. This places a responsibility on us to ensure that transgenerational memory carries a culture of remembrance and a commitment to truth – in the name of future generations who must learn how peace is built and protected."

"We all know that the complete legacy of the war is viewed completely differently by someone born in 1995, e.g. in Tomislavgrad or Posušje, where there were no war conflicts and where people live in mostly mono-ethnic environments, compared to people coming from war-affected and ethnically mixed environments."

"In my area in Slovenia, young people born after 1995 know almost nothing about these events. Only those with family ties to those affected sometimes learn something from their parents or relatives. This is not taught in schools. History often ends with the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. There is no talk of interethnic conflicts during the Second World War in this region, nor of socialism — and the wars of the 1990s do not even occur. Modern consumer society does not want to bother with traumas and the prescribed medicine is oblivion."