Finding Hope in Vukovar
This has been a day of emotional extremes. This afternoon we visited the memorial to the deaths of 261 wounded men, physicians and hospital staff who were removed from the hospital, after the fall of Vukovar in 1991, taken to a hangar in the country outside of town and systematically tortured and beaten before being executed and pushed into a mass grave.
The hangar where they were tortured and where four of the men were beaten to death has been transformed into a memorial. Photos of each of the men line the walls. They are illumined a few at a time in a seemingly random way and as they go dark others are illumined, reminding us all of how their lives were snuffed out prematurely by their captors. I thought of their pain and the pain of grandparents who would never see their grandsons in this world again, of parents still grieving six years later as the bodies of their sons were exhumed and finally laid to rest, of wives bereft of husbands, of sons and daughters who would never feel the strong arms of their fathers. I left the memorial almost overwhelmed with sadness at the senselessness of such suffering.
And then I thought, will it never end? There have been so many mass graves, so many atrocities, and so much brutality. But I did not contemplate the savagery of human beings as if I could hold myself aloof from such misshapen individuals and peer down at them from a position of superiority.
I know the violence of my own heart too well. The line between good and evil runs not along the boundaries between nations or tribes but down the middle of every human heart. An exaggeration, you say? Well then at least down the middle of this human heart.
I crossed the street from the memorial with arms crossed, head bowed, and eyes fixed firmly on the ground. All I could feel were a deep sadness and sense of near hopelessness. As I stepped onto the sidewalk across the street, I glanced up to look for our bus and saw instead that a field of dirt stretched away for hundreds of meters. I could not help but think “how appropriate” - a barren field across the street from the site of atrocities.
But then as I continued to stare woodenly at the field, I realized that I could see lively green shoots timidly poking up out of that dirt that my own mood had painted as barren. Those signs of life and hope brought to mind the hope filled stories of the morning – stories collected by Srdjan Antic of neighbor helping neighbor survive the war here without regard to their ethnicity.
Srdjan had also shared with us the work that he has done to bring about reconciliation between the rival factions in his society. He told of how his own transformation occurred almost eleven years ago at the ROM Leadership Development and Peace Gathering.
It was at ROM that he met people who did not even ask if he was Serb or Croat. Instead they greeted him with obvious acceptance without regard for his ethnicity. He told of how he went up to his room and turned to his friend and asked, “What is wrong with these people?” As the days passed he realized that they were just fine and it was he that was abnormal. He left ROM three weeks later determined to see others as fellow human beings, deserving of respect. He also began immediately to plan the first projects to bring that renewed mind to others.
Seeing those green shoots reminded me that in the midst of all the misery and pain, there will be hope as long as we commit like Srdjan to not accept the brutality of the status quo but to work to transform cultures of violence into cultures of peace.
The hangar where they were tortured and where four of the men were beaten to death has been transformed into a memorial. Photos of each of the men line the walls. They are illumined a few at a time in a seemingly random way and as they go dark others are illumined, reminding us all of how their lives were snuffed out prematurely by their captors. I thought of their pain and the pain of grandparents who would never see their grandsons in this world again, of parents still grieving six years later as the bodies of their sons were exhumed and finally laid to rest, of wives bereft of husbands, of sons and daughters who would never feel the strong arms of their fathers. I left the memorial almost overwhelmed with sadness at the senselessness of such suffering.
And then I thought, will it never end? There have been so many mass graves, so many atrocities, and so much brutality. But I did not contemplate the savagery of human beings as if I could hold myself aloof from such misshapen individuals and peer down at them from a position of superiority.
I know the violence of my own heart too well. The line between good and evil runs not along the boundaries between nations or tribes but down the middle of every human heart. An exaggeration, you say? Well then at least down the middle of this human heart.
I crossed the street from the memorial with arms crossed, head bowed, and eyes fixed firmly on the ground. All I could feel were a deep sadness and sense of near hopelessness. As I stepped onto the sidewalk across the street, I glanced up to look for our bus and saw instead that a field of dirt stretched away for hundreds of meters. I could not help but think “how appropriate” - a barren field across the street from the site of atrocities.
But then as I continued to stare woodenly at the field, I realized that I could see lively green shoots timidly poking up out of that dirt that my own mood had painted as barren. Those signs of life and hope brought to mind the hope filled stories of the morning – stories collected by Srdjan Antic of neighbor helping neighbor survive the war here without regard to their ethnicity.
Srdjan had also shared with us the work that he has done to bring about reconciliation between the rival factions in his society. He told of how his own transformation occurred almost eleven years ago at the ROM Leadership Development and Peace Gathering.
It was at ROM that he met people who did not even ask if he was Serb or Croat. Instead they greeted him with obvious acceptance without regard for his ethnicity. He told of how he went up to his room and turned to his friend and asked, “What is wrong with these people?” As the days passed he realized that they were just fine and it was he that was abnormal. He left ROM three weeks later determined to see others as fellow human beings, deserving of respect. He also began immediately to plan the first projects to bring that renewed mind to others.
Seeing those green shoots reminded me that in the midst of all the misery and pain, there will be hope as long as we commit like Srdjan to not accept the brutality of the status quo but to work to transform cultures of violence into cultures of peace.
posted by Randall E. Butler at 2:44 PM
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