Date: November 19, 1992
Author: Valentina Krčmar, Mothers for Peace – Bedem Ljubavi (Toronto Chapter)
Addressed to: David Marash, ABC News Nightline
View the Original Letter: krcmar book 2_Part40.pdf
About This Letter
In this November 1992 letter to David Marash, journalist and host of ABC News Nightline, Valentina Krčmar delivers both a message of gratitude and an indictment of global neglect. Following their phone conversation days earlier, she sends documentation that Mothers for Peace had already provided to the UN, Red Cross, and Western governments — months before the world acknowledged the existence of Serbian concentration camps.
Valentina thanks Marash for showing “what is really happening in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” praising his rare commitment to truth. Yet she also warns that the world’s inertia echoes “the silence of the concentration camps during the Second World War.”
“When the world wakes up, it might be too late. We gave them the evidence — they chose silence.”
She recounts a timeline of ignored warnings: meetings with Sir David Hannay, Cyrus Vance, and Rene De Grace of the Red Cross, as well as submissions to Robert Dole, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and Canadian officials. Despite this extensive outreach, the camps were only publicly exposed after media coverage in July 1992 — six months after she first delivered the evidence.
Krčmar accuses the UN and Red Cross of complicity through neutrality, describing their refusal to go public as a moral disgrace. Her rhetorical questions cut sharply:
“Do they need to establish gas chambers before the UN reacts?”
The letter closes with a plea for the truth to be told — for journalists like Marash to do what world leaders would not.
“For the sake of our dead, for mercy’s sake, we beg you, help us.”
This document stands as both a testimonial of conscience and a record of institutional betrayal, revealing how the most critical evidence of war crimes reached the highest offices — and was met with silence.
