POTOCARI, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Hasiba Husic walked the long rows of freshly dug graves at a memorial site here Monday morning and searched for number 452.

After about 10 minutes, Husic who now calls St. Louis home, found the place where later in the afternoon she would bury her father, a victim of a massacre 10 years ago deemed the worst act of genocide in Europe since World War II.

"It is one big tragedy, but it's also happiness because after 10 years I know where my father is buried and where I can now come to pray," she said. "But this is one big sorrow that is hard to survive."

The last time family members saw Nazir Music, he was trying to board a bus with his wife that would take them away from this small mountain village to safety. The day was July 11, 1995, and chaos reigned.

The nearby town of Srebrenica and dozens of surrounding villages had just fallen to nationalist Bosnian Serb forces despite U.N. assurances of protection. The local Bosnian Muslim population was in a panic.

A group of 12,000 to 15,000 able-bodied Muslim men sought to escape on foot through the surrounding forest. About half failed to make it out alive. The town's remaining 25,000 inhabitants, mostly women and children, the old and the infirm, sought protection at a U.N. military base in nearby Potocari. But there, Serbs separated about 1,700 men and boys from the women, massacred them and dumped their bodies in mass graves. Music, then 51, was one of them.

Investigators found his partial remains this year in a grave in Zvornik. His killers had dug up his body and removed it from the mass grave where he'd originally been buried in hopes of destroying evidence of his murder.

On Monday, the 10th anniversary of that horrible day, the remains of 581 newly identified victims of what became known as the Srebrenica massacre were buried. They joined 1,440 victims buried in previous years at the site.

Organizers estimated that a crowd of more than 50,000 turned out under a threatening sky for the memorial service.

The day began early for Hasiba Husic, her husband, Hajrudin, and their three children.

They left a relative's home near the memorial site and climbed a steep, muddy trail along a hill. They carried a video camera. Halfway up, they came across a newly discovered mass grave - bones, skulls and clothing visible in the mud.

Less than a dozen yards away lay the grave of Hajrudin Husic's 30-year-old brother. Shot in the leg in 1992 by a Serb sniper while out searching for food for his two young children, Ibrahim Husic died of infection when the family could not get him the necessary medicine.

After a brief prayer, the family set out again up the trail. Just off to the side, almost hidden among a thicket of chamomile flowers, lay the grave of another of Hajrudin Husic's brothers. Nesib Husic was 22 when he, too, was killed by a Serb sniper. The family pulled weeds that had grown on his grave and talked about replacing a marker vandalized by Serb forces.

Hajrudin Husic's mother, Tahira Husic, is among the missing. She refused to leave her ancestral home when Srebrenica fell. Then 59, she was diabetic and had trouble walking. Her house is destroyed.

"There's been no trace of her," Hajrudin Husic said.

Along their morning walk, the Husics waved at old friends, neighbors and co-workers. Hajrudin Husic said he was happy to see them still alive. He also pointed out the houses of many of his former neighbors who now live in St. Louis, home to one of the largest Bosnian communities outside of Europe.

"The two saddest days of my life are when I left here and today when I came back to see their graves," Hajrudin Husic said. "I'm never coming back."



Happy in St. Louis




The Husics first fled their home in Potocari in April 1992 when Serb forces began their eastward advance from the Drina River. The family moved first to Slovenia, then Switzerland before they returned to Bosnia in 1998. But they never felt safe among their Serb neighbors and applied for refugee status.

They arrived in St. Louis on July 5, 2001, and now live along a busy four-lane stretch of Chippewa in south St. Louis.

Hasiba Husic works as a seamstress at an athletic apparel company.

Hajrudin Husic, 40, works at a car wash.

Their twin 16-year-old daughters, Almira and Alvira, will be juniors at Gateway High this fall. Their son, Hassan, 18, graduated from South County Technical High School this year.

Hajrudin Husic is happy with his new life in St. Louis, though he still has trouble sleeping because of past trauma in his life. He knows many other Bosnians in St. Louis who still struggle to adjust.

"So many are lost," he said.




Memorial for 581



Back at the memorial site, prayers from the Quran played over loudspeakers. The sounds echoed off the fog-shrouded hillsides where the ruins of homes burned and bombed during the war still stand. Thousands of people jammed narrow mud-clogged paths between the rows of open graves. They jostled to find the place where loved ones would be interred.

At each gravesite, simple green markers bore the Islamic crescent and star and a black oval plaque inscribed with the names of the deceased, their home village or town and the years of their birth and death. Women in white scarves stood, kneeled or squatted next to the open graves. Many cried, sobbed or wore pained expressions of sorrow.

At noon, the Bosnian national anthem was played followed by soaring orchestral choir music. As several politicians and religious leaders gave speeches, scattered raindrops began to fall.

Soon after, the first of 581 small wooden coffins covered in green fabric began to be passed overhead through the crowd. The names of the dead were read. The list took 1 hour and 5 minutes to complete.

As Nazir Music's casket arrived next to his gravesite, Hasiba Husic broke down and began to sob. Her children sought to comfort her. Relatives lowered the casket into the grave and used shovels to quickly fill the hole.

Zejna Music, 57 and who still lives in Bosnia, came for a last look at her husband's final resting place. She cried and was almost inconsolable despite the hushed words of comfort from her children and grandchildren.

The family prayed over the grave before they walked away, as sunlight broke through the clouds.

Reporter Phillip O'Connor
E-mail: poconnor@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8321