Entry 1- Background

                After World War II, the Balkans states of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia became part of Yugoslavia. But after the death of their long time leader, Josip Broz Tito, in 1980 growing nationalism between all the republics threatened to split up the nations. April 6^th, 1992 Bosnia-Herzegovina had declared independence from Yugoslavia. When this happened the Serbs started attacking the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslims) and the Croatians.  “Ethnic cleansing is a process in which advancing army of one ethnic group expels civilians of other ethnic groups from towns or villages it conquers in order to create ethnically pure enclaves for members of their ethnic group”(Danner, Faces of sorrow: Agony in the former Yugoslavia exhibition). This is what happened in Bosnia when they started attacking. “It should be remembered that Serbs had lived in Kosovo for generations and that Serbs regarded Kosovo as the cradle of their civilization” (Rockler, When and Why Did the Ethnic Cleansing Begin?). The Bosnian general Ratko Maldic says that he only did these things because he was acting out of fear, so the Serbs kept going. And it didn’t take long; three years later in 1993 they already had control of three quarters of the country, but not all Serbs felt the same way. Some of them even tried to help the Muslims. But if they were to get caught they would be considered traitors and killed. By doing all of this the population decreased by over 430,000 people, but not all of them were killed, some were lucky enough to escape from it all. But to this day some of the people are still considered missing; others didn’t get a proper funeral. This Genocide was a lot like the holocaust. People being lined up and shot at and killed, while women were raped. It truly was a horrific event.