Ramiz Nukic survived the genocide in Srebrenica and tirelessly collected the bones of those killed in the forests of eastern Bosnia. He passed away and never received official recognition for his work.
Whenever he could, Ramiz went to the forest, to the Kamenica hill, in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Usually several times a week. Where he himself survived the genocide in the July days of 1995. He would cover two or three kilometers on his small tractor with a trailer. In the forest, he would take a branch and remove the leaves from the part of the ground he had chosen for the day. Slowly, systematically and with a look that forensic anthropologists have described as extremely sharp.
Ramiz would almost always find items that belonged to the murdered people. Often human bones too. He could unmistakably distinguish them from animal ones. And he knew which part of the body they belonged to, even though he had never read an anatomy book.
He searched for the bones for almost two decades. First,he looked for the bones of his father and two brothers. He didn’t find them. Their remains were later identified in mass graves much further away. But Ramiz didn’t stop looking.
He found the remains of more than 300 murdered people. He was well-known in BiH. No other individual has found anywhere near as many remains of those killed in the war.
“I will search as long as I live,” he used to say. And he kept his word. Ramiz Nukic died on November 8th after a short and serious illness, at the age of 63.
