Hikmet Karcic, "Torture, Humiliate, Kill: Inside the Bosnian Serb Camp System" (U Michigan Press, 2022)

Published: June 29, 2022, 8 a.m.

Half a century after the Holocaust, on European soil, Bosnian Serbs orchestrated a system of concentration camps where they subjected their Bosniak Muslim and Bosnian Croat neighbors to torture, abuse, and killing. Foreign journalists exposed the horrors of the camps in the summer of 1992, sparking worldwide outrage. This exposure, however, did not stop the mass atrocities. Hikmet Kar\u010di\u0107 shows that the use of camps and detention facilities has been a ubiquitous practice in countless wars and genocides in order to achieve the wartime objectives of perpetrators. Although camps have been used for different strategic purposes, their essential functions are always the same: to inflict torture and lasting trauma on the victims.\xa0\nTorture, Humiliate, Kill: Inside the Bosnian Serb Camp System\xa0(U Michigan Press, 2022) develops the author\u2019s collective traumatization theory, which contends that the concentration camps set up by the Bosnian Serb authorities had the primary purpose of inflicting collective trauma on the non-Serb population of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This collective traumatization consisted of excessive use of torture, sexual abuse, humiliation, and killing. The physical and psychological suffering imposed by these methods were seen as a quick and efficient means to establish the Serb \u201cliving space.\u201d Kar\u010di\u0107 argues that this trauma was deliberately intended to deter non-Serbs from ever returning to their pre-war homes. The book centers on multiple examples of experiences at concentration camps in four towns operated by Bosnian Serbs during the war: Prijedor, Bijeljina, Vi\u0161egrad, and Bile\u0107a. Chosen according to their political and geographical position, Kar\u010di\u0107 demonstrates that these camps were used as tools for the ethno-religious genocidal campaign against non-Serbs. Torture, Humiliate, Kill is a thorough and definitive resource for understanding the function and operation of camps during the Bosnian genocide.\nYou can find\xa0Pawe\u0142 Starzec's series of photos capturing the legacy of the camps\xa0here.\nChristopher P. Davey\xa0is Visiting Assistant Professor at Clark University's Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies