Never Again?

Often called Europe's second Genocide of the 20th Century, and labeled by President Barack Obama as "a stain on our collective consciousness," this year, on July 11, 2010 marked the 15th anniversary of the Srebrenica Massacre where about 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, as well as the ethnic clensing of another 25,000-30,000 refugees, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by units of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of General Ratko Mladic' during the Bosnian War.

The date of the "11th" is an important one during commemoration, as it is the official commemoration date of the massacre, and more importantly, on the 11th of every month, Women in Black in Serbia and several mothers of Srebrenica groups in Bosnia hold silent public vigils in conspicuous public space throughout Serbia and Bosnia. The purpose of these demonstrations is to advocate for public and political recongition of Serbian/Bosnian-Serb military/paramilitary crimes agains the Bosniaks in Srebrenica, to call attention to Dutch (and UN/International) culpability for the crimes committed, and to call for reparations & assistance for the survivors and victims' families.

This month, the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, in association with the Noyes Museum of Art, invites the entire Stockton and greater surrounding communities to join us in education, commemoration and action as we honor the lives lost, remember the survivors whose lives have been permanently interrupted, and reflect upon the failures of humanity that made this massacre possible so we may all learn to think and act toward making the well-worn post-Holocaust Mantra "Never Again" a reality.

Felde

Author Kitty Felde is a jounalist based in Washington, D.C. where she covers politics for National Public Radio in Los Angeles. Her series of reports on the war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and Bosnia later inspired her play, A Patch of Earth. Her work has been produced in theatres across the country including the National Theater in Washington, D.C. Felde was recently awarded the 2009 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award.

A Patch of Earth is one of four plays that were published in The Theatre of Genocide: Four Plays About Mass Murder in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Armenia, edited by University of Wisconsin Professor Robert Skloot.

Skloot is a professor in the Department of Theater and Drama and in the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of the play If the Whole Body Dies: Raphael Lemkin and the Treaty Against Genocide. He is also the author of The Darkness We Carry: The Drama of the Holocaust and also editor of The Theatre of the Holocaust, Volumes 1 and 2, all published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

Editorial Reviews (taken from Amazon.com)
Each play explores the face of modern genocide. The scripts deal with the destruction of four targeted populations: Armenians in Lorne Shirinian's "Exile in the Cradle," Cambodians in Catherine Filloux's "Silence of God," Bosnian Muslims in Kitty Felde's "A Patch of Earth," and Rwandan Tutsis in Erik Ehn's "Maria Kizito." Taken together, these plays erase the boundaries of theatrical realism to present stories that probe the actions of the perpetrators and the suffering of their victims. A major artistic contribution to the study of the history and effects of genocide, this collection carries on the important journey toward understanding the terror and trauma to which the modern world has so often been witness.

A Patch of Earth
In 1995, in the Eastern-Bosnian town of Srebrenica, Drazen Erdemovic, a young, disinclined soldier was one of those given the orders to kill. The play allows us to inhabit Erdemovic, however briefly and incompletely, to consider the nature of his internal struggle with the stain of guilt that persists regardless of the external pronouncement by the court. We are asked to discern: where does personal culpability end in acts of war and what choice would we ourselves have made had we been in Erdemovic's situation?

From the Playwright Kitty Felde's Page:
http://www.kittyfelde.com/f_patch.html 

Drazen Erdemovic faces the ultimate dilema. A reluctant soldier, he's ordered to kill busloads of unarmed Bosnian Muslim men and boys. Or be killed himself.

The play begins on the even of the sentencing for this confessed war criminal, who is known by his fellow soldiers as "the cry baby." Erdemovic managed to fight for three different armies during the Bosnian war and says he never killed a soul, until one July afternoon when he and his mates were sent to a cornfield near Srebrenica. There, he was taught how to kill large numbers of people in a short period of time. Buses arrived, carring Bosnian-Muslim men. Erdemovic at first refused to shoot, but was told if he felt sorry for the victims he could join them on the firing line. He confesses to killing "no more than 70" of the twelve hundred people slaughtered that July afternoon.

Erdemovic is haunted by the ghosts of his victims. His Serbian wife won't allow herself to believe his stories of the massacre, but his child sees the monster he has become. Erdemovic feels compelled to tell his story to the outside world to exorcise the ghosts that haunt him.



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