None of us Dared Say Anything: Mass Killing in a Bosnian Community during World War Two and the Postwar Culture of Silence

This dissertation analyzes the dynamics of mass killing in the Kulen Vakuf region of Bosnia during 1941 in order to explain why a culture of silence crystallized after the Second World War about the murder of Muslim civilians by Serb insurgents. The main argument is that the silence about nearly 2,000 Muslim civilians massacred by Serb insurgents was rooted in the transformation of many of the perpetrators into members of the Communist-led Partisan resistance movement. After the war, the Communist authorities remained silent about the massacres to avoid implicating Partisan fighters as war criminals, and so too did the Muslim survivors out of fear and a desire to move on. The dissertation uncovers the emergence of the silence through an analysis of the actions of the local Communist authorities, the Muslim and Serb communities, and the interactions among them between the years 1941-1981. It studies the history of the silence through the categories of those who “were silenced” and those who “were silent,” concluding that the complicity of nearly all social groups was necessary for the maintenance of silence about the massacres, which everyone knew about, but almost no one spoke of publicly. Through a detailed study of one Bosnian region over four decades this dissertation sheds light on the broader subjects of mass violence, remembrance, and national relations and identification in this part of Europe during the twentieth century. Specifically, it shows how the German invasion of Yugoslavia—and not widespread ethnic hatred among neighbors—triggered a small number of local extremists to engage in mass violence, which quickly cascaded into acts of attempted genocide and civil war. It illuminates how perpetrators of mass ethnic violence paradoxically were absorbed by guerrilla forces dedicated to multi-ethnic co-existence. It demonstrates how a Communist regime, which was explicitly committed to promoting the national equality of its multi-national population, ended up practicing a war remembrance policy that was profoundly skewed along national lines, and specifically against Muslims. It shows the concrete ways in which silence, a subject that historians of remembrance generally pay lip-service to but have yet to examine carefully, is created and enforced in the aftermath of mass killing. Finally, it argues that fixed notions of ethnic hatred or inter-ethnic friendship fail to grasp the highly fluid and situational nature of national relations and identification in multi-ethnic communities living in the shadow of mass killing. This dissertation is based on three main sources: previously untapped archival documents, especially from the Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo and the Archive of the Una-Sana Canton in Bihać; memoirs and testimonies written by participants in wartime events, including several unpublished manuscripts never used before by researchers; and numerous interviews conducted with survivors of mass killings and their children.

Keywords: Yugoslavia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Kulen Vakuf
World War Two
Mass Killing
Silence
Remembrance
Monuments
Advisor: Viola, Lynne