Jews and Muslims came together on Monday in Bosnia on the eve of the 28th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, Europe’s only acknowledged genocide since the Holocaust, to talk about ways they can use their shared pain to help rid the world of hate and bigotry.

More than 8,000 Bosniak — mainly Muslim — men and boys were killed in July 1995 in Srebrenica, after Bosnian Serb troops took hold of the eastern town.

The massacre has been declared a genocide by two U.N. courts.

“It is absolutely critical for the future of both the Jewish people and the (Muslim) Bosniak people for us to join forces in remembrance in order to make sure that this type of atrocities not be allowed to occur in the future,” Menachem Rosensaft, the general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, told The Associated Press.

Rosensaft was leading a delegation of Jewish scholars and young diplomats attending a conference co-organized by the WJC and the Srebrenica Memorial Center on preserving the collective memory of genocide victims and confronting Holocaust and genocide denial.