[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 1 (Tuesday, January 25, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: January 25, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                   A RERUN OF THE HOLOCAUST IN BOSNIA

  (Mr. WOLF asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, during the just completed winter session 
break, I made my third trip to the former Yugoslavia, this time 
visiting the war-ravaged city under siege, Mostar, located in southern 
Bosnia about 50 miles from the Croatian border.
  Each time I go there I come away thinking that things can get no 
worse. But they can and they have. Senseless killing and inhumane acts 
are the order of the day. The weekend report from Sarajevo in the 
Washington Post detailing the senseless mortaring, killing, and maiming 
of little kids out for a sleigh ride isn't, unfortunately, a low point 
in this end-of-the-century holocaust, it's business as usual.
  Mostar was little different. Divided by the Neretva River, east 
Mostar is home mostly to Bosnian Moslems while Bosnian Croatians hold 
the western half of the city. Serb gunners inhabit the hills and ridges 
to the east where artillery and mortars rain down on the city. East and 
West Mostar trade artillery, cannon, and sniper fire. As a result, the 
city resembles a bombed-out town from a World War II movie. The 
buildings remaining standing are largely shells and the people have 
moved underground, living in unheated, unlighted, and certainly 
unventilated cellars, seeking whatever safety from the shelling they 
can. There are mostly women, children, and the elderly there. Younger 
men are in the army there and elsewhere. Fighting.
  Conditions are awful. Just awful. Only untreated riverwater to drink 
and that has to be gotten under cover of darkness. Virtually no diesel 
oil for heating or even generating electrical power at the converted 
and mostly shelled-out hospital. Operations by candlelight, 1,000 
surgeries since this nightmare began on May 9, 1993. Can't stay in the 
hospital to recover. Need the all-too-few beds for the next batch of 
shelling victims which will surely follow.
  At a time when the Holocaust Museum at 14th and Independence Avenue 
here in town attracts millions trying to understand how this tragedy of 
World War II could have happened and when the movie ``Schendler's 
List'' is so popular dealing with this nightmare, how can we sit idly 
by and watch a 1990's rerun of the same tragedy.
  Years ago, there was a woman named Kitty Genovese who was brutally 
attacked in the streets of New York City. Many passers-by heard her 
screams but no one came to her aid or even called the police. She died 
as a result of the attack. Bosnia today, is an international Kitty 
Genovese case and the nations of the world are listening to the screams 
and doing little to help.
  We, and other free nations, must now engage and somehow bring this 
terrorism to a halt.

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