SREBRENICA, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA — ON July 11, 1995, a Dutch­ contingent of United Nations peacekeepers ceded control of Srebrenica, leaving the town’s civilian population — swollen with thousands of Bosnian Muslim refugees — at the mercy of besieging Serb forces. Serb soldiers and paramilitary police officers systematically executed about 8,000 Muslim men and boys, dumping their bodies in mass graves, which were bulldozed to hide the evidence.

The images most people remember today — the skeletal prisoners behind barbed wire, awaiting death in concentration camps — are only a part of the genocide. This was the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II; the entire region is dotted with mass graves.

Less well known is the history of “The Column,” a group of about 15,000 Bosnian Muslims who tried to escape the executions by walking more than 60 miles northwest through thick forests toward the safe haven of Tuzla. The harrowed survivors who reached the town were emaciated and traumatized.

To honor the memory of those who died, and to highlight the lack of justice served on those who perpetrated war crimes, hundreds of survivors and supporters this week walked the route taken by The Column in reverse. Working with the photographer Laura Boushnak, I interviewed survivors and relatives of the victims.

Nedzad Avdic was 17 when, together with his father and an uncle, he joined The Column, setting out across rough terrain to escape Srebrenica’s killing fields. The march took its name from the formation the fugitives used to traverse minefields; if the leader was blown up, at least those behind stood a chance.

Amid the confusion, the boy soon lost his father. “I cried, calling for him,” Mr. Avdic told me. “But everyone wanted to save themselves.” Scraps of his father’s remains, identified by DNA testing, were recovered from a mass grave a decade later.

After two days in the forest, Mr. Avdic was captured with his uncle. The Serbs took them to a school building in the village of Petkovci, about 35 miles from Srebrenica.

“They called for us five at a time,” he said. They heard shots and bodies crumpling to the ground. His uncle went first, in hopes of somehow sparing him. It was the last time Mr. Avdic ever saw him alive. His uncle’s remains were finally located two years ago in a secondary mass grave (his body was bulldozed and reburied in another location to conceal war crimes).

A soldier bound Mr. Avdic’s wrists and ordered him to take off his shoes and shirt. He had no shoes, so he took off his socks instead. His group was driven by truck to another killing field. The soldiers lined them up in front of rows of bodies.

The shooting started and he fell, with bullets in the arm and torso. “I prayed to God to die because my pain was terrible,” he said. But he stayed quiet, fearing the Serbs would finish him off in some unspeakable way.

When the soldiers finally left, he saw another man move among the bodies. Mr. Avdic rolled over the dead to reach this survivor. Mr. Avdic used his teeth to untie his companion’s ropes.

First, they hid in bushes as Serb paramilitaries marched another group of Muslims to slaughter. Then they resumed their flight, hiding in burned-out houses, even sleeping in a graveyard. After four days, Mr. Avdic’s wounds were infected and he could no longer even crawl. His companion carried him until, at last, they reached Tuzla.

Only a few thousand survived the “death march.” Many were killed by land mines or attacks by Serb forces. Some died of dehydration and sheer exhaustion. A few committed suicide rather than face capture by Serb forces.

To this day, there are many in Bosnia — teachers, municipal officials, police officers — who played a dark part in the mass killings of 1995. Until recently, Serb-dominated schools still proudly displayed pictures of indicted war criminals, including the Bosnian Serb politician Radovan Karadzic and the commander of the Army of Republika Srpska, Gen. Ratko Mladic. Both men are on trial in The Hague for war crimes related to the Srebrenica genocide.

Mr. Avdic lost his father, four uncles, six cousins and at least 20 other relatives in the war. Despite the horrors of Srebrenica, it was also his home, he said, and he refused to be driven from it. He returned to live there in 2007 and is now the father of two girls, ages 3 and 5.

“What kind of future do we have,” he asked, “when my children are taught by people who participated in the massacre itself?”