Remembering the Past in Sarajevo: The Jewish Museum

The Jewish Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina is located in a beautiful cobbled courtyard not far from the attention-grabbing Gazi Huzrev-beg Mosque in Sarajevo’s Old Town. Small in size and modestly sign-posted as it is, it nevertheless manages to squeeze several fascinating exhibitions into the old synagogue in which it resides. The history of the Jewish population in BiH is as varied, and at times tortured, as the country itself, and the museum provides an insight into the story of a unique people as they carved out their place in Balkan history.

Although there is evidence of some small and often transient Jewish settlements in the Balkans during the Greek and Roman times, the modern Jewish population largely came to the region following the expulsion of the Sephardim from Spain in 1492 (resulting in another unique quirk in Bosnian history, with these early Jewish settlers being Spanish-speakers). After this first influx, Sephardim and Ashkenazi Jews then began to settle in the Balkans. Although under Ottoman rule they had no political rights and were forced to pay higher rates of taxes than the Muslim population (as all non-Muslim groups were), inter-group relations were generally good and the Jewish community began to thrive (as briefly discussed in my last Sarajevo blog, Rise of a Titan). By 1840 Sultan Abdul-Medzid would grant the Jewish population with the rights to open their own schools and enable free use of synagogues, in addition to appointing a hahambasha, or chief priest, for all of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The museum paints a colourful picture of the Jewish community and their mutually beneficial relationships with other peoples in the region. Unfortunately, as history demonstrates, this was not to last forever. Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, took place over the 9^th and 10^th of November 1938 across Germany and Austria and left 91 Jews dead, 7,500 businesses destroyed, and 267 synagogues burned. It was only the start of what was to come as the Nazis began their campaign of annihilation and began to transport their hatred across Europe. The Nazis would succeed in occupying Yugoslavia on 17^th April 1941, and removal of the Jewish people would begin in earnest.

As has been the case with so many of my experiences in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the stories that remain with me from this exhibition are the ones of the people that stood up for what was right in times of such unimaginable desperation. The Righteous Among the Nations are a selection of individuals honoured by Yad Vashem, a Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. In the Jewish Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina 54 of these heroic individuals are remembered. Their stories are inspirational and should stand as an example of people’s capacity to do good to other people, even in the darkest of times.

Zora Sebek-Krajina, a woman in the Italian zone of Mostar who housed the German-Jewish refugee Fritz Cahn and then helped him to make contact with Tito’s Partisans to fight back against the Nazi occupiers, and who also helped other Jews to escape by providing them with Muslim clothes and identification so that they could leave Yugoslavia untroubled.

Vid and Mato Milosevic, carpenters in Sarajevo who hired their main competitor, Leon Altaraz, after he was compelled to close his shop by the Nazis, and then began to hide even more Jews in their shop when the Nazi police became death squads. They would eventually be found out and sent to Jasenovac concentration camp in 1941.

Ratko Jankovic, a railway authority employee who smuggled a family out of Sarajevo by getting them to pose as a doctor and sick patient, and guarding their carriage by informing the officers that the disease was extremely contagious and they should not enter. He also provided Muslim clothing and identity papers to Hagara Kajon, who was smuggled out of Sarajevo and would later join the Partisans.

These are just some of the names that should be remembered for outstanding acts of bravery when their own lives were not on the line. The Kristallnacht exhibition ends with a photo of the smashed windows of a Jewish store and the quote: “’Never Again?’ Hardly. The world has stood by and done nothing countless times since 1938, and will doubtless do so again.” Bosnia-Herzegovina knows all-too-well that this seemingly cynical message in fact holds true – the 11-07-95 Srebrenica exhibition just down the road can attest to that – but the Righteous Among the Nations exhibition that closes out the Jewish Museum demonstrates that there are many people out there who do not stand by and do nothing. Unfortunately, these people are often lost in the violence that they stand up against and their actions are forgotten in the face of the evil they rejected.

I have come back to Sarajevo to attend the WARM Festival 2018, which aims to answer the question “Why remember?” after conflict. It seems that we often tend to remember the worst in humanity. But even in those worst of times there are ordinary people doing extraordinary good.  Perhaps it is time to focus on them, and remember those that risked everything for basic humanity.

Sergei Skripal: Facts, Counter-Facts, and a New Type of War

The immediate aftermath of the Skripal poisoning produced some unlikely, Bondesque assassination theories. Many came from the British tabloids; the poisoned beer, the Russian in the rafters of the Zizzi restaurant where Sergei and Yulia had lunch that day or the poison wafted through the air vents of Skripal’s car, and yet even more came from the Russian media, who blamed everyone from terrorists to Theresa May and the CIA. The panellists of the recent Guardian Live event The Skripal Case: A New Cold War? were under no illusion that this attack could have been orchestrated in any way other than through the Kremlin and viewed the Russian response as little more than direct obfuscation and an attempt to muddy the waters as the investigation developed. But then, can we ever really be sure?

Many of the facts that emerged in the aftermath of the poisoning seemed to raise more questions than they answered. Why Sergei Skripal, a retired GRU agent who was surely a nuisance to the Kremlin but had been out of the loop for many years and whose days of selling state secrets were far behind him? And, if they wanted him dead, why use Novichok, an untested nerve agent that caused considerable collateral damage but ultimately failed to kill the target? Surely, the trained killers of Russian military intelligence would not have bungled an assassination attempt so catastrophically? Does that mean Skripal was in fact not the target at all? Why now, at a time of heightened tension between Russia and the West, and during a particularly tempestuous time in British politics (and just two weeks before Russia’s Presidential elections)?

As panellist Steven Morris pointed out, in many cases the point of chemical warfare is to destabilise the target population, as people do not necessarily know what is happening at first, whether there is a continued risk of exposure, or what the effects may be. This can lead to disorientation, false flags for further danger, and sometimes panic. The Skripal attack certainly destabilised not just Salisbury but the British establishment. The calls to hold Moscow to account for the attack were met with rebuttals in Parliament from Jeremy Corbyn, who argued that more evidence was needed before the finger was pointed eastwards. The foreign secretary Boris Johnson fumbled his way through a press conference in which he asserted that the British defence science laboratory at Porton Down (coincidentally located only five miles from Salisbury) had told him “unequivocally” that the Novichok agent had come from Russia, a claim that Porton Down later denied. Theresa May, who was commended for her level-headed handling of the crisis, nevertheless was forced to share high-level intelligence with her French and German counterparts in Brussels to provide evidence of Russia’s involvement at a time where relations between these allies are particularly strained (leaving panellist Anne Applebaum to pose the interesting question of how events may have unfolded had Britain already left the EU and May had been unable to meet with Merkel and Macron in Brussels so soon after the event).

The European and American response to the poisoning did in the end represent a relatively united front against the Russian attack, and yet Moscow continued to deny, deflect, and counter-accuse. It does not appear that they have been successful in convincing anybody in the West that they are innocent of this crime, and yet, as audience member and former GCHQ Director Sir David Omand pointed out, perhaps again the point is not to convince, but to pollute the media and the discourse. This “implausible deniability” has been cultivated by the Putin administration for some time now and is paying dividends in terms of how the president is viewed both at home and abroad.

Much attention has been paid to Putin’s close advisor Vladislav Surkov, who is rumoured to have written a short story under the pseudonym of Natan Dubovitsky, Without Sky, that details “the world’s first non-linear war”, where truth and fiction are blended to confuse and disorient the public, and where the goal of war is not victory but to reach a point where it is hard to know if there is even a war at all. The story, which appeared just one month before Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and subsequent backing down from the brink of full-scale conflict in eastern Ukraine, has been credited as a road-map for Putin’s new “hybrid warfare”, which merges traditionally militaristic posturing with new technologies and covert operations to create disorientation and alarm in the West. The fact that nobody really knows if Surkov is the author of the story or not encapsulates exactly what this new information war is trying to achieve. Historically, propaganda aimed to create a narrative. Today, Putin’s propaganda machine wants to obscure that narrative and leave his audience in a state of unease and instability.

A similar campaign of disinformation to that viewed after the Skripal poisoning emerged following the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 by Russian-backed rebels in Eastern Ukraine in 2014, with the Kremlin denouncing investigations identifying a Russian-made missile as a cause of the crash, suggesting that the satellite imagery showed the missile did not come from a rebel-held area, then blaming a Ukrainian fighter pilot for shooting down the passenger flight and even hinting at tacit EU/US involvement. Meanwhile, the rebels themselves first claimed responsibility for the attack through Twitter, then denied it.

The rabbit hole goes deeper as Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election uncovers growing evidence to suggest that collusion between Trump staff and Russian officials was ongoing throughout the election cycle. Trump himself has denounced the investigation as ‘fake news’, but fake news, it seems, is what Putin excels at. Several of the Guardian Live panellists discussed their personal interactions with social media “trolls” who spread misinformation about them that quickly dissipated from social media to news outlets and influential figures such as Julian Assange, who posted inaccurate information about journalist Anne Applebaum that had originated from a “troll”. As the panellists acknowledged, some of these methods are relatively crude, with fake social media bots and individuals posting obviously fake stories or claims about their target, but the US-election meddling claims suggest a far more sophisticated disinformation campaign that may be headed by the Kremlin.

The world of spies and assassination is one that is rife for embellishment and provides a situation where conspiracy theories can run rampant, but with suggestions of interference in foreign elections and the Twitter account of the Russian embassy in the UK posting jokes at Britain’s expense on their feed, this information war is making its way into the mainstream. Journalists and citizens who are careless with their sources can perpetuate these lies, and when enough people believe them they can quickly become truths. Whether it’s a sophisticated propaganda machine orchestrated by the Kremlin, the White House, Downing Street, or a single troll on a computer in their living room, the information age has made deception ever simpler, and it would appear we are teetering on the edge of the abyss of post-truth. It has never been more important to check your sources, question what you are told, and verify information before passing it on. The technological advances of the internet and the instantaneousness of knowledge from around the world has been misused not just by unscrupulous individuals in their basements, but increasingly by the leaders of the world. And this has led us to the brink of the disinformation age.

A big thank you to Guardian Live for chairing an enlightening discussion at their recent event, and to the panellists who gave some unique insight into what the case means for Russia, the West, journalists, and all of us.

Find out more about Vladislav Surkov here https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/26/kremlin-puppet-masters-leaked-emails-vladislav-surkov-east-ukraine

To learn more about the phenomenon of Russian bots you can read this

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/19/russia-fake-news-salisbury-poisoning-twitter-bots-uk

The Imperial War Museum - War, Peace, and Human Nature

The Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum details the slow-burn rise of the Nazis that would culminate in one of the most heinous acts of human history. It demonstrates in often harrowing and graphic detail the acts and the actors that would turn the world’s stomach. Within those walls are images of normal people, helpless families torn apart by industrialised death camps; fathers, mothers, and children would never see each other again. Ordinary soldiers, hardened by years of battle who became violently sick upon discovering the camps. Simple-minded, average bureaucrats who would stoop to the depths of depravity in order orchestrate Hitler’s final solution. One is left to wonder how something like this could ever have happened.

The Holocaust exhibition is just the most extreme example of the exhibits on display at IWM that can lead you to question how inherently ‘good’ people may actually be. From the First World War through Cold War history to the Falklands, Northern Ireland and the current War on Terror, IWM attempts to show how conflicts develop and evolve through their lifespan, as well as focusing on their devastating consequences. You can view the heavily armoured ‘pig’ vehicle that British soldiers used on British soil as Northern Irish families were torn apart by decades-long violence, art depicting the futility and horrors of the most recent War on Terror, First World War gas masks that look like horror film props, and an area dedicated to that most terrifying weapon of all; the nuclear bomb. It is hard not to be shocked by the brutality of conflict.

And yet next to these vehemently anti-war exhibits are others that seem to romanticise warfare, like the Family at War exhibition that details the lives of an ordinary British family surviving the Blitz. I found myself fascinated by their stories, and perhaps spent longer in this section of the museum than any other. At the top floor of IWM is the final exhibit, coming directly after the Holocaust display, entitled ‘Extraordinary Heroes’ and dedicated to telling the stories of Victoria and George Cross medal winners. Again, here I was fascinated by the tales of people who pushed themselves beyond their limits to become role models for bravery and sacrifice.

The IWM captured the dissonance between my disgust at the horrors of war and the deep interest in individual war stories that I continue to have. It begs the question that if I, and so many of us, have a deep aversion to conflict and do not wish to see people harmed or killed, why do we still have such a deep fascination with war? There is something about warfare that seems to be deeply linked to humanity, despite the fact that we often refer to acts committed in conflict as inhuman. Wars have occurred for as long as humans have existed, and there is no denying the political benefits of waging a “good war”. Margaret Thatcher revitalised her support from the UK public by winning a war half a world away in the Falklands, and George Bush surged to a landslide victory in 2004 after launching disastrous campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. A quote that always sticks with me from the documentary that accompanied the incredible TV show Band of Brothers is from the daughter of one of the men of Easy Company, who died in his 90s well over half a century after the war ended, and asked to be buried next to his comrades who had died back in 1944/45. He had come home from war, had a family, an entire new career, made new friends and lived a dozen different lives, and at the end he felt closest to people he had known for no more than a few years a lifetime ago. A quote on the wall of IWM from Harry Patch, the last surviving First World War veteran tells the same story: “I tried for 80 years to forget it, but I can’t.” He died in 2009 and was buried with full military honours nearly a century after his service. Hundreds of people lined the streets to view his funeral procession, waving Union Flags.

People are fascinated by war stories, and there is more to our flirtation with conflict than just the action-movie excitement. As Thatcher’s and Bush’s election victories and the stories of brothers-in-arms demonstrate, war unites people in a way that nothing else does. We are never more together than when we are against someone else. This tribalism has run through the human experience for as long back as you care to look. Petty differences within groups are forgotten when you have to unite against another enemy, and this “us-vs-them” mentality gives life meaning. Humans are a social species, and the need for a strong, positive in-group image is key to our mental health. Our family, friendship groups, and those we associate with make up a huge part of who we are. This is not always a bad thing, but unfortunately the intense comradeship nurtured by warfare demonstrates that all too often our similarities are defined by our opposition to something, or, more specifically, someone else.

Looking at social identity through the lens of conflict highlights the darker side of humanity, the very human phenomenon that we often refer to as inhumane. When we consider someone to be like us we feel a strong connection to them. We want to protect them and that relationship, and when pushed that can lead us down a very dark path. The most extreme form of this is demonstrated by a quote in IWM from an SS colonel on his reasoning behind supplying the Nazi Einsatzgruppen with gas vans to enable their murder of “subhuman” Nazi enemies: “What was uppermost in my mind at the time was that the shootings were a great strain on the men involved and that this strain would be removed by the use of gas vans”. A Nazi commander, directly responsible for one of the most heinous atrocities ever committed, was concerned about the strain that mass extermination was putting on the health of his men. That is why it is wrong to call war and atrocity crimes inhumane. Unfortunately, they are not just a human phenomenon, but a uniquely human phenomenon, caused in part by our desire to protect our own group regardless of the cost to others who we view as different to ourselves.

War can bring out the absolute worst in humanity, but it also brings us together in a way that nothing else does. Why it takes something as extreme as conflict to make us feel united is something to be reflected on. This phenomenon of uniting against a common enemy flows through our culture as well, with any number of films, books, TV series building on that theme of coming together to defeat an evil ‘other’. Even in science fiction, if the Earth is united it is against an alien foe. Are our relationships defined by what we are opposed to? Do we have to have an enemy in order to be united? Could we ever see ourselves as one group, one human race, with no need for an enemy to fight against to give ourselves a sense of meaning? Why am I, as someone who would consider myself to be anti-war in most circumstances, so fascinated by the stories of comradeship, bravery and heroism that warfare produces? Is it in human nature to fight, or is the centuries-long history of global conflict something that we can eventually turn our back on?

The Imperial War Museum cannot answer these questions, but it certainly makes you think about them.