David Binder, a longtime correspondent for The New York Times who covered the Cold War in Europe, the breakup of the Soviet bloc and the horrific civil wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, died Sunday at his home in Evanston, Illinois. the age of 88 years.
His wife, Helga, said the cause of death was kidney disease.
A tireless and relentless journalist, Binder covered the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and its fall in 1989 — writing several hundred reports on East-West tensions and life under communist regimes in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania , Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, reports "The New York Times".
In the early 90s, after Germany was reunited and peace returned to much of Europe, Binder returned to the Balkans to cover the wars that engulfed the former Yugoslavia in massacres, mass rapes and genocide, killing 100 thousand people and driving millions more from their homes. he interviewed civilian victims, fighters and their leaders, including accused Serbian war criminals like Slobodan Milosevic and General Ratko Mladic, reports Koha.net.
Binder's passport was more than 8 meters long based on pages stamped with visas from troubled regions, and his reporting — more than 2,600 articles and commentaries in his 43-year career for The Times — provided insight into dictators and their policies. as well as details about the daily routines of citizens who faced food shortages.
Binder covered Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia from 1963 to 1966. He focused on the popular government of President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia.
Binder moved to The Times' Washington bureau as a diplomatic and European affairs correspondent in 1973. He returned frequently to Europe in the 80s to report on developments in Soviet bloc nations, and in the '90s to cover German reunification; the fall of the communist regimes in Albania, Romania and Bulgaria; and the civil wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo.
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As Yugoslavia disintegrated in 1991, he was trapped with Croatian forces in the five-day shelling and sniping siege of Dubrovnik harbor.
Ralph Blumenthal, his former colleague at the Times, recalled that Binder had a "great love for the Balkans," noting that he had absorbed the history and culture of the region for decades and was deeply affected by the tragedies of the wars there. His last book, "Farewell, Iliri" (2014), was a memoir about politicians, poets, artists, fishermen, farmers and friends of the Balkans.
David Binder was born in London on February 22, 1931, one of four children of American parents, Abner Carroll and Dorothy Walton Binder. His father was a foreign news editor and correspondent for The Chicago Daily News. He graduated from Harvard in 1953.
