In the Srebrenica Memorial Center, on the occasion of commemorating the 31st anniversary of the genocide, the exhibition “‘Facing Srebrenica’: Views from the besieged city” was opened. These are photographs of Dutch soldiers, which show everyday life in the besieged enclave, as well as numerous people whose lives were violently ended in 1995.
The exhibition “Facing Srebrenica” is the result of a joint research project of the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands Institute for Military History, the Balkan Research Network of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIRN BiH) and the Srebrenica Memorial Center.
The aim of the project is to collect and analyze private photographs taken by members of the Dutch United Nations Battalion (DUTCHBAT), stationed in the Srebrenica enclave between February 1994 and July 1995. Over the past three years, around 12,000 photographs have been collected, which offer a rare visual insight into the everyday life of the besieged city.
The exhibition presents a selection of seventeen photographs. These photographs show the everyday life of the city under siege – a space of limited movement, scarcity and improvisation, but also a space where life did not stop. Following the descriptions, created from the archives and testimonies, the visitor is confronted with Srebrenica as it was seen, recorded and lived in that period.
Azir Osmanović, the leader of the museum-archive team at the Memorial Center, explained that the selection of photographs for the exhibition was difficult because each of the photographs is significant, each one tells the story of Srebrenica and its victims.
“In the end, the choice was to try to make a chronology of the life of Srebrenica,” said Osmanović.
University of Amsterdam professor Guido Snel said that these photos belong to the people of Srebrenica.
“I am grateful to BIRN BiH and the Srebrenica Memorial Center for their cooperation and that together we use these photos, multi-perspective and ensure that they find their place,” he said during the opening.
As part of the project, where possible, we tried to identify places, events and people from the photographs, and through the testimonies of survivors and contemporaries, to supplement their meaning. This gave the photographs a wider context, which goes beyond the military perspective and opens up a space for understanding life in the besieged Srebrenica.
Some of the photographs on display show DUTCHBAT soldiers in relation to the local population and children who asked them for candy. Moments of brief relief and smiles are visible on the faces of some of the children shown, while others are shown in front of devastated schools or moments when they were treated in the Srebrenica hospital. The photographs show the former landscape, a department store, a market, and even mini-hydropower plants, as well as many faces, many of whom did not live to see the end of the war.
The exhibition is set in the “Lives Beyond the Fields of Death” Memorial Room, which houses testimonies of survivors recorded by the Memorial Center and BIRN BiH.
Director of BIRN BiH Denis Džidić stated that the photographs, which have been collected and exhibited, can also be a tool for the fight against revisionism and the denial of what existed and what happened in Srebrenica.
“The photos show life in Srebrenica, culture in the most difficult days, sport, art, resistance, but unfortunately hunger is also shown,” said Džidić, during the opening of the exhibition.
The director of the Srebrenica Memorial Center, Emir Suljagić, said that the photos from that exhibition greatly complemented the collection at the Center, which today serve for educational purposes about the genocide in which more than 7,000 men and boys were killed.
The exhibition is open to the public during the working hours of the Srebrenica Memorial Center, the Balkan Research Network of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIRN BiH) announced.
