The Philosopher’s Attic

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

These days, ten years ago the world saw - or more likely turned its eyes on - one of the most brutal genocide massacres and war crime since the Second World War. Srebrenica.
Almost exactly 10 years ago Serbian Troops entered the UN protected city of Srebrenica after the Dutch UN Commander and troops were at first refused any support by the French General Command at Sarajevo, then granted the support, but to pull out and leave the city to the Serbs. Until today the number of victims is unknown. Only 2000 have been identified, 610 bodies are buried. Every month new mass graves are unearthed while the responsible - Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic - are still free and living in Serbia today, partly being protected by the ever changing leadership of the Serb Republic.

610… Buried in a memorial site ready to receive 10′000 missing, right beside the former UN barracks. 10′000 (?) killed in what was supposed to be a UN protected zone (declared a ’safe zone’ by the UN in 1993). Thousands thrown into the earth like animals. No right to live. No right to rest in peace.

I remember those days 10 years ago quite clearly. I remember how the world looked away and how I could not believe it. Retrospectively I guess that this was the moment when I had lost my political innocence and the primeval faith in higher authorities and names as mighty as the ‘United Nations’, the ‘NATO’, ‘Security Council’ and the ‘UNHCR’… It’s when I felt the terrible force of History repeating itself no matter how much is done to prevent it. It’s when I understood that if you lack the lobby to be helped, you will not be helped. And it’s when I saw that all the enthusiasm and idealism people have around you does not mean that they act upon it.
In Switzerland people remained unimpressed. My memory was that they couldn’t have cared any less whether in some God forsaken place some former Soviet subjects killed themselves. And I remember the articles and letters I wrote at that time. The tears I had shed because I couldn’t believe that we - the free world - would stand by again and again and see the horror happening without saying a word, without doing anything.

Of course, in the years that followed everyone was quick to condemn this, to offer their support, to help and welcome the refugees into their countries. I supposed it’s the easier thing to do. Easier than exceeding a UN mandate that was humanitarian. Easier than to step up to protect civilians from a war that was one of the - still unspoken of - most barbaric war crimes to be committed since Nazi Germany. At the time of the great generation, when our grandparents stepped up to help Europe they didn’t have the means to prevent the genocide of Hitler’s ideology. 10 years ago, the world had the means to prevent it, to act upon it. And still nothing was done. If there is no will… there is politics.

I wonder if people remember where they were ten years ago when it happened. If they even remember assisting this chapter of the past by tuning into their news networks or if it was just a normal day or week for them, filled with all kinds of atrocities all over the world.
I have never forgotten Srebrenica. Every time I heard the name I am filled with horror. With my still childlike revolt that now simply has become a reality like so many others. The sad truth is that the Serbs didn’t play by the rules the UN had set up. Neither do the terrorists we’re fighting now…

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What follows is the story of one survivor:
Safet Malagic - now living in Switzerland with his wife and sons - was one of them. Together with the other men - and his seven brothers - he marched from Srebrenica to Tuzla. Hunted by the Serbs on foot and tank, after a night of sheer horror, he was at the verge of killing himself to finally end it. The next morning they bordered upon a ridge and a bullet his a 15 year old just in front of him. The father of the boy started to shout: “The Serbs have killed my SON… my son…” took Safets gun from him and shot himself on the spot. That’s when Safet and his brothers knew that they couldn’t go on like this. They decided that the youngest two and the oldest two were to surrender to the Serbs and that since they never were in the Army they would probably be spared.
Safet Malagic never saw his brothers again.

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Links:
US Department of State - Press briefing from 5/9/1995, regarding the Air strikes and the Lack of Compliance by Bosnian Serbs with UN/NATO Conditions.
Srebrenica Time line
Press Clippings of 11/7/1995
The Commemoration I
The Commemoration II
The Commemoration III and some open words
The Commemoration IV
Comment of the Banner of Liberty
Srebrenica - A Cry from the Grave
Genercide Watch

Last weeks terror attacks on London has some unsuspected influences on me. It made me go back to my time in GB, to my friends there, to the fears I had then and the ideas about the future that preoccupied me at that time.
After I had checked up on all academic friends in the city, I finally got hold of one of my oldest friends living and working in London. I hadn’t spoken to her in almost 3 years and was (not so much) surprised to find out that she had gotten married at the beginning of June. Both her and her husband’s reaction to my call and my first “are you all right?” line was so British it still makes me laugh. Calm and maybe even a bit detached. “Yes, we’re very good. We just got home from our honeymoon and have just started to work again and now we’re having a nice little drink. The weather is very pleasant…” - My thoughts… ‘guys… ehem and the ATTACKS???’. Brilliant.
After catching up a bit and swearing not to stay out of touch for that long ever again, we hung up and I was at the end of my list of friends. In the few days since that call I have have been revisiting my stays in GB. The time I have spent there is still influencing me on several levels, maybe even more than I can now feel or explain. I remember one particular summer when ‘Robin Hood - Prince of thieves‘ was showing in theatres in Wales. I went back to the songs we listened to (of COURSE Bryan Adams… what else :D. What did we (K. and me) know about the future, the times we were growing up in and to, love or friendship? They were all concepts to us. Faint ideas about things to come. Empty expectations. Like fuzzy, yet unsharp paintings in a gallery of possible ways to go and roads to travel. We’ve lived through a lot, unfortunately independently from one another. We haven’t managed to share any of the major stories of our respective lives. Me not knowing about her marriage is only one truth of this reality. I’m not bitter about that. It’s just the way it is. The only shocking aspect of this truth is the fact that it takes a bunch of terrorists to asses this and finally express the will to change it.
And now that one part of the gallery of clear and sharp paintings lies behind us. But there still are a lot of pictures to be ’sharpened’…
K. if you’re reading this against all my better knowledge: let’s keep the memories of our time spent together in GB and Switzerland, let’s change the way things are now and let’s build to something new. A better connection, one that with right can be called a friendship. A friendship that maybe will have you see MY marriage… *brig grin*

After 60 years the sacrifice of the women at the Homefront are finally acknowledged.

Women’s courage in Second World War commemorated

Memorial to war women unveiled

Tracing the last WWII heroines

‘I did what I was asked to do’

Go to WildBillGuarnere.com for further discussion and reports about this or the Victory Commemoration that took place the same week as the terror attacks in London
(Relevant Boards: War at the Homefront or WWII Commemorations)

http://www.victorythanks.org.uk/

Ce soir mon coeur fait chanter
des anges qui se souviennent…
Une voix, presque mienne,
par trop de silence tentée,
monte et se décide
à ne plus revenir; tendre et intrépide,
à quoi va-t-elle s’unir?

Rainer Maria Rilke: Tendres Impôts à la France

Warum, wenn es angeht, also die Frist des Daseins hinzubringen, als Lorbeer, ein wenig dunkler als alles andere Grün, mit kleinen Wellen an jedem Blattrand (wie eines Windes Lächeln) -: warum dann Menschliches müssen - und, Schicksal vermeidend, sich sehnen nach Schicksal?…
Oh, nicht, weil Glück ist, dieser voreilige Vorteil eines nahen Verlusts. Nicht aus Neugier, oder zur Übung des Herzens, das auch im Lorbeer wäre…..
Aber weil Hiersein viel ist, und weil uns scheinbar alles das Hiesige braucht, dieses Schwindende, das seltsam uns angeht. Uns, die Schwindendsten. Ein Mal jedes, nur ein Mal. Ein Mal und nicht mehr. Und wir auch ein Mal. Nie wieder. Aber dieses ein Mal gewesen zu sein, wenn auch nur ein Mal: irdisch gewesen zu sein, scheint nicht widerrufbar. (…)

Erde, ist es nicht dies, was du willst: unsichtbar in uns erstehn? - Ist es dein Traum nicht, einmal unsichtbar zu sein? - Erde! unsichtbar! Was, wenn Verwandlung nicht, ist dein drängender Auftrag Erde, du liebe, ich will. Oh glaub, es bedürfte nicht deiner Frühlinge mehr, mich dir zu gewinnen -, einer, ach, ein einziger ist schon dem Blute zu viel. Namenlos bin ich zu dir entschlossen, von weit her. Immer warst du im Recht, und dein heiliger Einfall ist der vertrauliche Tod.
Siehe, ich lebe. Woraus? Weder Kindheit noch Zukunft werden weniger ……. Überzähliges Dasein entspringt mir im Herzen.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Zehnte Duineser Elegie