Thirty years have passed since what was deemed the first genocide in Europe since World War II. Srebrenica is the tragic symbol of the Bosnian War. More than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were murdered. It is difficult to forget the shame of Europe and the democratic West for having allowed such barbarity. It is the same thing we will hear in a few years about what is now happening in Gaza. How could the brutal genocide in Srebrenica have been committed? How can the genocide in Gaza be happening? How can we fail to learn? The memory of evil is weak; we soon collectively turn the page. We forget and relapse. The memory of what we have not experienced firsthand fades too quickly from our consciousness. It is as if history were starting all over again, and with it the endemic collective hatreds.

"Two perfectly symmetrical bones—that's how we know they belonged to the same individual." Dr. Dragana Vucetic, a forensic anthropologist with the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), has been helping to identify the remains of people murdered in Srebrenica during the Bosnian War for twenty years. In what has been deemed the first genocide in Europe since World War II, more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were murdered. Thirty years later, more than 7,000 bodies have been identified and returned to their families, who have provided burial. However, for Vucetic, every bone is important so that families can come to terms with the trauma and find peace. This Friday, seven people will be buried at the Potocari memorial in Srebrenica, where the genocide is commemorated with a grand ceremony every July 11.