Srebrenica, July 30: Srebrenica must have been stunning before the war, with its Alpine setting. But for most of the past 13 years it has boasted some of the most picturesque war damage in Bosnia. The massive wrecked supermarket in the center of the town, where the single road divides, must have been captured by countless foreign cameras including mine.

Alpine scenery: Srebrenica as it would have been seen by the Serb besiegers

The wreck is no longer. In its place, there is a spanking new Povloni supermarket. The cinema, too, replaced. This morning, the town sparkles in sunshine. The Malaysian mosque is gleaming, and the cinema being restored. People are out at cafes. New buildings, like the green stucco headquarters of Care International, strut their stuff.

Behind this veneer, eye sores no doubt remain. The Domavia Hotel seems little changed from when I first stayed here in 1997. It was used by soldiers during the war, most of whom probably died – and some carved initials in the cupboard door. The same stuffed wolf still sits outside the door of the mayor in the municipality. Those who survived the siege will have plenty of their own memories.

But by and large the physical change is dramatic and testament to the huge sums spent since 2003. Srebrenica has definitely changed.

Beba Hadzic acknowledges the changes. She meets and greets several old friends in the street, and they embrace without embarrassment. Include one of her relatives, a Pasagic, is from the upper end of the town where she was born.

But Beba herself is not ready to make peace with the past. She takes us up to visit her old family home. The elegant house is set back from the road, with full pear trees and vines spilling over a veranda. Before the war, occupied by her parents, and the families of her brother and sister.

Beba’s and her own family lived in the lower end of the town, in a spacious apartment where we stayed last night. As director of the primary school, she enjoyed considerable social standing in the town, and owned a house by the lake. Life was good. She had many Serb friends. She was particularly close to Milenko Zivanovic who called her mother “Mum” before he went off to become an officer in the Yugoslav army.

When fighting began in the town in April 1992, Beba gathered her parents in the apartment. Serbian soldiers arrived and ordered them out before paramilitaries arrived – a favorite tactic to panic civilians. They were bussed to Bratunac, where they stayed briefly with friends.

Beba’s husband would have been taken to the school gym in Bratunac and bludgeoned to death had it not been for the intervention of a Serb friend, who was subsequently drafted and killed in the war. Beba is still shaken by how close her husband came to death.

Bratunac was cleansed shortly afterwards. Beba’s friends in Bratunac hiked back up the hills to Srebrenica and stayed in Beba’s flat. At one stage, 12 families lived there during the siege.

After the town fell, thousands of Serb families moved into the empty buildings. The family home was occupied by Serb refugees from the town of Dornji Vakouf. The apartment was taken over by Milos Mukosavlavic, a Serb who had worked with Beba’s husband in the mines and knew Beba’s family well.

Beba’s husband came back in 2001 to work in the municipality – an act of great courage. One of his first actions was to demand the apartment back, as allowed by the Dayton Agreement. Mukosavlavic objected, but eventually moved out in a bad humour when Beba and her husband insisted. He caused considerable damage and even stole the faucets.

Up at the other end of town, Beba herself tried to revisit to the family home but was told to leave by the Serb occupants who told her to be thankful she was still alive and not be greedy. She tried to pick her own pears, but was ordered out.

One can imagine the hurt and humiliation felt by this proud woman. She devised small acts of resistanc. On one occasion, she found that a Serb neighbor had taken painted wood panels from her apartment that she herself had painted. They held sentimental value. She went out and bought new, larger panels, and made sure that the Serb woman came over to see them back on the wall, just to reassert her sense of ownership. Normal behavior in an abnormal environment is an act of survival.