When History Is A Nightmare: Lives and Memories of Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina

by Stevan Weine

Overview

Stevan M. Weine is a psychiatrist who has spent the past decade working with Bosnian survivors of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. As he listened to their testimonies, Weine concluded that these narratives were capable of bearing a complex truth about the horrific events in Yugoslavia that often were lost in more analytic works on the subject. When History is a Nightmare also explores how these traumatic events affected not just individuals, but an entire society and its culture.

Weine investigates the survivors’ attempts to reconcile the contrasting, collective memories of having lived in a smoothly functioning, multiethnic society with the later memories of the ethnic atrocities. He discusses the little-known group concept of merhamet. Denoting compassion, forgiveness, and charity, merhamet was a critical cultural value for the Bosnian Muslims.

Weine also explores how ethnic cleansing was justified from the vantage point of psychiatrists who played prominent roles in instigating the horrors. He also provides personal portraits of leaders such as Jovan Raskovic and Radovan Karadzic. He concludes by describing the recovery efforts of survivors—how they work to confront the destructive nature of their memories while trying to bring about healing, both individually and collectively.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813526768
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	08/01/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	290
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

Read an Excerpt

When there was a group of Bosnian survivors that I met with on Saturdays in a Queens school, I sometimes came with my wife and two daughters. They would play together with the Bosnian children while I sat with the adults in our small group. Afterward all the families had a pizza lunch in the school cafeteria. I'll never forget the time when I walked into the cafeteria carrying my infant daughter in one arm and her blue diaper bag on my shoulder. When Z. sees us he starts screaming at the other Bosnians, "See, that's what they do! That's what Serbs do!" The next hour is spent trying to help him to contain the torrent that has so suddenly erupted. The story comes out in bursts and fragments, but with some support, he is able to tell me about the morning when he was on a forced march with his sister and her baby and they came to a Serb checkpoint at a bridge. You had to throw all your belongings over the bridge into a net. he tells the soldiers, "We need diapers for the baby." The soldiers grab the baby and throw her into the river. When the child's mother tries to jump in after her, she is shot dead. As he paces, shouts, and kicks the air for a tense hour, the school cafeteria is that bridge. Eventually he calms down and says, "I saw your child, and the memories came alive."

What People are Saying About This

Tvrtko Kulenovic

Weine's history, based on survivors' testimonies, produces a story with human faces that is more capable of helping us to fulfill promises that so many Holocaust claims of 'Never again!' Bosnians will be grateful for this book.

Robert Coles

An extraordinary effort, on the part of an American psychiatrist, to understand a terrible European tragedy that still puzzles and haunts us. The result is a compelling series of human documents-stories from Bosnia that will bring the suffering there close to our minds and hearts, awaken and inform us mightily.

Yael Danieli

A profoundly human book, with a keen ear for the story, and an open heart to convey its depth. Stevan Weine attempts to weave history, human rights, psychology, anthropology, and creative arts into a new perspective on what genocide does to the lives of its survivors and to their culture.

Jerrold M. Post

Through his skillful empathic listening and eloquent writing, Stevan Weine conveys the magnitude of the horrors, the dreadful consequences of man's inhumanity to man.

Ervin Staub

A remarkable book. Everybody ought to read this panoramic view of the tragedy of Bosnia.

Editorial Reviews

The title suggests that this is a journalistic account of the Bosnian war, but it is not. Weine, codirector of the Project on Genocide, Psychiatry, and Witnessing at the University of Illinois in Chicago, seeks to elucidate the complicated conflict by emphasizing the psychology of everyone involved--including those responsible for making ethnic cleansing part of our vocabulary. Weine sums up his argument precisely when he quotes from Ulysses--"History is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake"--saying that the core problem lies in the inability of the Balkan peoples to deal with history in the right way. Weine's attempt is admirable and sincere, but as an outsider he fails to see how intricate the conflict really is; it is severely stereotypical to assert that the post-World War II years were essentially about suppressing bitterness and hatreds. In addition, he neglects the crucial question of why so many were unable and unwilling to distinguish between their nationality and religion. Nevertheless, chapters on the leaders of the recent genocide in Bosnia are particularly interesting, and those with little knowledge of the conflict will find this accessible introductory work helpful.--Mirela Roncevic, "Library Journal" Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Weine, a psychiatrist who spent six years working with Bosnian refugees, investigates survivors' attempts to reconcile their remembrances of living together in a cherished multiethnic society with the memories of horrific ethnic atrocities. He explore the Bosnian value of , meaning forgiveness and charity, which was central to the experience of living together, then looks at how Serbian leaders used memories to promote ethnic hatred and genocide. The author is an associate professor of psychiatry and co-director of the Project on Genocide, Psychiatry, and Witnessing, at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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