Ida SeferRoche was born in the town of Bosanski Novi, but she lives and works in the USA for 20 years. She founded the Bosnian American Genocide Institute (BAGI), within which she teaches children and young people about genocide that happened in BiH, as well as other forms of crimes against humanity. Her main goal is that the truth about what happened in BiH is heard.
Together with members of her organization and in cooperation with the Holocaust Museum in Chicago, SeferRoche organizes lectures, exhibitions, open panels and other types of projects through which she works on education of pupils and students.
The special accent of the organization BAGI is on multi-ethnicity, which is especially evident in the board of directors. Honourable members are the survivors of Srebrenica genocide, detention in the concentration camp “Omarska”, as well as the holocaust.
“The reactions of people are empathetic. In America, people talk a lot about genocide and for a long amount of time. Whenever we present our research and testimony of survived victims, they know what we are talking about. We often work with the Holocaust Museum in Illionis, and they helped us build a network in order to complete our mission. We realized a large number of commemorations through which we educated our young generations that were born after the war in BiH,” said SeferRoche.
They are marking genocide in the United States for nine years now. Last year, on July 11, they took part in the preparation of the traveling memoir “Where are you?” in Chicago with artist Aida Sehovic and seven BH organizations whose volunteers prepared coffee and poured it in cups for genocide victims.
“The passers-by were watching and they joined the activity and poured the coffee in memory of victims. Thousands of passers-by passed through the center, and that shows us that people can learn about genocide everywhere. We are witnessing that some people are still claiming that there was no holocaust, so that denial that genocide happened in BiH or anywhere else in the world is not a novelty. We can see examples on denial of genocide and crimes that really happened through social networks,” she said.
She noted that no nation should take the collective responsibility for crimes committed on their behalf with silence and indifference, because the perpetrators of those crimes have their first name and surname and they should be held responsible for their actions.
(Source: M. N./Klix.ba)
