Good People in an Evil Time: Portraits of Complicity and Resistance in the Bosnian War

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding book
Review: Bottom line, this is a great book. The introduction alone,
by editor Laurie Kain Hart, is absolutely extraordinary,
and the author's own preface is exceptional. But the text,
and the heart, of "Good People in an Evil Time" is simple
accounts by ordinary Bosnian people of their experiences
during the war.

Many other books have addressed political, military, and
historical aspects of that war, but frankly few of them
seem to help in understanding the human side and the
present day. For those who did not experience the war first
hand, answers to the human questions have been very slow in
coming, but this book has them by the dozens in the voices
of ordinary people.

For the creation of this book Broz was exceptional in
several ways. She is a granddaughter of Josip Broz,
commonly known as Marshal Tito, Yugoslavian hero of World
War II and head of state of the communist post-war
Yugoslavia. Her family name carried respect that
undoubtedly gave her entree to pass many gates that would
have closed to others and provided a foundation for trust.
Her status as a doctor gave her standing to request entry
to combat zones to try to help those who were suffering,
and her personal qualities brought her to act where most
others would not.

In Broz's own words, "Treating people of all three religious
traditions, I felt their need to open their souls and tell
me, shyly at first, what had happened to them during the
war. From these brief stories on cardiology wards, I
realized how thirsty people were for a truth that was subtle
and nuanced where the shells were falling, in a way that it
wasn't in Belgrade or in the worldwide black-and-white
coverage."

A great achievement of this book is to show so clearly how
people are more than their membership in an ethnic group.
Hopefully, it will also remind us to look beyond
caricatures of ethnic groups in conflict and to search for
victimizers and power seekers who hide themselves or profit
by casting blame everywhere but on themselves.

For the Bosnians and those near to them, this book also
helps to confirm that goodness among them was not isolated,
to remember and honor some of those who practiced it. My
wife and her family came to America from Bosnia as refugees
during the war, and many members of their extended family
still live in different parts of Bosnia. While without
doubt there are bigots, villains and crooks as well as
decent people in the former Yugoslavia, the voices in this
book echo the many experiences and first-hand accounts of
the mutual understanding and simple unconcern over ethnic
differences among ordinary people of the region.