Photo: The heart found all over Vukovar as a symbol of peace.
From pain to peace: Ol Rappaport visits Vukovar
‘Peace is not made by victory.’
In June 2018 I was on a cruise from Budapest to the Black Sea Delta. We stopped at the Croatian town of Vukovar to learn about the siege and massacre of 1991. What I learned in Vukovar was not simply about the brutality of war, but about the extraordinary capacity of ordinary people to live together again among the rubble and ashes.
Vukovar’s 1,800 lightly-armed militia resisted the might of the Serbian army for eighty-seven days. The siege has been compared with Stalingrad and ended with what was then the worst massacre in Europe since the second world war. Our guide, Mihael, was a native of Vukovar. His family took refuge in the hospital basement before escaping to Germany as refugees, returning only after the Yugoslav wars ended.
Although Vukovar is Croatian, it has a large Serbian population. As a schoolchild, Mihael and other Croat pupils arrived late and left early to avoid attacks from Serb pupils. Twenty years later this was no longer necessary. One sign of how far Vukovar had moved on was Mihael’s sister’s wish to marry a Serb. Her father refused to consider it. ‘Please, just meet him!’ she pleaded. Out of love for his daughter he did, finding that this Serb was the only man he had met who was capable of making a happy marriage with his daughter.
Mihael was clear: Vukovar may have suffered one of the worst massacres of the Yugoslav wars, but it was not the only atrocity. No group was guiltless. All had suffered violence and all had inflicted it. Today Serbs and Croats again live as neighbours, often uneasily, but they manage. Mihael spoke of a Serb convicted of war crimes who, after serving his sentence, returned to Vukovar. Every day he passed people he had persecuted. Every day his victims saw their oppressor walking among them.
Across the Danube from Vukovar lies the disputed island of Vukovarska Ada; Serbs and Croats may visit in summer without passports. Mihael’s father and his closest friend before the war, a Serb who still lives in Vukovar, never speak in the streets of the town. But sometimes they meet on Otok Mala Ada, and there they sit together and talk.
Vukovar teaches that peace is built by imperfect people accepting imperfect compromises because they decide that living together matters more than seeking the unachievable. The people of Vukovar have accepted compromises that are painful and often hard, but still preferable to bloodshed.
Contrast that with Israel and Palestine. Each failed negotiation has reinforced the conviction that further concessions will never bring peace. Intransigence has bred intransigence. Peace will never come by hurling accusation and counteraccusation (however justified) or imposing impossible, intractable demands.
Peace is not made by victory, nor by forgetting the past. It is made by people like Mihael’s father and his Serbian friend, who cannot yet speak in the streets of their own town, but who still find a place where they can.
Like Northern Ireland, its peace remains imperfect and fragile. It reminds us that lasting peace is built on accepting painful, difficult compromise. It is the only bridge between yesterday’s enemies and tomorrow’s neighbours.
