Week 11: Post Spring Break

This week on the Veterans History Project I had a lot of time to dissect my spring break trip! As I mentioned before, this past week I was able to spend time in Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina.  As I mentioned before, Mostar is a unusual place. After centuries of tumultuous history, including a civil war from 1992-1995, Mostar is a city that has experienced undocumented amounts of ethnic division and political strife. While I'm there, I was able to talk to locals to get a better understanding about their lifestyle and about the difficulties surrounding the area so that I may be able to have a better understanding of what we do here is so important.

During my time in Mostar, I was able to meet somebody who told me all about the time that they spent during the Civil War that took place over 30 years ago. He was only 3 years old, but he says that it was traumatic enough that he remembers it even in his young age. He is a Bosnian and his family was captured by Croatians and Serbians. His entire family was sent to a concentration camp. He took me to the place where he had almost died over 30 years ago and peacefully spoke of it. I cannot imagine having to live with a traumatic past like that.

 This was truly one of those trips that made me so thankful to live in the country that I live in. Sure, we have a lot to fix as Americans just like everybody else, but we are not living in constant fear like the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina are. I've attached photos of a building that one of our friends currently lives in. If you look closely, you can see bullet holes that are from the previous civil war.
Often times, we view Civil War and acts of war  as things of the past. Here in Mostar, it is very recent and very real. Our tour guide told us that 60% of the Serbian and Croatian youth living in Bosnia identify with the Nationalist party. White supremacy and authoritarianism is taught in schools commonly here and truly reflects the state of the society there.

Again, I will never have to experience anything that the youth experience. That is simply because of the sacrifice of the American veteran. Because of their actions overseas and the bullets they took for me, I get to live a life where I am free to do whatever I may please as long as my actions do not hurt others. People in Bosnia only dream of having that ability. I get to have it.