Thousands of Markers and One Cross: The Catholic Rudolf Hren Rests with His Own in Potočari

Among the thousands of white markers at the Srebrenica–Potočari Memorial Center stands a single cross. Rudolf Hren rests there, a Catholic who grew up in Srebrenica, played football, started a family and shared the good and the bad with the town to the very end.

Childhood and Life in Srebrenica

The Hren family moved to Srebrenica in 1960 from Beočin in Vojvodina. Rudolf, born around 1960, was three months old at the time. His father Aleksandar, of Slovenian origin, and his mother Barbara found work in the lead mine.

Rudolf grew up as a Srebrenica boy. He played football for the local club, and later married a Bosniak woman, Hatidža, with whom he had a daughter, Dijana. His friend Mirsad Mustafić, who now lives in Tuzla, describes him with the words: "He was a true gem of a generation."

The War

Barbara Hren spent the entire war in Srebrenica. In 1992, in Srebrenica, her younger son Ivan died at the age of twenty. He was buried in the Stari grad cemetery.

According to his mother, Rudolf was also wounded in 1992.

The Fall of Srebrenica and the Journey Through the Forest

After the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995, Rudolf set out through the forest with other men in a column toward Tuzla. His mother saw him for the last time in those July days. Later, as she says, the butcher Mensur told her that he had seen Rudolf alive during the retreat and that he was waiting for him. Rudolf never reached Tuzla.

The men from the column were captured and killed after the fall of Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces – the Vojska Republike Srpske (VRS) and Bosnian Serb police forces. Rudolf Hren was one of the victims of the genocide in Srebrenica.

Fifteen Years of Waiting

Rudolf's remains were found in a secondary mass grave in Kamenica and identified in 2010. His mother Barbara, his wife Hatidža and his daughter Dijana decided on the place of burial: Rudolf would rest in Potočari, among those with whom he had lived and with whom he was killed. Speaking of herself, his mother said: "I am a Catholic, I am a Croat."

Burial in Potočari

Rudolf Hren was buried on 11 July 2010 at the Potočari Memorial Center in a Catholic ceremony, together with about 775 other identified victims of the genocide. A cross stands on his grave, surrounded by thousands of markers.

His friend Mirsad Mustafić visits his grave every time he comes to Srebrenica.