Schindler's Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Population Transfers

Abstract

In 1993, the film Schindler's List provided what many commentators took to be simile and many others metaphor for the violence in Bosnia. The cinematic version of Thomas Keneally's 1982 book on the holocaust of the Jews of Cracow seemed to emblematize the horror of the "ethnic cleansing" of Muslims from northern and eastern Bosnia in the summer of 1992 and thereafter, complete with wretched people in cattle cars and "concentration camps" with starving prisoners.

War-related Deaths in the 1992–1995 Armed Conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Critique of Previous Estimates and Recent Results

“…Despite of these problems, a majority of deaths have unambiguous causes which allow for clear classification. 5 In his article ''Schindler's Fate' ' Hayden (1996;see also ''TWRA Press, Sarajevo'' from March 29, 1996, http://www.hri.org/) noted the number of 278,800 war victims proclaimed by the IPH, and in particular its components: 140,800 Muslims, 97,300 Serbs, 28,400 Croats and 12,300 Others, are almost identical to those reported by Belgrade, in the regime controlled journal Politika on 12 November 1994 (p. 4), as having been published by the Greek Elefterotipija, as results of the work of prof. Bosˇnjovic´from Sarajevo. The author further notes that the ratio of war-related deaths to the pre-war populations of Muslims and Serbs in Bosnia are almost the same: 7.4% for Muslims and 7.1% for Serbs.…”

Collective Guilt, Collective Responsibility and the Serbs

“…While an individual defendant may be acquitted, the charge itself indicates that the larger guilt is assumed." 25 Hence, while the case of Srebrenica may be used as an exemplar of how some Serbs engage in denial, 26 following Hayden it can be argued that this denial is not a denial of the crime per se but rather of the collective guilt implicit in that crime. 27 By making some people more likely to deny the existence of crimes than to openly discuss them, the concept of collective guilt is an impediment to peace-building in the former Yugoslavia.…”

“Democracy” without a Demos? The Bosnian Constitutional Experiment and the Intentional Construction of Nonfunctioning States

“…Application of this reasoning to Bosnia in April of 1992 would have to produce the same conclusion: Bosnia was in the process of dissolution because its population was divided into hostile communities that could not agree on terms for organizing a political authority. The war that followed was aimed at separating the populations into territories that were largely ethnically homogenized, the process now known as "ethnic cleansing" (see Hayden 1996aHayden , 1996calso Ron 2003). This process was brutal, often murderous, as the populations were so intermingled in so many parts of Bosnia that clear lines of demarcation could not be drawn without engaging in what had been called "exchanges of populations" earlier in the twentieth century (see, e.g., Stavrianos 2000: 590-91;Djordjevic!…”

“…resistance leading to military conquest and mass expulsion (Croatia) or military rule (Kosovo 1989(Kosovo to 1999, the same recipes that had been used in 1945 to finally resolve the minority problems that had been created by Wilsonian self-determination after World War I (see Arendt 1966: 227-43 and 267-302;Hayden 1996c). Bosnia was the exception because there was no single majority nation.…”