Surviving the Bosnian genocide : the women of Srebrenica speak /

This is a collection of accounts by Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) women who lived in Srebrenica, a town that was overrun by Serb forces at the end of the Bosnian war. The Serbs murdered approximately 8,000 Bosniak men and older boys, a massacre often called "genocide," though some scholars challenge that characterization. Leydesdorff (oral history and culture, Univ. of Amsterdam, the Netherlands) presents accounts of life in Srebrenica before the war when Bosniaks lived intermingled with Serbs; Serb attacks when the war began; daily life while the town was a UN "safe area" but was besieged and under frequent attack; experiences during the seizure of the town and the Serbs' separation of the older boys and men from the women; and finally of the women's forced departure from Srebrenica. These are heartrending stories from women who lost their husbands, sons, brothers, homes, and indeed everything in their lives before the war. Serious errors of fact mar the book from literally its first page, however, and far better accounts are available for understanding Bosnia. This is most comparable to Chuck Sudetic's Blood and Vengeance (CH, Nov'98, 37-1741), but Sudetic's book is superior. Summing Up: Optional. Graduate students, faculty. R. M. Hayden University of Pittsburgh

In July 1995, the Serbian army murdered about 8,100 Bosnian men and boys in Srebrenica-a town that had been designated a "safe area" by the U.N. and was ostensibly under the protection of Dutch soldiers. That the Dutch-outnumbered and unprepared-did nothing to stop the killings only added to the survivors' trauma and feelings of abandonment. With sensitivity and compassion, Leydesdorff (We Lived with Dignity) interviews about 50 female survivors of the Srebrenica massacre, many of whom still live in refugee camps, in this valuable oral history. Many of the women still exhibit signs of severe trauma, and though they survived, most have not found a new reason to live; others feel relentless guilt they could not do more to save their families. Exploring the war-torn years from 1992 to 1995 that led to the genocide, Leydesdorff puts her interviews in a broader, scholarly context by relating the women's experiences to survival stories of WWII and to prior research on trauma and rape victims. One of her main conclusions is that too little effort has been made to listen to these women's concerns, which she addresses by giving readers a valuable perspective on these survivors, encouraging them to tell their own stories. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.