Any selection of books on a topic is necessarily subjective. In contrast to academic papers whose authors are obliged to make and critically assess a comprehensive overview of the literature, when it comes to selecting and recommending reading material for others, it is possible to leave out works without explanation. Therefore, as a rule, any such selection reflects the reading history, interests and tastes of the person making the recommendation, while someone else would add or remove titles and every new list would be different. Nevertheless, such selections are important and can serve as a guide to others, because we seek lists to guide us when we take an interest in a topic.
With this caveat and stated intention and purpose, here are 15 titles, 15 books about the genocide against Bosniaks in the wider Srebrenica area whose anniversary is marked on 11 July.
To begin with: Zbjeg
Zbjeg [Refuge] by Hasan Nuhanović offers probably the most powerful testimony written to date about the Srebrenica genocide. Nuhanović, today a curator at the Potočari Memorial Centre, was born in Zvornik. When the war started in 1992, his family was in Vlasenica from where they became refugees, fleeing for their lives. In the genocide, Hasan lost his father, mother and brother, who had survived all the fleeing until July 1995 when they were thrown out of the UN base in Potočari, where Hasan was working as a translator, and thus effectively sent to their deaths. Zbjeg covers the period from 1992 to 1994, while Hasan Nuhanović’s second book Pod zastavom UN-a: Međunarodna zajednica i zločin u Srebrenici [Under the UN Flag: The International Community and the Srebrenica Genocide] covers the period from when Srebrenica was proclaimed a protected zone to is ultimate fall and the genocide. Both books were sold out soon after publication and for a long time they were hard to find in bookshops, but the publishing house Vrijeme recently reissued Zbjeg. The interview titled “Fluid Mechanics” that Boro Kontić did with Hasan Nuhanović almost a decade ago is still very timely and worth reading.
Razglednica iz groba [Postcards from the Grave] by Emir Suljagić, the current director of the Potočari Memorial Centre, is a survivor’s memoir published in the already distant year of 2005. Like in Hasan Nuhanović’s Zbjeg, in Emir Suljagić’s Postcards from the Grave the Srebrenica tragedy is expanded in time and traced back from 1992. This is particularly important because stories about the Srebrenica genocide often focus solely on those few days of July 1995. But the July abyss has a months-long prehistory of struggling to survive, taking refuge, looking for food, and avoiding death that had been common in that part of Bosnia long before July 1995.
The novel Šta su meni ptice [What Are Birds to Me] by Fajko Kadrić was published in 2022 and has already gone through three reprints. Using the life story of Ekrem Redžić from Vlasenica, Kadrić tells the story of thousands from Podrinje who flowed into Srebrenica from 1992. Ekrem Redžić first sought refuge from Vlasenica in Cerska from where he made several trips as a courier to Tuzla and the free territories along complicated and treacherous forest paths, avoiding military positions. When Cerska fell in March 1993, like many others, Ekrem will seek refuge in Srebrenica and Fajko Kadrić uses his story to explore what it meant to be a refugee in 1993 in Srebrenica of all places. If the books by Hasan Nuhanović and Emir Suljagić are important because they follow the genocide through a broader timeframe, the novel by Fajko Kadrić is equally important because it follows the genocide through a broader geographic area. Mostly due to court judgements, the genocide has become known in public discourse as the Srebrenica genocide, but it is important to understand its geographic breadth. As Hasan Nuhanović wrote already in June 2012 in an article titled Municipal Genocide and published in Oslobođenje, of the 8.372 men and boys killed in the genocide, two thirds had lived in Bratunac, Vlasenica, Zvornik, Han Pijesak, Rogatica and Višegrad before the war. Moreover, mass executions of captured civilians were carried out after the fall of Srebrenica also in Bratunac, Zvornik, Vlasenica, and even in Trnovo which is 200 kilometres from Srebrenica.
Survivors’ Testimonies
Among the books written by survivors, leaving an important record of death and survival, we should also mention the book by Nedžad Avdić and Amela Avdić Unkić Ja, haški svjedok [Witness at the Hague]. In July 1995, Nedžad, who has retained his boyish smile and gentleness to this day, joined the column of men that tried to break out of the encirclement and reach Tuzla. At the very beginning, his father was killed by shelling and he himself was taken prisoner somewhere in the vicinity of Bratunac. He was taken out with a group of prisoners to be shot in the night between 14 and 15 July 1995 in a place called Petkovci near Zvornik, but he survived the firing squad and lived to testify about it at the Hague Tribunal, which he details in the book. His sister Amela contributes her memories and the book is also interlaced with the stories and memories of their mother, stories of being a refugee, fighting to continue living and to return. After completing university studies in Tuzla, Nedžad returned to Srebrenica where he lives today with his family.
Emir Bektić, one of those who crossed over onto the free territory, wrote his memories down in a book titled Kad osvaneš sam [When the Morning Finds You Alone]. Emir was a 16-year-old boy when Srebrenica fell and he set off to break out of the encirclement with his father, whose remains he still has not found. He was captured twice, but managed to survive and reunite with his mother and sister in the free territory. Four years after the war, their mother died at the age of 41, and so at the close of the 20th century, he and his sister, barely of age, found themselves alone.
You are likely to run into Azir Osmanović when you visit the Potočari Memorial Centre where he works as a curator. Today a historian and curator, Azir recorded his testimony of a 13-year-old who made it through in a book titled Od Srebrenice do svjetla na kraju tunela [From Srebrenica to the Light at the End of the Tunnel]. In his writing and public statements Azir often talks about the lasting effects of the genocide and how they are transferred onto new generations, about his brother who committed suicide after everything he survived, about how his father coped with all of it, about returning to live in Srebrenica… Also notable among books by survivors is Kadir Habibović’s Život protiv smrti – Srebrenica [Life against Death – Srebrenica].
Unfortunately, apart from Postcards from the Grave and Under the UN Flag, these testimonies have not been translated into English and this remains an important task for the future. It is therefore also important to mention the book Voices from Srebrenica: Survivor Narratives of the Bosnian Genocide co-edited by Ann Petrila and Hasan Hasanović, who also survived the genocide as a minor.
The Chronology of a Genocide
Probably the most comprehensive chronological overview of the genocide is given by Matthias Fink in his book Srebrenica: Chronologie eines Völkermords oder Was geschah mit Mirnes Osmanović [Srebrenica: Chronology of a Genocide or What Happened with Mirnes Osmanović]. On more than 1000 pages, this German historian and reporter presents the broader context, including the break-up of Yugoslavia and the start of the wars, as well as a detailed day-by-day description of the genocide. This book is notable also because it is available in a major world language (German) and as an audio book, a format that is increasingly popular. Although not always easy to navigate and not a book that is easily read from cover to cover, its exhaustive account is important when we keep returning to the topic of genocide, or one of its aspects or stages.
A question that keeps recurring when it comes to genocide and Srebrenica is: How do you describe a genocide? Hariz Halilović, a social anthropologist from RMIT University in Melbourne, titled his book of editorial columns, reviews and articles Writing after Srebrenica and it is important not just because it tackles that question but also because of the unique position of its author who is originally from Srebrenica, but survived the horrors of Prijedor where he found himself at the start of the war in 1992. Halilović keeps circling back to Srebrenica, not just as a topic, but also as a place where he brings various groups, including students, and tries to at least partially answer the question of how to describe Srebrenica?
Srebrenica after the war is also the topic of a brilliant anthropological study by Lara J. Nettelfield and Sarah E. Wagner titled Srebrenica in the Aftermath of Genocide. The two co-authors spent several months, returning multiple times, in Srebrenica and its surroundings, speaking with the survivors and trying to capture how they live today. As the genocide meant mass killings of men, returning to Srebrenica and fighting for the right to remembrance was mostly left to women. The book Srebrenica in the Aftermath of Genocide is based in part on speaking with these women and opens this broad topic within the account of the genocide. The names of some of the women and their struggle have become known beyond the boundaries of the region, but the book also includes accounts from numerous other women whose names are not well-known, but who were among the first to return to Srebrenica and remained on the frontline always and everywhere.
The topic of the international community’s role and the catastrophic failure of the United Nations (UN) is perhaps most widely represented in literature, various special reports and articles. The already mentioned book by Hasan Nuhanović Under the UN Flag provides an invaluable insight by someone who saw all the steps, decisions and omissions of the international community’s hefty bureaucracy first-hand in Srebrenica itself. A purely bureaucratic decision to guarantee the safety only of UN staff meant in Hasan’s case that he would survive, but his father, mother and brother would be thrown out of the UN base and killed. If books by Hasan Nuhanović and the other survivors provide a view from below, then Diego Arria’s book Slow-Motion Genocide in Bosnia offers a view from above, from the perspective of high-level politics, diplomacy and hypocrisy. Arria was the Venezuelan representative to the UN and in those crucial years Venezuela was on the UN Security Council, giving him access to the highest circles of decision-making in this world government.
Vladimir Filipović reworked his doctoral dissertation into a book titled Under the Blue Helmets: Motives of States for Contribution to the UNPROFOR Mission 1992-1995 that deals with the broader topic of UN peacekeeping missions and the motivation of states to send their soldiers into war ravaged Yugoslavia. Filipović’s research shows that the designation of safe areas, including Srebrenica and Žepa, was an ad hoc solution that the UN bureaucracy itself was unable to define with certainty. This example also shows how events take on their own dynamics: even though top UN leadership did not reach agreement on the “safe zones” idea, the decision nevertheless had to be implemented. In practice, this meant that the biggest countries refused to send troops to Srebrenica, which was remote from larger logistical centres and was entirely surrounded and overcrowded… Ultimately, the task was taken up by the Canadians, who were motivated to further their image as a world power in peacekeeping missions, only to be replaced by the Dutch whose role has become notorious. The example of the Dutch shows something else as well: the Dutch government had advocated for a stronger approach by the international community (including bombing) up until it was their lads in the field. At key moments, it was the Dutch government that opposed airstrikes out of fear for the lives of its soldiers. It was clear then, but not only there and then, that all lives are equally important, except that some are more important than others, to paraphrase Orwell.
Finally, the documentary novel Beara by Ivica Đikić offers powerful testimony about the genocide from the perspective of the perpetrator. At the time of the genocide, Ljubiša Beara was the Chief of Security of the VRS Main Staff. A former captain of a JNA warship, he was the military and political leadership’s operative for the genocide. That job included, as Đikić shows, complex logistical preparations, finding temporary detention sites for the prisoners and their mass liquidation (detention sites were most often set up in schools, cultural centres and other large halls). Đikić’s novel shows how top military and political leaders were aware of the kind of crime that was being prepared, evident especially in requests such as the one from Miroslav Deronjić, Chief of the Bratunac Crisis Staff, that mass executions not be carried out in his municipality, but elsewhere. The novel has been translated into Italian, Swedish, Norwegian and Czech.
Survivors’ Testimonies:
Hasan Nuhanović: Zbjeg
Hasan Nuhanović: Under the UN Flag*
Emir Suljagić: Postcards from the Grave *
Fajko Kadrić: Šta su meni ptice
Nedžad Avdić and Amela Avdić Unkić: Ja, haški svjedok
Emir Bektić: Kad osvaneš sam
Azir Osmanović: Od Srebrenice do svjetla na kraju tunela
Hasan Hasanović and Ann Petrila: Voices from Srebrenica *
Kadir Habović: Život protiv smrti – Srebrenica
Anthropological and Historical Studies:
Hariz Halilović: Kako opisati Srebrenicu
Matthias Fink: Srebrenica: Chronologie eines Völkermords oder Was geschah mit Mirnes Osmanović **
Lara J. Nettelfield and Sarah E. Wagner: Srebrenica in the Aftermath of Genocide*
The Role of the International Community:
Diego Arria: A Slow-Motion Genocide in Bosnia*
Vladimir Filipović: Ispod plavih šljemova: Motivi država za sudjelovanjem u misiji UNPROFOR 1992-1995.
Documentary Novels:
Ivica Đikić: Beara**
*Available in English
** Available in other foreign languages