Max Bergholz | Violence as a Generative Force: Identity, Nationalism & Memory in a Balkan Community

The Ellison Center at the University of Washington

During two terrifying days and nights in September 1941, the lives of nearly 2,000 men, women, and children were taken savagely by their neighbors in Kulen Vakuf, a small rural community straddling today's border between northwest Bosnia and Croatia. The frenzy — in which victims were butchered with farm tools, drowned in rivers, and thrown into deep vertical caves — was the culmination of a chain of local massacres that began earlier in the summer. Max Bergholz is Associate Professor of History at Concordia University in Montreal. In this talk, he discusses research from his book, "Violence as a Generative Force" which tells the story of the sudden and perplexing descent into extreme violence of a once peaceful multiethnic community straddling the border between Bosnia and Croatia.