How Holocaust Memories Continue to Divide the Serbs and the Croats

In Holocaust and genocide education, we frequently and rightly stress remembrance in order to honor the victims of the past as well as to safeguard our future from repeated transgressions. However, there are parts of the world where remembering or “misremembering” atrocities accentuates the fracturing of communities. In the Balkans, the festering wounds that have been inflicted throughout history never seem to truly heal, as the past, both real and fictionalized, drives contemporary and competing realities. This is noticeably evident with the modern-day rifts separating ethnic Croats and ethnic Serbs, which despite recent political inroads and relative stability, persist in being purveyors of mutual animosity