Mass Myths to Mass Graves: Politicizing Memory in Serbia as a Prelude to Genocide in Bosnia

As the systematic and planned extermination of an unwanted group, any genocide starts long before actual killings take place. It has its preparation, execution, and post-genocide phases. Focusing only on its most dramatic and horrific phase, the physical extermination of victims, can reduce or undermine the preventative purpose of studying genocide. Recognizing and paying due attention to the other two phases increases the likelihood of prevention in two ways: by identifying the early warning signs and by holding perpetrators to account. As a crime against humanity, genocide warrants a global and interdisciplinary response—one which avoids dehumanizing the perpetrators and their actions and concluding that only “monsters” are capable of doing something as unconscionable as genocide (Lee et al. 2019, 109–124). Understandable though it is at an emotional level, such a conclusion does not help create an understanding of the phases of genocide, which, we believe, is necessary to prevent future genocide. In this paper, we discuss how engineering and politicizing a “collective memory” in Serbia during the 1980s helped shape the consciousness of the future perpetrators of genocide at Srebrenica, and we consider the need to address the social construction of the reality in which that collective memory was enmeshed, a reality which enabled Srebrenica to occur in the first place.