Karadzic, mentioned in the previous post, masterminded and arranged for the implementation of some of the worst war crimes carried out in our lifetime, most notable among them, the rape camps and the genocide at Srebrenica. (Caution. The article is rated R for 'revolting.') Perhaps you saw it on TV more than a decade ago. The victims are not abstract, nameless images on film. I have met them. I know them. I have spent time in their houses sipping strong, Turkish coffee and eating pita and baklava while listening to their stories. They told me things, things that eventually accumulated in my subconscious and later bubbled up to give me the worst nightmares of my life.The other people like me who do this work in my city became so emotionally overwhelmed by the witness accounts of genocide, that a trauma specialist was eventually called in to do a series of art therapy and physical reintegration sessions with us--much the same care that was being given to the survivors themselves. Some of my colleagues were the survivors themselves.
It appears that even secondary trauma burrows into the deepest fiber of human tissue and remains there until the right trigger makes it wake up and start coursing through the veins again. As long as Karadzic is in the news, I must accept that the indignant anger and the deep sadness that have been dormant at the cellular level within my physical being are going to drag themselves through my conscious mind for a while.
Human filth. He is human filth.
1 comment:
This is a little bit like what happened to me when that horrible story came out with that sub-human pig in Austria who kept his daughter in the basement. That was hard. I finally had to stop accessing news sources for a while so I could regain my balance. For a couple of days then it seemed like the whole thing was inescapable and I felt like I was way too close to the edge. The really horrible thing is that it really was inescapable - for a very, very long time - for that woman and her children. I *felt* that and many of my own horrors came back to me in a condensed and very threatening way. Take extra care of yourself now, May. You can't help anyone if you get too sucked under. Put your own oxygen mask on first.
He's gonna get his, you know. Won't fix things, but he's gonna get his. That scumbag piece of shit. This is one of those times that brings out the ancient Roman in me. Public stoning, starving lions... but somehow they all seem too generous for guys like this. The whole thing is ghastly and would read as nearly unbelievable if some survivors were not still around to tell.
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