30 years after the Srebrenica massacre, St. Louis remembers the genocide and its victims

Reported by STLPR

Thirty years ago, the world reacted in horror to events in Srebrenica. During the Bosnian War, the town became the site of a massacre that is officially recognized as modern genocide. According to the United Nations, at least 8,300 Muslim men and teen boys were killed or went missing at the hands of the Serbian army.

The mass killing was part of a larger war that took 100,000 lives. It was also part of the reason that thousands of Bosnians, fleeing that war and genocide, settled in St. Louis.

“Most people in St Louis have either met a Bosnian so far, or will meet a Bosnian because the population is so large right now,” said Adna Karamehic-Oates, who directs the Center for Bosnian Studies. She is one of the organizers of the Srebrenica Remembrance Coalition. Karamehic-Oates and the center collect oral histories and accounts of Bosnians who survived the war. The pain is still raw, even decades later.

“I think it's important to remember that,” she said. “Because most of the Bosnian population in St. Louis is here because they are from areas that were brutally attacked … they carry those stories [and] most people have trauma, most people have lost someone in their family.”

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