"Peace isn’t simply the absence of war"

Thursday 28 December 2023

A survivor of the Bosnian Genocide who has made it his mission to use storytelling for education is set to speak in Jersey to mark Holocaust Memorial Day next month.

Smajo Bešo OBE, founder of the Bosnian Genocide Educational Trust, is set to deliver the island's annual Holocaust Memorial Day address.

The annual event, set on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on 27 January, is marked internationally and serves to remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, as well as the victims of subsequent genocides.

In Jersey, commemorations at New North Quay remember 21 islanders who died in German camps.

Jersey organisers have added that they also remember other victims of Nazi persecution, including people with disabilities, gay men, political opponents and resistance fighters.

Smajo is scheduled to speak to islanders during an event at Jersey Arts Centre, called 'An Audience with Smajo Bešo', as well as to secondary school students.

Pictured: Smajo was made an OBE in the 2023 New Year's Honours List.

Smajo was seven when the war broke out in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina.

His father was one of several male relatives who were tortured in concentration camps, and some of his family members were murdered.

The Bosnian genocide culminated in July 1995, when around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men were murdered by the Army of Republika Srpska (the Bosnian Serb Republic) led by General Ratko Mladić in just over a week, while over 25,000 women, children, and elderly forcibly deported.

Smajo's family found refuge in the UK in 1994, building a new life in the northeast of England.

Today, he teaches architecture at Newcastle University.

Smajo founded the Bosnian Genocide Educational Trust and was made an OBE for services to genocide education and commemoration.

He said: "The Bosnian Genocide happened in the heart of Europe just 50 years on from the Holocaust.

"The lesson from Bosnia is that we must never be complacent or take peace for granted because it exposed how vulnerable and fragile society can be. 

"Learning from the Holocaust, and subsequent genocides like the one in Bosnia, can enhance our understanding of possible warning signs or patterns and, most importantly, it can better equip us to actively work towards preventing future atrocities."

He added: "Peace isn’t simply the absence of war; it is our everyday actions through which war is made less likely. That is the true nature of peace.”

Paula Thelwell, a member of the Jersey Holocaust Memorial Day's interim advisory panel, said that Smajo's speech "will add great poignancy to the commemoration".

'An Audience with Smajo Bešo' is scheduled at 20:00 on Thursday 25 January 2024 at Jersey Arts Centre, with tickets available from the box office in the new year.

The annual Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration is to take place at 14:00 on Saturday 27 January 2024 in the Occupation Tapestry Gallery at the Jersey Maritime Museum and at the Lighthouse Memorial on New North Quay.