Maybe. Maybe Not. ~ By: Sabine Hirschauer

Written By Sabine Hirschauer, PhD Candidate

I’ve been here before. I’ve read these words, these sentences. I’ve seen these images before. Men clustered on a hill, standing in line, their heads bowed, waiting. For their hair to be shorn. Like animals. Fathers and brothers taken to concentration camps. Mothers chased across a mine field. Their daughters systematically raped. For days. Screams and wails lingering in the air, coming from a police station. Thousands of people packed into boxcars, then later forced for three days and nights to march across a non-man’s land. Emaciated men behind barbed-wire. An entire village population evacuated. Into an 18-car train. Hundreds of men on the floor of cattle sheds. This is not the Holocaust. Not World War II. Not Germany in 1940. This was Manjaca, Brezovo Polje Slavonski Samac, Tuzla. Bosnia-Herzegovina, the cruel summer of 1992. The end of the Cold War and its false prophecy of a perpetual peace. A cliché again comes to mind: Does history really repeat itself? Or is it sometimes just a fluke of the most cruel kind? The infamous vicious cycle. Or a time warp that one can overcome. Bend back. Make straight. And good again?
I’ve just finished copying and pasting from excerpts from the 1992 Human Rights Watch/Helsinki watch report about the Bosnian conflict. And as I read on I know I’ve been here before. I’ve read these words, similar sentences before. I’ve seen these images. Over and over again. The report “speaks” of the atrocities committed at the “refugee” camps by Serbian soldiers, of deteriorating conditions at the camps. The frustration of UN workers being paralyzed to act according to rules and regulations, according to senseless UN bureaucracy. And an international community seemingly oblivious of the medieval slaughter that is unfolding in the heart of a modern Europe – at the end of the 20th century. “Our frustration arises from our inability to do anything other than write reports and stand-by since UNPROPFOR has no operational responsibilities across the border.” In one of the memos a UN staffer begged for a minibus to help carry escapees “to safety since UN vehicles are not to be used for humanitarian purposes.” To no avail.
I’ve been here before. I’ve read these words, similar sentences. I’ve seen these images. The Holocaust. Trains and ships packed with people fleeing to borders, to the safety of other countries, just to be refused, turned around, pushed back into hell.
You’d think after all these second chances we would be a better people. So let me throw out a seemingly unrelated and in comparison innocent and trivial event. Twenty years fast forward, along comes the Euro Crisis. And Poland’s foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski being quoted of saying in November 2011 “I fear German’s power less than German’s inaction.” This makes him the first foreign minister in his country’s history of making such remarks. Poland, today one of the junior members of the EU, a country which has been over and over again invaded, captured and left for dead throughout history by its brutal neighbors. For me, this quote, hearing it on the radio, came as an indicator as to how we – possibly - can overcome the curse of history. Maybe. Maybe not. Or how we construct our own signs and our own destiny?
The concept of the EU, in general, as a confederation/association of states, independent yet interdependent (to me) is an effective mechanism that deters war and fosters peace. And the concept of the monetary union, in particular, (to me) is a sign of a commitment for us to finally abandoning the bloody battlefields of our ancestors and to see each other collectively rather than insular. This is (for me) why the EU and the Euro cannot fail. In addition to its economic function, both could serve as a mechanism that raises our moral compass as a people to avoid mass slaughter and mass political contentment - again. Maybe. Maybe not.
Or: This is - at least - how I see it. And I know everything is complex. And comes in various shades of grey. But maybe it’s not so complex. And maybe not so grey.
But this is my imperfect reality. This is my truth. Today. And how I know it. So: Do we need to suffer over and over again from the same thing? I think not. I think never.

Written By Sabine Hirschauer, PhD Candidate