New England Friends of Bosnia and Herzegovina cordially invites you to the:

20th Anniversary Commemoration of Srebrenica Genocide: Commonalities Among Genocide Survivors’ Stories

• DATE AND TIME: JUNE 27th, 2015 (Saturday) | 2:30PM
• LOCATION: Facing History and Ourselves | 16 Hurd Road, Brookline, MA 02445
• KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY: Bosnian Ambassador to the United States, Her Excellency Jadranka Negodic
• GENOCIDE SURVIVORS’ TESTIMONIALS:

Senada Cvrk Pargan (Srebrenica genocide survivor), Marie Carine Boggis (Rwandan genocide survivor), and Jack Trompetter (Holocaust survivor).

***REGISTRATION REQUIRED DUE TO THE NATURE OF THIS EVENT.***

Please join us to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the biggest genocide in Europe since the Holocaust, where, among other atrocities, 8, 372+ men and boys of all ages were brutally murdered in less than one week, virtually almost leaving the Srebrenica town (and surrounding areas) without its male population.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our friends at Facing History and Ourselves for generously lending us one of their lecture halls for this occasion. Their generosity and support is very much appreciated.

Keynote Address by:

Ambassador Jadranka Negodic earned her law degree from the University of Sarajevo in 1979. She started her professional career as the Head of Department for Legal and General Affairs at the University Clinical Center in Sarajevo in 1983. From 1994 until 1997, she served as the Legal Adviser for the Center for Social Care in Dubrovnik, Croatia. She returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the role of Chef de Cabinet at the Ministry for Justice (Federal Ministry of Justice) from 1997-1998. Ambassador Negodic served as the Head of Division for Neighboring Countries, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1998-2001) and Head of Diplomatic Protocol Department within the same Ministry (2001-2003). In year 2003 until 2006, she became the Minister Counsellor at the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Embassy in London. She returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina as the Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) in 2007 until 2008. From there, she moved to the role of the Ambassador, Head of Mission of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the European Communities in year 2008. She served as the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Ambassador the United Kingdom from 2009 until 2012, when she was appointed as the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Ambassador to the United States of America.

Testimonials by:

Senada Cvrk Pargan was born in Srebrenica in 1975. As a young girl of age 17, she survived in the besieged town of Srebrenica four years of hellish war… a survivor and witness of genocide against the innocent population of her hometown in 1995. Today, she is married and mother of two children, a successful businesswoman, prominent activist in the Bosniak community of North America, a writer and publicist. In the struggle to preserve the memory of the dead victims, she has published her second book called "The Darkness of Silver Light". This book is dedicated to the twentieth anniversary of the genocide. In addition to never forgetting the 99 members of her family, who were victims of this unprecedented evil, her goal is to keep the memory alive of all the 8372 brothers and sisters who lost their lives in Srebrenica in 1995, only because of their Bosniak origins.

Marie Carine Boggis was born and raised in Rwanda until the age of 17, when she moved to the United States. She was 8 years old during the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda and lost both her parents and four siblings. Carine graduated from the University of New Hampshire (UNH) with a dual bachelor’s of arts degree in political science and international affairs. She currently works as an academic advisor at UNH and is pursuing her Master's’ degree in Public Administration. During her time as an undergraduate, Carine became involved with the Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur Bureau of Speakers. She spoke at various events sharing her story and urging people to get involved in stopping the genocide in Darfur. She continues to speak against genocide and mass atrocities by delivering lectures, speaking at rallies, and other educational events. In her free time, Carine volunteers with two organizations, the Friends of Rwandan genocide Survivors (FORGES) based in Dover, NH and more recently the Genocide Survivors Support Network (GSSN) in Newark, NJ.

Jack Trompetter spent the first three years of his life in hiding, separated from his parents. He was born in Holland in 1942 - two years after the Nazis had invaded the Netherlands and established their rule. As in other Nazi-occupied countries throughout Europe, Jews were confined to ghettos and suffered arbitrary arrests and violence. The daily terror of not knowing whether they would be alive the next day prompted Trompetter’s parents to seek refuge in hiding. Jack lived with an aunt, then at an orphanage and finally with the DeGroot family at a farm in eastern Holland, while his parents hid in the south. The territory in which Jack’s parents were hiding was liberated in 1944, but it wasn’t until the war’s end in 1945 that they were reunited with their three-year-old son. He came to the United States in 1949. He is an artist and is currently living with his wife Lucy in Cambridge.

ALL ARE WELCOME!