This is the most difficult piece to write about. I often listen to the radio, usually CBC and having been in the military, my ears tend to perk up at news about wars and such. The war in what was once called Yugoslavia is hopefully the most disturbing news I will ever hear. I do not want to hear that such things can happen again. I heard of a mass grave near Bihac (pronounced Bee hach) where there an estimated 300 bodies were dumped in with animal carcasses and garbage.

It numbed me.

I was taught in the army that civilians were to be protected at all costs. We were to fight for them, and to protect them from harm. Never, not ever would we hurt civilians. To do so would mark us as outcasts and terrorists, not professional soldiers. To hear of these atrocities, this ‘racial cleansing’, is so abhorrent to me, it is almost beyond my comprehension.

Much of ‘art’ today is to make personal symbols that generally have meaning only for the artist. Thus the artist can feel superior when showing their work when the patrons say "I don’t get it". Well of course they don’t get it, the artist is making a code that only they understand, it is an easier thing to do that to make something that everyone has a chance of understanding when they see it, even if only giving it a moment’s thought.

I chose the icon of the cross for the historic significance to the Christian people, as well as it being a recognizable symbol for most of the world. Bones and barbed wire, instantly understood symbols for pain and suffering. Together, they say it all for me.

I thought that this was over; Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Majdanek, Neuengamme, Janowska and others, are names from the Holocaust. These are names from history and that is where they belong. I thought that we would have learned this lesson.

Today we can add the names of towns in the former Yugoslavia; Bihac, Srebrenica, Kosovo, Brestovac and others, all with mass graves that include civilian men, women and children.

I know I cannot change the world. I made and show these pieces to remind people of the darkness. We cannot forget, if we do it will happen again. Yugoslavia was a civilized country. I remember watching the Olympics in Sarajevo. Our greatest danger is thinking that it couldn’t happen here.