Jews, Muslims come together to commemorate Srebrenica massacre

SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Jews and Muslims come together in Bosnia on the eve of the 28th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, Europe’s only acknowledged genocide since the Holocaust, to talk about ways they can use their shared pain to help rid the world of hate and bigotry.

More than 8,000 Bosniak — mainly Muslim — men and boys were killed in July 1995 in Srebrenica, after Bosnian Serb troops took hold of the eastern town. The carnage has been declared a genocide by two UN courts.

“It is absolutely critical for the future of both the Jewish people and the (Muslim) Bosniak people for us to join forces in remembrance in order to make sure that these type of atrocities not be allowed to occur in the future,” Menachem Rosensaft, the general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, tells The Associated Press.

Founded in 1936, the World Jewish Congress, or WJC, is the leading international organization connecting and protecting Jewish communities globally, in more than 100 countries.

Rosensaft is leading a delegation of Jewish scholars and young diplomats attending a conference co-organized by the WJC and the Srebrenica Memorial Center on preserving the collective memory of genocide victims and confronting Holocaust and genocide denial.

The day-long conference, held in Srebrenica as part of this year’s commemoration ceremonies, serves as a forum for the two communities to talk about living with the pain of being the victims of the ultimate crime of bigotry.

“If we as Jews and as Muslims understand that we are also joined by that pain, we can build on that constructively to also forge the world beyond suffering in which (genocide) becomes unimaginable,” says Rosensaft, who is the son of two Jewish survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camps.