Bosnia looks to learn a lesson from Dachau

"When one sees what a human hand and a human mind is capable of doing to another human being, one becomes speechless," said Mirsad Duratovic, a survivor of Bosnia's wartime detention centres, as he stood on the grounds of the memorial centre in Dachau, the Nazi-era concentration camp.

Duratovic, the president of Prijedor 92, an organisation of former detainees that is campaigning to build war memorials at the site of former prison camps in Bosnia, was among a group of survivors who visited Dachau last month.

The trip afforded the Bosnian survivors the opportunity to meet with German concentration camp survivors and human-rights activists to discuss problems related to building memorials at places of mass suffering.

In 1992, in the Bosnian Serb-administered camps of Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje near Prijedor, thousands of Bosniaks and Croats were held in inhumane conditions. Many were tortured or killed.

Yet, apart from a small plaque in Keraterm, these places are not marked in any way, due to resistance from the local Bosnian Serb authorities.

Duratovic said the visit to Dachau revived memories of his own incarceration. He was only 17 years old when he was arrested by Serb forces at the beginning of the war, and was held in Omarska and Trnopolje. Fifteen members of his family disappeared or were killed.

The first Nazi concentration camp, founded in 1933, Dachau served as a prototype for later extermination sites. Over 200,000 prisoners from 30 countries were imprisoned there during the Second World War. At least 30,000 were either killed or died of illness. Thousands more died during the so-called death march of April 1945, when the Nazis evacuated the camp.

Visitors to Dachau today see the inscription "Never Again" written throughout the camp.

"They said 'Never Again', and yet the same thing happened in our country and elsewhere in the world," said Edin Ramulic during the visit.

Ekkehard Knobloch, one of the driving forces behind the campaign to remember those killed during the war in Bosnia, said that memorials alone would not help people face their past.

He noted that it wasn't until 1989 when "people who had survived the horrors of Dachau started to return to this place. Although it was painful for them to talk about (their experiences), their accounts made these monuments become more than just concrete blocks. It was only then that this place gained authenticity."

The former director of the Dachau memorial, Barbara Distel, agreed that encounters with survivors were an important reminder of past war crimes, especially for young people.

Ervin Blazevic, a member of the Bosnian Optimisti association, noted that building a memorial in the former Yugoslavia faces challenges very different from those that existed in post-war Germany.

"There was no defeated side in Bosnia," he said. "That is the main reason why it is so difficult to mark places where war crimes were committed on a large scale. Usually it's the winner who sets the terms and has the power to impose memorials in the territories of those who were defeated in the war. We don't have such a situation in Bosnia."

In 1995, the Dayton Peace Agreement ended the Bosnian war, stopping the violence but dividing the country into two parts - the Republika Srpska and the Bosniak Croat Federation. Authorities in both entities resist building memorials to victims who are not members of their own ethnic group.

If nothing else, the visit provided the Bosnians with a perspective on just how long it may take to create a proper memorial. After all, it took the Germans 20 years.

"Many inhabitants of Dachau have a problem with the fact that a former concentration camp is in their neighbourhood," said Nicolas Moll, a historian with the Center Malraux Sarajevo and one of the organisers of the study visit to Dachau.

"It is a constant reminder for them of the horrors that were taking place behind these walls for 12 years and that the town and its population didn't do anything to stop that."

Ajdin Kamber is a reporter in Sarajevo who writes for The Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a non-profit organisation that trains journalists in areas of conflict.

The Institute for War & Peace Reporting.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service.