Kyrie eleison.

July 11, 2010:

An excerpt from my journal:

I don’t feel like writing. We’re back in Sarajevo, safe and clean and comfortable in our hostel, and now sleep is tempting. But I want to write about today. It’s important.

We awoke early to walk down the one main road in Potocari, the village just down the valley from Srebrenica. Potocari is where most of the killing took place. Beginning on about the 11th of July, 1995, the RS army (Bosnian Serbs led by Mladic, who remains free to this day!) encroached. They took a few UN hostages and threatened to kill them unless the Dutch UN soldiers stationed there gave up the supposedly-protected enclave. They did. They let the Serb soldiers separate the men from the women and children, and shipped the women and children off to Tuzla in buses. Some men took the road our hostess lived on and walked towards Tuzla—many were killed along the way, but a large number did survive and finally made it there. But for the majority of the men, who stayed closer to where they thought they’d be protected (the UN headquarters, now taken over by Serb soldiers), the next few days were hellish—executions of over 8000 people: the worst genocide on European soil since the Holocaust. Many of the bodies were moved to secondary graves to hide the evidence.

Today was the largest memorial service—the fifteenth anniversary—since the 1995 genocide. The town, which is normally sleep and abandoned, practically swelled to bursting: this morning, 70,000 people filled the street and the entire memorial site and cemetery. It was like the crowd at a really morbid rock concert. Foreign dignitaries from all over the world came rolling in with their sleek cars and security guards; buses full of people from all over Europe arrive; groups of hikers who had followed the route from Tuzla came. It was really beautiful to see the mass of humanity. But my reaction was mixed, honestly. I mean, where is the media attention, where is the rest of the world, on July 12th? On November 28th? (I know I also write as one of those foreigners who comes and leaves, but still!) A bunch of diplomats gave speeches commemorating the occasion, and promised “never again,” and that’s nice I guess, but I couldn’t help but think… where is your support on the days there are no TV crews in Srebrenica? And where were you fifteen years ago, with the promises of “never again” still ringing in our ears from the Holocaust, when the international community could have intervened earlier and didn’t?

Much of the day was hard. The never-ending line of green caskets, borne on backs up the hills to already-dug graves—like rafts floating in an endless line on a sea of heads and hands. Tears and wails. Hands upturned in prayer. The endless drone of victims’ names, lasting for more than an hour. Even worse, the terrible silence when they stopped. But the moment I broke down and wept was when I saw the fresh grave of the one Dutch soldier. There was a cross on it, and a mound of flowers. I suppose he’s seen as a hero of sorts, one of the few who did the right thing and fought back. But I couldn’t help but weep. There was only one.

Only one.

One cross in that whole cemetery.

Serbs are generally Orthodox. The Dutch UN troops were primarily Christian. So HOW, WHY could such atrocities have been committed? Why did so few sacrifice?! For me, that one cross proved the failure of Christians, over and over and over again, to actually live as Christ (and to die is gain). Why do we stand by?
I think I wept more for the ways we have failed to love God and His people than for anything else.

Lament. Songs of lament. They will speak to me now of hot sun in Bosnia, beating down on thousands upon thousands of mourners, upon the grieving mothers and lonely widows, upon the impossibly-beautiful mountains and the impossibly-long line of cars and buses belching exhaust and heat. Upon Srebrenica.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Kyrie eleison.