Alma Masic, Director, Youth Initiative for Human Rights inBosnia and Herzegovina(Sarajevo)
I have two associations withGuernica: First, the event itself. The attack and systematic destruction of the town Guernica on April 26, 1937 by German and Italian warplanes on behalf of the nationalist-fascist forces of General Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Of the around 6,000 persons then living in the town (many among them refugees), it is estimated that between several hundred and 2,000 persons were killed, and more that two-thirds of the houses completely destroyed. Three days after the bombing, the town was taken over by Franco’s troops. The event has become a symbol of modern warfare with systematic destruction of towns and terror against defenseless civilian populations.
Second, Pablo Picasso’s famous painting “Guernica”. After the destruction of the town, Picasso was commissioned by the Republican Spanish government to make a painting. After the bombing, he choseGuernicaas a theme and finished it three months after the attack. It was first exhibited inParis, and then went on tour around Europe and theAmericas. Picasso refused to have the painting exhibited inSpainuntil democracy was restored andGuernica, the painting, finally made its way toSpain in 1981. The monumental painting, illustrating the suffering of the civilians, was Picasso’s way of showing the world what had happened inGuernica. Today, the painting is a worldwide incarnation of the memory of the bombing of Guernica and an universal illustration of the horrors of war and the terror against civilians.
These two dimensions of Guernicahave specific echoes for me related to the war inBosnia and Herzegovinabetween 1992 and 1995, and especially the siege ofSarajevo, the town where I currently work.
The systematic terror against civilians was also one main characteristic of the Bosnian war and the siege ofSarajevois one of the most brutal illustrations: during three and-a-half years, from April 1992 to February 1996, the town ofSarajevowas besieged and exposed to systematic shelling, killing more than 11,000 persons, among them 1,500 children. Just as Spain is in the grip of coming to terms with its history of dictatorship, so too are we, in Bosnia – two decades after these events – trying to decide what to remember, how, and why.
In early April this year, we commemorated the 20th anniversary of the siege ofSarajevo, which brought back a rush of painful emotion. How can we remember this history without re-opening wounds? Can we harness it to build a safeguard against future wars? Currently, Youth Initiative for Human Rights -Bosnia and Herzegovina, in consortium with several other foundations and public institutions, such as FAMA, an independent creative agency, the Theater Festival MESS (a public institution) and Foundation “Education Builds BiH” has created a Virtual FAMA Collection that helps people learn about the siege. This collection (www.famacollection.org) brings home the human scale of events, places and experiences of the Siege of Sarajevo ’92-’96 by communicating collective memory with a personal face. As a virtual bank of knowledge, it aims to bridge the digital divide between a culture of remembrance and today’s real-time quest for knowledge. Through this interactive website which is an introduction to the development of the Museum of the Siege of Sarajevo, we hope to provide a record of life under the siege inSarajevoand create a tool to educate future generations.
The second correlation – Picasso’s painting – to me, is an illustration of cultural resistance against nationalist and fascist aggression. This cultural resistance is also very important for the siege ofSarajevowhere the challenge was not only how to resist the aggression militarily, but also how to resist the daily terror, mentally. Cultural resistance in this context meant, despite and because of this daily terror, that cultural activities were developed – plays and theatre festivals, film festivals, concerts, “Miss-Sarajevo-Under-Siege-elections.” The purpose of these events was to show the aggressor that our history, culture, and traditions could not be destroyed, and also to attract the world’s attention to this battle for survival. This cultural resistance from inside the country was also supported from outside. For example, in 1993, Susan Sontag staged a production of “Waiting for Godot” in besieged Sarajevo. A special section at Virtual FAMA Collection is dedicated to cultural resistance because we believe that culture is a powerful tool of resistance, and one in which we all can participate.
Though the bombing of Guernica and the siege of Sarajevo are separated by time, place, distance, and of course, context, both these events have lessons on how to resist and remember. These lessons matter not only forSpain or Bosnia, but for all of Europe today.
By Oriol López i Badell and Jordi Palou- Loverdos, Memorial Democràtic, Spain
Remembering the bombing of Gernika is a useful exercise to analyze the indiscriminate attack on a population that was identified with a particular ideology. It was not important who lived in the city, simply that Gernika was located in an area considered Republican. For the military rebels, its population was the enemy as they were supposedly supporting a legally elected democratic state. This kind of aggression has been repeated throughout history and recently, we can see a similar attack on the city of Homs (Syria) for example, where the public calls for reforms to democratize the country.
In 1930’s Europe, where fascism gained ground, the Spanish democracy put in place a series of reforms to modernize the country (land reform, educational policies, workers and women’s rights, etc.) that were not accepted by the most conservative part of society. That’s why General Franco rose up against the elected government and, with the support of Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, led the country to a Civil War. The Nazi and fascist air fleets were the main protagonists in air raids, such as that on Gernika in the springtime of 1937. Barcelona also became renown for being the first European city that lived through ceaseless bombings for days. In Spain, 12,000 people were victims of the aerial and naval bombardments. If we add the victims in the battle field and those who died as a result of the repression, we find a total of 300,000 victims approximately.
Today remembering these figures and commemorating the victims means being aware of the human cost caused by a coup d’état which aimed to end democracy. But for years the episode of Gernika was silenced by Franco’s authorities (who won the war). They even attempted to blame the bombing on the Republicans. In contrast, the war victims who supported Franco were widely honored during the almost 40 years of dictatorship. Later, when democracy returned, a political pact continued the silence about the horrors of the Civil War and dictatorship, supposedly to uphold social peace. But people demanded the truth and wanted to pay homage to the victims who had been forgotten. Several associations and anonymous citizens fought for the right to remember.
The recovery of historical memory connected with the fight for democracy in Catalonia and Spain between 1931 and 1980 is the main goal of Memorial Democràtic. Our objective is to give Catalan society, especially our youth, the tools to remember the origins of today’s democracy and by doing so, reinforce the foundations of our society – respecting plurality and human rights. Democracy was not easy to gain and we all should be aware that it is a system that requires attention and care. Democracy does not live on its own, but is made and shaped by each of us participating in it. Perhaps today we are not facing a severe structural violence in Spain as we did in the 1930’s, but we should be alert to tackle other dangers such as today’s economic and financial systems. The crisis today is not a dictator like Franco, but of global systems that are taking advantage of peoples and societies in the frame of a crisis.
Today, the bombing of Gernika stands as a reminder and an invitation: a reminder of how quickly democracy can be lost, and an invitation for us to act to preserve our democracies every day.
- By Will Glendinning, Coordinator, Diversity Challenges (Ireland)
What connections can there be between the air-raid bombing of Gernika in 1937 and the 31-year long conflict in and about Northern Ireland that ended in 2000? On the face of it, these two histories may seem disparate. Gernika was the bombing of a city by the German airforce, Luftwaffe. In Ireland, the conflict resulted in over 3,500 deaths. But there were no air raids and no single event on the scale of Gernika. It is when we consider questions of what we should remember, why, and how, that the connections start to emerge.
The bombing of Gernika is now recognised as a key event in the lead up to World War II – and yet its very existence has been denied by Franco and his followers.
In the Irish conflict there are many examples of events that are remembered by one group and forgotten by others. For example, in 1916, Republicans led the Easter Rising against British rule while Irish soldiers died at the Battle of the Somme in World War I. Both of these iconic events in the history of Ireland are commemorated every year – but without reference to each other. Only now, with the 100th anniversary of these events coming up, there are active discussions on how commemorations can be more inclusive.
The remembering of events is important. What may be even more important is why we remember them: Do we desire as complete a record as possible of what happened? Or are we only remembering those events where we, or our community, are the victims? Are we blocking out or excusing those events where the memory is uncomfortable, where we, or our community, may be complicit in the perpetration?
Do we ignore events where we were actively complicit but also those events where we were the bystanders? Did we do as much as possible to try to reduce tension, to stand up for the human rights of all – or did we follow the crowd and allow the voices calling for action to go unchallenged? These are the uncomfortable questions that arise from examination of the selective process of what we remember and what we choose to forget.
When considering how we remember it is important that the ‘how’ is inclusive, that it covers all events no matter whether the victims come from ‘our’ community/tradition or from ‘other’ communities/traditions.
It is essential that we discover and listen to the uncomfortable memories. These memories challenge us and challenge our perceptions of the nature of the conflict. If we include all memories of events, no matter how uncomfortable we find them, then we have created the opportunity of learning from what happened and building a more peaceful future. If we are selective and not inclusive, then we remain in our comfort zone. Then memory and remembering fuels resentment and lays the foundation for future conflict.
At Diversity Challenges, we bring stories and storytellers from differing perspectives into the same safe place so that those from differing backgrounds can hear and reflect on the similarities and differences and learn. This is not forgive and forget. This is not “remember, justify, and repeat”. True reconciliation is to remember and change.[1] And this challenge is what connects us - whether 30 years or 75 years or 100 years after the events and whether in Gernika or Ireland or elsewhere.
[1] John Paul Lederach Beyond Violence Community Relations Council and Centre for Voluntary Studies 1995 University of Ulster ISBN 1-898276-09-9
- By Adrian Kerr, Manager, Museum of Free Derry, Ireland
Why do we have to remember events like the bombing of Gernika? Why, 75 years on, is it so important that such events be publicly commemorated rather than just read about in history books?
We have to remember it to remind ourselves and everyone else of what it actually was. It was not an unfortunate action in war, it was a war crime. It was the deliberate targeting of a civilian population by the military.
And this is accepted fact now in the case of Gernika, despite the Franco regime’s attempts to distort the facts. Today, there is an ongoing effort in Spain to make sense of and come to terms with this history. But what about other cases where the perpetrators are still in power, where their stories remain as the almost unchallenged history of the event?
How often is the bombing of Dresden for instance, which was also the deliberate targeting of a civilian population by an enemy air force, referred to as a crime? Or the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Hundreds of thousands of civilians died in these attacks but how often are they referred to as crimes? Rarely, because the perpetrators won and then wrote the history books.
We have a similar situation here in the north of Ireland. During the most recent phase of conflict here over 3,500 people died, which is a high percentage in a region that had a population of only 1.5 million, or less than half that of the city of Madrid. The history books and mainstream media carry the official version of events that says the war was between two opposing sides, irrationally split by religion and politics, and that the British intervened as a peacemaker to try to end the war. They ignore the role of the British in creating the conditions for war here and in becoming actively involved in and prolonging it. They stick with the line that the paramilitaries were terrorists but that those in uniform were peacekeepers. For instance, even though the British government have now apologised for Bloody Sunday, and admitted that all those who died were completely innocent, it is still not a crime to them, it was just a mistake. But that is not our experience of it.
And history is about experience, not just facts and figures. It is about people, and it is subjective and relative. This is why Sites of Conscience like the Gernika Peace Museum, which help us to understand history based on people’s experience of it, are so important. Sites of Conscience encourage us to explore how different events came to be, who was responsible, and what repercussions different people and nations faced, and where and why similar events are still happening today.
At the Museum of Free Derry we tell a story that often features in history books, but we tell it in a way that doesn’t. We tell it from the point of view of the people who lived through it, of the community who experienced it. Through the efforts of the museum and the Bloody Sunday Justice Campaign out of which it grew, and other like-minded organisations, history is being revealed and rewritten. In more and more cases the British are being forced to accept that killings carried out by their forces were wrong, that their victims were unarmed civilians and not armed combatants as they always claimed. And this is happening because people refused to forget, refused to let go of their history and let others write it.
At the Museum of Free Derry we share our history so that lessons can be learned, not so that our history can be sanitised to suit those responsible. We remember so that those responsible cannot be allowed to forget what they did.
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