There are dates that have been seared into Europe’s collective memory. 11.07.1995 is one of them. On that day, the Bosnian town of Srebrenica became the site of a genocide. Around 8,000 Muslim men and boys were systematically killed that night and in the days that followed by Bosnian Serb troops under the command of Ratko Mladić. It remains the gravest war crime Europe has witnessed since the end of the Second World War, committed in full view of the international community, which had promised protection but failed to provide it. Srebrenica had, after all, been declared a safe area by the United Nations. On the 31st anniversary of the genocide, photographer Armin Smailovic, who regularly works for ZEITmagazin, and director Branko Šimić bring this story to the stage of the Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion, Reconciliation as a staged reading with music (11.07.2026).
Their project is based on more than 15 years of research. The source material consists of conversations with one of the few survivors and with a Dutch UN soldier, whose statements later became central to the tribunal in The Hague. These interviews first became a play for the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, then a radio play for Deutschlandfunk, and now this reading, which structures three perspectives side by side: those of the victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. Jens Harzer, an actor at the Berliner Ensemble, and Vernesa Berbo, known from the Gorki Theater, read the texts. And Amira Berbo accompanies them musically. What emerges is a dense tapestry of sound with speech, documentary material, and photography. Rather than explaining, it seeks to remember what a genocide can mean.
Text: Laura Storfner / Photos: Sandra Kühnapfel, Armin Smailovic
Dokumentationszentrum Flucht, Vertreibung, Versöhnung, Stresemannstr.90, 10963 Berlin–Kreuzberg; map
Srebrenica will be presented as a musical and theatrical reading on 11.07.2026. Following the performance, artists will speak with Dr. Kathrin Jurkat about their work with the material.
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