Abstract

Middle managers of genocide

The mine installations have become emblems of evil: Rusty boxcars sit along the railway tracks leading out of the complex. In 1992, this rolling stock was loaded with Muslim deportees, spidery iron tentacles, conveyor belts and limbs of machinery link one shed to another, silent and skeletal like the inmates that were packed inside. In 1992, this tarmac was a killing yard, the bodies loaded onto trucks by bulldozer. Omarska was a place where cruelty and mass murder had become a form of recreation. The guards were often drunk and singing while they tortured. A prisoner called Fikret Harambasic was castrated by one of his fellow inmates before being beaten to death. One inmate was made to bark like a dog and lap at a puddle of motor oil while a guard and his mates from the village jumped up and down on his back until he was dead.