Srebrenica: Learning from Australian-Bosnian Students

To coincide with the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, Victoria University and the Bosnian-Herzegovinian community in Australia organised a Study Tour to Bosnia for Bosnian- Australian university students. To varying degrees all of the students had been affected by the genocide, which continues to shape the reality of life for many. Coming to terms with that reality will be negotiated differently and over different timeframes depending on the individual and the circumstances. But within the mutually supportive environment that the study tour offered it was anticipated that the burden of the individual negotiations would be eased and made tolerable. For non-Bosnians such as myself, the study tour and participation in the Srebrenica commemoration was an opportunity both to express solidarity with the victims of the genocide and to provide the students with a learning framework grounded in their experience of reality. As a historian I have a particular interest in how the selective operation of memory, especially shared group memory, structures reality, which—if it is to be a life-affirming experience—has to be approached reflexively. In this way lessons from the past also provide hope for the future