Day tour to Srebrenica

The Bosnian War took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. By 1995 that war was mainly between the government troops and the Bosnian Serb Army. The UN had declared Srebrenica a "safe area" but UN soldiers in Srebrenica didn't or couldn't prevent the town's capture by the Bosnian Serb Army. In July 1995 over 8,000 Bosnian muslims around the town of Srebrenica were massacred.

We took a tour from Sarajevo to the area, a two hour drive to the east. There were six of us altogether; us, a German woman, the driver, the tour guide, and a guide-in-training. The museum is housed in the buildings used as the UN base during the war. Originally this was a battery factory.

Museum entrance

The complex

The main factory building is now a photo gallery of the funeral ceremonies that are held annually when newly identified victims are buried in the cemetery.

Cemetery of the victims of the massacre. The victims were originally buried in mass graves. In some cases the graves were excavated several months later using heavy equipment and reburied in multiple locations in order to hid the evidence. As the bodies are exhumed and identified by DNA, they are being buried in this cemetery.

The town of Srebrenica. Even after all the events of the war, Bosnian muslims have moved back to the town.

A World War II monument in the town of Bratunac, where we stopped for lunch on the way back to Sarajevo.