Every year, the world is united in grief for the victims of genocide. In January, we remember the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. In July, we commemorate the more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys who were killed in Srebrenica. In recent years, memorialisations of the Holocaust and Srebrenica have increasingly involved closer cooperation between educators in both communities.
Participants of the "State of Peace" Youth Academy, organized by the European Union in Bosnia and Herzegovina in cooperation with the Post-Conflict Research Center, discussed the lessons and the legacy of the Holocaust in the region, and how these lessons can be used to prevent conflict and strengthen the reconciliation process.
Polish-born Jewish legal theorist Raphael Lemkin first coined the term ‘genocide’ in his 1944 work ‘Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress.’ Lemkin’s description of genocide as entailing “criminal intent to destroy or to cripple permanently a human group” laid the foundations for the Genocide Convention and genocide studies as a sociological discipline.
The Post-conflict Research Center (PCRC), Educator’s Institute for Human Rights (EIHR), the forumZFD, the Haggadah Sarajevo Association, and the Bosnian Cultural Center marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Sarajevo today and the 80th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference.
The life of Jews in Mostar today is anything but easy. For years, this minority population living in the city on the Neretva River has been trying to improve their position in society and preserve the rich heritage of the Jewish culture in the region.