A SHOCK FROM TRNOPOLJE

3 days ago (24 Septemer 2020) thanks to the Most Mira programme, for the first time I had a chance to visit the former Trnopolje concentration camp. That camp was established near Bosnian city of Prijedor. Trnopolje was one of the best known camps in this region. When you step on that ground, it takes you back into the past where you are trying to imagine thousands of men, women and children behind barbed wire. Many of them were killed, raped, tortured and taken into the unknown.

At that site I saw a primary school. The students there have no idea what happened in their classrooms 28 years ago! Why? Because their teachers and their education system are preventing them from learning the truth.

It was on this site that the famous image used for Time Magazine cover „man behind a wire“ was taken. That man was Fikret Alić who now lives in Kozarac near Prijedor.

Photo: www.fikretalic.com

It's maybe weird for the civilised world, but this site hasn't got a monument or plaque which would tell the story of this place in 1992. Not even a single word about that hellish summer in the Prijedor region. It was like nothing had happened.

However, one thing on that site literally shocked me. In one corner by the roadside there is a monument. But not an ordinary monument. It's a monument dedicated to the fallen soldiers of Army of the Republic of Srpska, at the very place where unarmed civilians were detained, killed, raped and tortured.

Photo by Medina Tahić

Sounds weird, right?

I will try to help you understand it.

We all heard and learned in our primary school history class about Treblinka concentration camp. Could you imagine that after the Second World War the same Nazi regime is still in power in any state or any region in Europe? Could you imagine the Nazis building a monument to their fallen soldiers after the Second World War at the Treblinka site?

I can't either.