On February 4th, 2020, nearly 25 years after the horrific events of the Srebrenica genocide unfolded, a team comprised of members of the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Center and the Post-Conflict Research Center went to Mt. Udrc. The team was accompanied by three guides, all of whom were themselves survivors of the death march from Srebrenica to Tuzla: Fahro Mustafic, from the village of Rasevo, Enver Secic, former Bosnian soldier from Bratunac, and Ramiz Nukic, known as Srebrenica’s ‘bone collector’. The team set out into the mountain’s immense conifer forests to collect items left behind all those who courageously fought to escape the encroaching arms of certain death. At the mountain’s peak, a site known as ‘Pisanica’, the team discovered the remnants of a hut where a group from Srebrenica hid during those fateful days in July of 1995. On the team’s descent, a number of other items were found scattered along the mountain’s wooded paths. The scenes were ominous. Dishes used to prepare food and pieces of clothing lay bare on the forest floor, abandoned all those years ago. Personal belongings seemingly left behind as proof that something horrific had transpired in these forests.
The team carefully collected each item to be safely stored at the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Center. The Center’s museum will become a new home to the objects, where, along with survivors’ testimonies, they will forever tell the tragic stories of their owners, some of whom escaped genocide’s final embrace, many of whom did not.
