Torture, Humiliate, Kill: Inside the Bosnian Serb Camp System

Detention camps as instruments of torture and collective trauma

Format: Hardback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 22 March 2022
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press

After the Holocaust, half a century later, Bosnian Serbs orchestrated a system of concentration camps on European soil, where they subjected their Bosniak Muslim and Bosnian Croat neighbors to torture, abuse, and killing. In the summer of 1992, foreign journalists exposed the horrors of the camps, sparking worldwide outrage. However, this exposure did not stop the mass atrocities. Hikmet Karcic's book, Torture, Humiliate, Kill, reveals that the use of camps and detention facilities has been a ubiquitous practice in countless wars and genocides to achieve the wartime objectives of perpetrators. Although camps have been used for different strategic purposes, their essential functions are always the same: to inflict torture and lasting trauma on the victims.

Torture, Humiliate, Kill develops the author's collective traumatization theory, which contends that the concentration camps set up by the Bosnian Serb authorities had the primary purpose of inflicting collective trauma on the non-Serb population of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This collective trauma consisted of excessive use of torture, sexual abuse, humiliation, and killing. The physical and psychological suffering imposed by these methods were seen as a quick and efficient means to establish the Serb "living space." Karcic argues that this trauma was deliberately intended to deter non-Serbs from ever returning to their pre-war homes.

The book centers on multiple examples of experiences at concentration camps in four towns operated by Bosnian Serbs during the war: Prijedor, Bijeljina, Viségrad, and Bileća. Chosen according to their political and geographical position, Karcic demonstrates that these camps were used as tools for the ethno-religious genocidal campaign against non-Serbs.

Torture, Humiliate, Kill is a thorough and definitive resource for anyone interested in learning more about the horrors of war and the devastating effects of genocide. It is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the importance of never forgetting the past.

Weight: 580g
Dimension: 158 x 237 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780472132966