By Adrian Nikacevic *
There are sentences that follow us through life, carrying both comfort and unbearable weight. For me, it is two simple words: “Never again.” I first heard them as a child, when elders spoke of the Holocaust and of the promise that such horrors would never return. I believed that promise had the force of law – that it would protect children, families, the innocent. I believed that after so much death, the world would never again turn away.
But my childhood in Bosnia revealed the truth. My world was not defined by school games and laughter, but by the sound of sirens and grenades, by the smell of damp basements where we hid. I remember nights without electricity or water, when the cold seeped into our bones and my mother tried to shield us with a thin blanket as if it could keep out the war. I remember the eyes of the adults around me – filled not only with fear, but with betrayal: the world knew, and did nothing. As a child I could not understand, but I felt the bitterness. Today I know that “Never again” did not apply to us.
While we lived through war, Rwanda descended into its own abyss. In just one hundred days, 800,000 people were slaughtered – neighbors killing neighbors – while the world looked away. The United Nations hesitated, great powers calculated, and innocents disappeared. In both Bosnia and Rwanda, the promise of “Never again” was broken.
And today, Gaza burns before our eyes. The horror is not hidden – it is broadcast live. Images of children buried beneath rubble circle the globe in real time. Tiny bodies wrapped in white sheets. Fathers carrying lifeless sons and daughters in their arms. Rows of graves dug in haste. Journalists, doctors, aid workers killed. On our screens we watch hunger, thirst, despair – and once again, we hear excuses, debates, silence. “Never again” rings hollow.
What breaks me most is the fate of children in Gaza. They never had a chance to be guilty of anything, yet they pay the highest price. Their wide, terrified eyes take me back to my own childhood. I remember my fear at the sound of grenades, the way I froze at the crack of snipers, and I wonder: do the children of Gaza feel the same? Do they believe, as they tremble through the night, that someone hears them? Will they ever know the world once promised their suffering would never be repeated?
As a humanitarian worker, I have seen this suffering up close. I have held the hand of a child who lost both parents. I have met mothers too exhausted to cry, fathers too powerless to protect. These encounters remind me of what international resolutions and lofty declarations so often forget – that “Never again” cannot remain a slogan. It must become an obligation.
The Holocaust exposed humanity’s deepest abyss, yet instead of learning, we repeat the same mistakes. Rwanda was silence. Bosnia was silence. Gaza is silence today – perhaps the loudest silence of all, because it unfolds in front of us, in an age when no one can claim ignorance. We cannot say we did not know. We cannot say we did not see. Yet again, the world delays, debates, excuses.
For me, “Never again” is a wound. A wound that opens each time I see a child crying from hunger or fear. A wound that reminds me that even in a world of institutions, conventions, and laws, the innocent are still being killed. But it is also a reminder of responsibility.
I cannot change the world alone. But I can speak. I can witness. I can remind. Because silence is complicity. And speech, however small, is resistance.
I want to believe that one day “Never again” will be true. But it will not happen by itself. It depends on us – on whether we admit our failures, acknowledge our silence, and find the courage to act differently.
When I look into the eyes of Gaza’s children, I see my own childhood. And I wish I could promise them what was once promised to me: “Never again.” The difference is that I refuse to let those words remain empty. I choose to speak, to remind, to bear witness. Because if we do not even try, then we have already surrendered – and those children will truly never have had a chance. – Vatican News
*Adrian Nikacevic, Deputy Country Director of JRS Serbia
