Mothers of Srebrenica

In July 1995, following three years of horrific ethnic war between Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, war crimes intensified against the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica, a town in eastern Bosnia. United Nations peacekeepers abandoned a safe zone to Bosnian Serb forces, who in a single day killed more than eight thousand men and boys, and raped and expelled thousands of women and children in the largest genocide in Europe since the Holocaust.

In the aftermath of the genocide, a group of mothers came together to try to find the bones of their family members. Since then, the Mothers of Srebrenica Association has become a formidable organization that remains committed to disrupting the cycle of genocide that took the lives of their families and friends and still haunts their every day. They have fought to establish a burial ground, helped open a memorial center, compiled evidence to prosecute the perpetrators, secured an international day of remembrance, and built a home (on land where the genocide occurred) that they use as a base of operations and a guesthouse. from The Plough Quarterly October 4, 2025

I was fortunate enough to receive a widow and her two children from Srebrenica in July of 1995. I was working with Lutheran social services in Jacksonville, Florida when we received an emergency call that a mother and children needed immediate protection. Besima Sepic and her two boys spent their first night in the US in my guest room. Besima had been raped and her youngest child was the offspring of that horror. The other child had witnessed the horror. The night they spent with us, Besima sat up all night with the light on while the boys curled up on either side of her and slept. 

After LSS got a place for them to stay, we helped them get settled and Besima got a job and the boys got in school and they all had enough to eat. None of them spoke any English when they arrived, but about a year later, I got a call from Besima and she spoke enough English to say thank you and tell me how well they were doing. She rebuilt her little community after that genocide the best she could. I will never forget the honor of being able to help her. 

Below is the rest of the article quoted above.

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/politics/human-rights/mothers-of-srebrenica?utm_source=Plough+-+English&utm_campaign=146c475985-Dig&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4cbb94afa4-146c475985-295699297