Diane W. Paul decided several years ago that the last thing she wanted to be in this world was a bystander, innocent or otherwise.

It was this aversion to dispassion that led her to write a letter to Stephen Spielberg recently telling him she couldn't bring herself to see his hit movie, "Schindler's List."

"What's the use of crying in a movie about something that happened 50 years ago?" asked the 38-year-old Ms. Paul. "People are dying today."

She had a similar reaction in April during the ceremonies opening the Holocaust Museum in Washington, to which she had been invited. In a letter to this newspaper, she wrote:

"I listened as learned men and the leaders of nations spoke about the importance of the museum, of the lessons of history, as they pledged, one by one, 'Never again.'

"At the time, I wanted to shout, 'What about Bosnia? What will you do to stop the murder of civilians happening at this very moment?' But of course I did not. I remained silent."

She is silent no longer. In fact, she is more than willing to talk about the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and even to "do something" about them. She has quit her job. She intends to devote herself to the Balkan crisis, through volunteer work, organizing relief aid, possibly by returning to the ravaged territories where she worked last year. She has already returned once, last month, at her own expense.

Her husband has supported her in this, probably more than most men in similar circumstances would. But he, and their two small boys, watch and wonder where this decision will ultimately take her. Or all of them.

Diane Paul has delicate, busy hands; they wrestle with each other, fiddle with rubber bands, leap up before her to punctuate what she says. She has shortish dark hair, regular features; a ready smile, and deep, unfulfilled eyes.

Bosnia has been much on Ms. Paul's mind. And the Holocaust as well. In fact, it's with her every day. She is the director of the Holocaust and War Victims Tracing and Information Center of the American Red Cross at its Northwest Baltimore headquarters, or will be until her resignation takes effect next week.

Its mission is to find those who disappeared in the whirlwind the Nazis set off in Europe during World War II. To trace them, the living and dead, and to "alleviate the emotional and spiritual distress of survivors and their families by providing information regarding the status of missing loved ones."

She has been doing that work for 3 1/2 years.

But to her, the tragedy at hand is the one that demands attention. And she believes it is not to diminish the importance of the larger historical one to give all her energies to the one now unfolding in the Balkans.

"I can't help but draw parallels between the situation in Bosnia and the Holocaust," she says, referring to the slave labor still going on, the concentration camps still operating, the "ethnic cleansing" in hidden mountain valleys, and the rapes of Muslim women, as a matter of policy by the Bosnian Serbs.

"Some people are opposed to this [way of thinking]. Some people see the Holocaust as a unique thing. What they don't want to see happen is for the terrible meaning of the Holocaust to get diluted by later tragedies.

"I guess what I am concerned about is that nobody can say now we don't know what's going on. For people to get up and say, 'Never Again. Never Again. Never Again,' and while things like these are happening -- and doing nothing about it -- is, to my mind, unconscionable.

'They'll just keep killing'

"There are people who think I'm foolish," she says. "They'll say, 'Why bother? Why do you care so much? They'll just keep killing each other.' They also say, 'Why intervene? It has nothing to do with us.' "

With this point of view she differs most vehemently: "It has everything to do with us."

Hers is not an easy decision, if only because she's not a free agent.

"I would anticipate I would return to the region," she says, "but it would depend on my family. It has not been easy on them."

During his wife's first sojourn in Croatia, Dr. Marc Paul, a radiologist connected with Good Samaritan Hospital, took care of their two boys, ages 7 and 5, which Ms. Paul regards as extraordinary.

Dr. Paul, aware he has done all the right things, betrays a certain ambivalence toward the implications of his wife's commitment.

The first visit, he says, "led to some difficulties. I felt I was willing to make a sacrifice by staying home, though I also felt I was vicariously helping out there as well, by taking care of things at home."

How does he feel about her going again? "We'd have to talk about the specific situation. The second time [in January] was really hard on the children. We are still very supportive of her efforts, but another extended visit over there, by herself, would be real difficult for our family."

Yet he does not rule out the possibility of their both going, or the whole family.

Ms. Paul's determination to commit herself to helping the victims of the Balkan wars preceded her visit to the region, from June through December of last year. In a way it was inspired by her work with Holocaust survivors in Baltimore.

"I made up my mind that if anything like the Holocaust happened in my life, I would do something about it," she said.

This was even before the tragedy of former Yugoslavia laid claim to her mind. That process began in May 1992, when she read a magazine article about Croatian children wandering around in a refugee camp in Hungary looking for their parents. It had a special resonance with her. She is a professional social worker, and before joining the Red Cross, she worked with traumatized children in Baltimore and in Louisville, Ky.

Help for Yugoslav victims

When she was offered the opportunity to go to Croatia last year to set up a program of psychiatric assistance for victims of the Yugoslav wars, the first of its kind, she seized it. The catalyst for the Red Cross program was the systematic rapes of the Muslim women. What she encountered there was also something of a catalyst in her own life.

Asked what she recalls from her time there, she drew in her breath and said: "It affected me in so many levels it is hard to know where to begin." Then she began:

"One day I visited a camp, and as we were leaving, a woman came out and started screaming and pleading with us to help her find her husband. She was a Bosnian Muslim who had lived in Bihac. After several months of being shelled, she couldn't take it any more. She fled with her son. Her husband stayed behind. Later she got a message from a neighbor that her husband had disappeared, and the walls of their apartment were covered with blood.

"The woman tells everyone, repeats the story of the walls covered with blood over and over again. She is frozen in her trauma story."

When Ms. Paul speaks of that you can see she is trying to make you not just understand, but to feel what it was like, to see and hear this woman in the camp, unhinged by the war.

Ms. Paul lays out on her desk drawings and paintings by children she met in the Balkan refugee camps. For the work of distressed children, they are not unusual. Most of the drawings show planes dropping bombs, exploding buildings. Many of the scenes include dogs and cats.

The trauma of lost pets

"The children always draw their pets. The dogs chained up," she says. The loss of them seems to be the single trauma many of them focus on. "One child whose dog was killed by the soldiers felt guilty because he didn't run back and let him loose."

"Look here," she continues, pointing to another drawing. "This little girl always draws pictures of people running into the woods, which was what so many people had to do."

HTC Diane Paul looks up from the drawings, as if to say, "Can't you see? It's all so clear."

She presents a paradox. She is evidently anxious, but at the same time she manifests the serenity of a person who finally, after much uncertainty, knows exactly what to do.