Foreword by Stephen Fry p2&3
Who was Raphael Lemkin? p5
Learn about Zigi Shipper p7
Learn about Safet Vukalic p10
How you can help p16
#genocideknowmore The awareness raising guide written by young people for young people
Stand Together!
We think that it is important to understand what survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides went through. Inside the pages of this booklet you can read about the experiences of Zigi Shipper and Bea Green who survived the Holocaust. Similarly, you can learn more about the stories of Sokphal Din, Sophie Masereka and Safet Vukalic who surWhy we think this important… Theisboys at No.52 p10 p14 1
vived genocides in Cambodia, Rwan- genocides?’ Perhaps you could send da and Bosnia respectively. us your answer to the question. too.. We’re also hugely privileged to have the foreword of our booklet written by Stephen Fry. Mr Fry’s hugely powerful piece is his personal response to the question ‘why is it important for young people to learn about the Holocaust and other
Learn about Sokphal Din p9
How does genocide happen? p12 #genocideknowmore
How does genocide happen? Who coined the term? All these questions are hugely important...and we hope that our booklet will be useful to those would like to think about the answers.
Learn about Sophie Masereka p11
Learn about Bea Green p8
Foreword By Stephen Fry Why is it important for young people to learn about the Holocaust and other genocides? Hello there. Gosh. there’s a question. Why remember the Holocaust? Why be reminded of genocide?
sion and all your clothing and killed. Shot perhaps. Or crowded into a gas chamber and choked to death by poisonous gas. Your bodies are burned. It is the end of you. In one horrible and incomprehensible nightmare you and thousands like you have had your lives snuffed out without mercy, appeal or hope.
Well let’s have a thought experiment, which is to say, let’s close our eyes and imagine a scene. Picture it in our minds. It’s After you’re gone your father and brother are worked until like being the writer and director of your own movie inside they are thin, weak and unable to work any more and thereyour head. This is your movie, try and see the pictures and fore no longer of any use to those in charge. Then they too are hear the noises and special effects as clearly as you can. killed and burned as you were. Every day for years this hapRight. Ready? pens until the thousands of dead number hundreds of thousands and then millions. So many that the human mind can’t Imagine that tonight, this very night, at four in the morning picture it. Which is why it is easier to picture just you and your you are suddenly woken up by a loud knocking at the front door downstairs. Before your parents have a chance to answer family in the film you are playing inside your head. Your family and maybe three or four families like you that you know well. it, the door is broken down and six armed soldiers burst in. They are dressed in dark uniforms, belts and black leather boots, they have machine guns in their hands. They grab your parents, roughly pull you and your brothers and sisters down the stairs by the hair. Without explanation you are pushed into the back of a lorry, where there are other families, all as shocked and bewildered as you are. You ask your parents what’s going on, but they aren’t quite sure. It might be because you are black. Or because you are white. Or because you are Asian. Or Arabic. Or Jewish. Or because one of your family has political opinions that the people who sent the soldiers don’t like. It might be because one of your grandparents was a gypsy. Or because you have Spanish blood in you. Or because you’re part Swedish. Or because you’re Scottish. Or Welsh. Or because you have ginger hair. Or because you have blue eyes. Or because your father is shorter than 5’ 9” tall. The reasons seem ridiculous. Absurd. Laughable. But there you are being transported through the night. It’s really happening and you can’t make it stop.
But you know what? It’s worse than you have already imagined. Worse than your violent, terrible, undeserved and helpless murder. it’s worse because …
I won’t go into too much detail about what happens to you, because it’s frightening and upsetting. But without any appeal, any mercy, the soldiers – most of them uninterested or even openly laughing at your unhappiness and fear – take you to a camp where there are thousands of others like you, all huddled around as full of fear and dread and panic as a human being can be. Thousands and thousands of families. Your father and older brother are taken away. They aren’t even allowed time to say goodbye to you.
It’s like a second murder. First your body was killed and now any meaning or hope that such an outrage might have is killed too. In your film your dead self, and the dead souls of your parents and brothers and sisters are screaming out to be remembered, but no one can hear you. No one is listening.
You will be forgotten. Completely forgotten. No one will care or remember. No stone will mark where you died. It’s possible that in a year or so a foreign army will invade your country and arrest those responsible for killing you. They might even put them on trial for “crimes against humanity”. But in the end people will forget you and the whole business. And worse than forgetting, some people – people who also, for some twisted reason, hate blacks, or whites, or Jews, or Asians, or gypsies, or gay people, or immigrants, or epileptics, or people with learning difficulties, or people with different political ideas – these people will say that it never happened. You were never killed like that. It’s all at best an exaggerations at worst it’s a lie. All dreamt up. The footage and the memories of survivors are not real. Fake news.
It’s a nightmare film I’ve asked you to direct and star in, but it’s as much a documentary as a fictional film. Because it all did happen, just as I’ve said.
You don’t know this, but the fact is they are being separated because they are considered strong enough to work. You and your mother and younger brothers and sisters are … there is no other way of putting this … you are stripped of all your posses2
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We remember those who died firstly because they were us. They could so easily have been you, or me. By a lucky accident of history
football team, or the cast of the school musical show, or to be popular and successful and happy.
we came into the world in a period where we aren’t killed or hurt or insulted because of the way you were born. Or were we? Every time someone is taunted because they are black, or gay, or in some way different we owe it to the dead victims of the Holocaust to remember where such mean, stupid cruelty can lead.
Also, it’s worth understanding that the Holocaust was a modern event. The death camps where the victims were murdered had computer rooms. It’s true. Special huts where IBM punched card computers were housed. The same IBM that advertises today on TV and in magazines. These ‘Hollerith’ Let me put it another way by telling a story about when I was computers as are they were called stored, sorted, indexed and very young. filed the details of all the people the Nazis thought were eneI was about 7 or 8 years old when I remember happening mies ripe for extermination – what they would call 'subacross a black and white photograph of about twenty people. humans.’ Sub-humans to them were people of different races, It was in a drawer in my parent’s bedroom that I was rather Jews were the worst, and gypsies too, but Slavic people naughtily looking through. Half of the people in the photo(Russians, East Europeans) and Poles were next. Gay people, graph were children. They looked at the camera with large people with learning difficulties or physical disabilities also solemn eyes. I took the photograph to my mother and said, counted. Didn’t matter what age they were, a four year old girl “Who are all those people?” She sat me down, obviously think- was as easily killed as a forty year old man. Blacks and Asians ing I was ready to know a little of our family history. weren’t much considered because there was no really significant population of them in Europe in those days 80 or so years “These are all members of our family,” she told me. ago, but those that were there were also in the sub-human “Unfortunately most of them were killed.” category. The holocaust was industrial killing and used all the “Killed? Who by?” aspects of the modern world we take for granted: transportation systems, computers, bureaucracy and logistics. And it’s “Well, by Hitler.” modern enough for there to be survivors of its horrors who are Immediately I pictured Hitler, with his little toothbrush mousstill alive today. I have met a few in my life. These monstrous tache holding a knife and stabbing all those men, women and crimes should be remembered because you and I have the imchildren who were members of my family that I would never agination to picture us being the victims and we know that we know. It all seemed a bit strange to my eyes, but I knew Hitler would demand that our murders should be remembered so was a Bad Man so it made a kind of sense. That’s what Bad that the kind of behaviour and poisoned thinking that leads to People do. Later of course, as I grew up, I found out that they such horror could not be allowed to happen again. had not been personally murdered by that one man, but were part of a systematic policy of human slaughter that is called the Shoah by Jewish people, the Holocaust by many and was There are still those in the world who value people differently called by the Nazis responsible “The Final Solution of the Jew- not according to their character and actions, but according to ish Problem in Europe.” The “Jewish Problem” to them was their race, or religion, or lack of religion, or their sexuthat that were millions of Jewish people in the Europe they al preference, or gender or how long they have lived in the were conquering and they regarded Jewish people as unworcountry, or some other category. There are people who will thy to be part of their greater German empire. Not just Jewish throw stones at you or attack you because you are different. people of course, but we’ll come to that. There are people who do not believe that all human beings are But that’s all history, isn’t it? The people in the photograph were black and white and so they weren’t real. The people in the films and archive footage were black and white. They weren’t colour or HD, or 4K so remembering their deaths is no more worthwhile than remembering the deaths of people massacred by the Romans two thousand years ago.
Well, yes. But first remember that actually one of those children was YOU. In the film that I asked you to play in your mind, the thought experiment where you and your family were snatched from your home and taken to a death camp. They were just as alive as you are. Just as hopeful of getting into the
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really brothers and sisters, all part of the human family. These people will join marches and vote for politicians who promise to “deal with” the minorities they don’t like.
We remember the holocaust so it cannot happen again. We remember it because we believe in the value of all human lives. We remember it because, in the film we played in our heads, we know what it felt like to be herded and slaughtered.
Stephen Fry
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What do you know about Genocide? We recently asked one hundred other young people what they knew about the Holocaust and other genocides. The results showed us that, through no fault of their own, young people do not know much about the Holocaust and other genocides. We decided that we needed to do something to try and raise awareness. This booklet is part of our effort to help young people learn more.
Question: Have you heard of the word ‘genocide’?
Question: Can you correctly define the word ‘genocide’?
Yes
Yes
No
92%
6%
No
8%
94%
Interestingly, more than ninety of the hundred students who answered the survey said that they had heard of the word ‘genocide’. However, when we asked them to define the concept only 6% were able to do so correctly.
Question: Can you name the person who coined the term ‘genocide’? Yes No 100%
Question: Have you heard of any other genocides? Yes No
24% 76%
Raphael Lemkin was the lawyer who coined the term ‘genocide’. He took the Greek word ‘genos’ meaning ‘race’ or ‘people’ and put it together with the Latin term ‘caedo’ which meant ‘act of killing’. Not a single one of the hundred students had heard of Lemkin.
Reassuringly every of the hundred respondents had heard of the Holocaust. Next we asked whether the young people had heard of any other genocides besides the Holocaust. Startingly seventy six percent of our one hundred respondents admitted that they could not name a single other instance of genocide.
We asked those students who had heard of another genocide to What genocide have young people heard of? name the ones that they knew. Of the 24% of young people who 13% Genocide against the Tutsi had heard of a genocide other than the Holocaust most knew about 5% Rohingya the Genocide Against the Tutsi—however, most simply listed it as ‘Rwanda’. Next came the genocides that targeted the Rohingya, 4% Armenian Armenian and Yazidi people. This was possibly surprising given that Yazidi 4% none are officially recognised by the UK government as genocides. Just two percent of all students had heard of the Bosnian and CamCambodian 2% bodian genocides whilst not a single respondents recalled the genoBosnian 2% cides in Srebrenica and Darfur 0% Srebrenica Darfur
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0%
Who was Raphael Lemkin? Lemkin in Poland
Lemkin in Sweden
Lemkin at Duke University, USA
When Lemkin was studying in Lviv he asked his professors why no one had been prosecuted for massacring Armenians in 1915. In the 1920s Lemkin thought about this more when was a lawyer in Warsaw. He came up with idea for laws banning the killing of human groups. He called this crime ‘barbarity’. When the Nazis invaded Lemkin had to flee.
Lemkin was able to escape to Sweden. Whilst he was in Stockholm he began to collect information about what the Nazis were doing in the countries, like Poland, that they had occupied. Documents were smuggled out of Poland and given to Lemkin. He began to realise that the Nazis were intent on wiping out every single Jewish man, woman and child.
Lemkin continued his journey in 1941. He travelled from Sweden, through Russia, to Japan before eventually arriving at Duke University in North Carolina. Here he lectured and spoke to groups outside the university about his experiences in Europe. Whilst he may not have used the term "genocide" while at Duke, his stay helped him formulate his ideas.
Raphael Lemkin. The man who came up with the term ‘genocide’ in 1944
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Lemkin after Duke
Lemkin and The Genocide Convention
Lemkin’s later years
Lemkin used his legal expertise to work for the US government after his time at Duke. Most importantly, in 1944, he published a book called ‘Axis Rule in Occupied Europe’ which mentioned the term ‘genocide’ for the first time.
Lemkin spoke to everyone powerful person he could find to persuade them to make ‘Genocide’ a crime. HE finally succeeded and, on December 9th 1948, the United Nations passed the ‘Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’. It was a triumph for Lemkin.
Unfortunately Lemkin died of a heart attack in New York in 1959. He was only 59 years old. Right up until the end of his life Lemkin fought to make more countries take notice of the Genocide Convention.
Why was Lemkin important? We think that without Lemkin there would not have been the word ‘genocide’. Without that word there would not be a way to prosecute the people who commit genocide and maybe deter those people who are thinking about it.
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Explaining ‘Genocide’ On December 9th 1948, in the aftermath of the horror of the Holocaust the United Nations made ‘genocide’ a crime. The word ‘genocide’ had been thought up by a lawyer called Raphael Lemkin. He was a Polish Jew who had lost many members of his immediate family in the Holocaust. Lemkin combined the Greek word ‘genos’ (meaning ‘race’ or ‘people’) with the Latin word ‘cide’ (meaning ‘act of killing’). The United Nations voted in 1948 to define genocide as being committed when someone intends to destroy , in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
The Holocaust
Srebrenica 1995
Cambodia 1975-79
The Nazi regime and their collaborators murdered six million Jewish men, women and children. At the same time the Nazis persecuted other groups (like the Roma, and hose with disabilities) because they though they were inferior.
Under the cover of the civil war in Bosnia in the 1990s Bosnian Serb troops were ordered by their political leaders to force Bosnian Muslims out of areas they wanted. This culminated in genocide with the murder of 8,372 men and boys at Srebrenica.
In 1975 a radical leader called Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge followers seized power in Cambodia. They launched a brutal attack on ethnic minorities and religious people...as well as other civilians. Around 2 million people were murdered.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Darfur 2003—Present Darfur is a part of Sudan with a mixed population of black Africans and Arabs. he Sudanese government has used a n Arab militia group called the Janjaweed to launch a genocidal campaign that has killed thousands.
Genocide against the Tutsi 1994 In 1994 an extreme government from the Hutu majority sought to wipe out the Tutsi group in Rwanda. In 100 days around a million people were murdered.
Genocide today Over the last few years the attacks on the Yazidis in Iraq and the Rohingya people in Myanmar have been recognised by some as genocide.
How does Genocide happen? Genocide doesn’t happen overnight. The analyst Professor Gregory Stanton studied genocides and discovered that there is a process by which genocide happens. Stanton says that the group who is targeted in a society is identified so that everyone knows who they are, are abused, isolated and discriminated against before extermination. The final stage of genocide is denial where the perpetrators refuse to admit that anything happened. 6
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Why is it important to learn about Zigi? Even though Zigi is nearly ninety years old his energy, drive and determination to help us understand his story and message was inspirational.
of little food, terrible conditions and brutality Zigi was sent to another camp called Stutthof. For the first time he thought that he was going to die. Some officers came and said that
Zigi was born in 1930 in the Polish town of Lodz. He was born into a Jewish family. Unfortunately, Zigi’s parents got divorced when he was about three years old and he was brought up by his grandparents. Zigi had a very good early life in Lodz which was the second largest city in Poland at the time. He enjoyed school and lived in a lovely apartment; he even had his own bedroom which was almost unheard of in 1930s Poland. Zigi’s father worked in the family business with his grandfather and uncle. Everything was going well until September 1939 when the Second World War broke out. Within six weeks the whole of Poland was occupied by German troops. Everything changed. No Jewish child was allowed to go to school. Jewish teachers weren’t allowed to teach, and doctors and lawyer weren’t allowed to do their jobs either. Nazi soldiers enjoyed humiliating Jewish people in the street by cutting off their beards or making them clean the pavements in front of everybody. In November 1939 Zigi was informed that he and every Jew living in Lodz would have to go to live in in a confined area in the city called a ‘ghetto’. The ghetto was big enough for 20,000 people to live in it but the Germans made 265,000 Jews move into the space. Zigi’s father had escaped the city to Russia by this time and so he moved into the ghetto with his grandparents. They were ‘lucky’ in that they had a single room all to themselves. There was no running water which meant that there was no toilet. The ghetto was completely surrounded by barbed wire and no one was allowed to leave. Everyone inside the ghetto was told that they would have to work otherwise they wouldn’t be given any food. Zigi worked six days a week from seven o’clock in the morning to seven o’clock in the evening in a metal factory. People were dying of starvation and lack of medication and lots of people were committing suicide in the ghetto because things had become so desperate. Lodz ghetto was the longest surviving ghetto from 1940 until 1944 and Jews were sent there by the Nazis from all over Europe. In the summer of 1944 some German officers came and told the people running the ghetto that the Russians were approaching and that the ghetto had to be closed. He was told to report to the railway station and put on a cattle truck. When the train eventually stopped Zigi peered out and saw the word Auschwitz. Because Zigi was a metalworker he fortunately was not taken for immediate execution. Instead he was showered, had all his hair shaved off, given striped pyjamas and a number that he remembers today: 84303. After a few weeks 7
they needed boys to work on a railway. Zigi survived by taking chances to steal food. By now the Russian Army was getting close and Zigi had to endure a death march away which he only survived due to the help of his friends. On May 3rd 1945 Zigi was liberated by British soldiers. Eventually, Zigi came to England with nothing but a paper bag. He found friends, work, got married and had a wonderful family. He travels all over the country educating young people about his experiences and telling them ‘not to hate’.
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Why is it important to learn about Bea? Bea Green enjoyed her early life in Munich, the capital of Bavaria in Germany. She was born in 1924 and lived with her parents and an older brother. Bea’s father was a successful lawyer and the family enjoyed holidays in their country house outside of Munich. She had a nanny who took her for walks in the local park and started school when she was six. However, by the time that Hitler had come to power. From that moment, Bea somehow knew that she was regarded by other Germans not just as a Bavarian. Instead, Hitler’s regime ensured that she was seen as being Jewish first and then Bavarian…and being different from other Bavarians.
beating that some of Michael’s teeth were knocked out and one of his ear drums was perforated. After they had finished beating her father the Nazi thugs ripped off the legs of his trousers and forced him to walk, barefoot, around the streets of Munich. To try to humiliate him further the SA men hung a placard around his neck which said ‘‘I am a Jew and I will never again complain to the police’. When Bea’s dad reached the train station in Munich the SA men threatened to kill him but he was able to jump into a taxi and get home.
All this was part of a campaign of discrimination and persecution against Jewish people by Hitler and his regime. Jews were forbidden to practise many professions and Bea’s school was On 10th March 1933 Bea was off school and in bed with a cold. closed down. In the village where Bea and her family went for She heard the front door of the family’s fourth floor flat bangtheir holidays a sign appeared which said ‘Jews not welcome ing shut. She thought it was her mum coming home from here.’ shopping. Bea got up and opened her bedroom door and looked into the corridor outside. Opposite her room were pegs Soon discrimination turned to violence during the infamous pogrom of November 1938, commonly known as ‘Kristallnacht’. Bea’s dad received a phone call saying that Nazi thugs were coming for him and so he had to flee so that he wasn’t attacked or sent to a concentration camp. Even though they were proud Germans Bea’s parents know realised that their family had to leave the country. So, when the opportunity arose to send Bea to England they took the chance. Leaving Munich at midnight on June 27th 1939 was, at first, a real adventure for Bea. But when the steam train slowly pulled out of the station Bea saw her mother crying – even though she tried to hide her tears from Bea. It was at that point that Bea realised the enormity of what was happening. She travelled to Britain as part of the ‘Kindertransport’, which saw 10,000 children from Nazi Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia being given refuge in Britain just before the Second World War. As the train that Bea was on left Germany and rolled into Holland someone handed Bea some orange juice – she was really surprised to see a non-Jewish person being kind to her! When Bea arrived in England she was taken in by a British family who were kind to her. She was determined to go to on which Bea’s dad always hung his clothes on. On the pegs, school and learn English which she did. Bea’s family were also like normal, was her dad’s suit…but it was covered in blood. able to escape Germany – her parents fled to Peru where Bea For eight year old Bea it was shocking. She couldn’t underwas reunited with them several years later and her older stand what was going on. No one ever told Bea what had hap- brother escaped to Britain. Bea went on to have a successful pened – probably to protect her from the horrific nature of the career and have three sons in south west London where she incident. still lives today. What Bea learned later was that her father, Michael, had gone to a police station in Munich to help one of his clients, Mr Uhlfelder, who had been wrongfully arrested. When he arrived at the police station he was shown to a room…where he was badly beaten by Nazi Stormtroopers. So savage was the 8
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Why is it important to learn about Sokphal? Sokphal grew up and went to school in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. He was born into a loving family and was particularly close to his mother. Sokphal dreamed of being a doctor and was working towards his ambition when Cambodia was turned upside down.
Sokphal was forced to become a soldier in the Khmer Rouge army when Cambodia’s neighbours, Vietnam, invaded the country. He wasn’t trained and didn’t want to fight…but when he was captured by the Vietnamese they tortured him because they thought he had become a soldier by choice. He was held in a prison camp for a few months before he was able to esCambodia had been unsettled by the Vietnam War that was cape. Miraculously he was reunited with his family and they raging on its borders for many years. As time went on the conmoved to a refugee camp in Thailand before being able to flict came closer and closer. A civil war broke out and, in April start a new life in Britain in 1987. Although Sokphal was able 1975, soldiers from a rebel army, called the Khmer Rouge, capto escape the Killing Fields in Cambodia the dreams that he tured Phnom Penh. Soldiers from the Khmer Rouge went round had cherished when he was young were broken. from house to house and told everyone that they had to leave their homes and march out of the Today, Sokphal city immediately. Teenage soldiers lives in England had come to Sokphal’s house that and spends his fateful morning and threatened time working, him with a gun. translating and educating young The Khmer Rouge targeted anyone people about his with an education, anyone who experiences. had links to the previous government or anyone who followed a religion that they didn’t like. Even Sokphal has visited wearing a pair of glasses marked our school several an individual out for execution. time to educate us Sokphal’s stepfather, who had about his experiworked as an accountant for the ences and the gengovernment, was taken away for ocide in Cambodia ‘re-education’ and was never seen again. Fortunately, Sokphal had lost his student ID which had he been discovered with it could have resulted in his murder. After a tortuous journey Sokphal’s family arrived in a jungle work camp. The conditions were dreadful, food was scarce and disease rife. The Khmer Rouge guards were brutal and had no hesitation about beating or executing anyone over which they had control. Due to the terrible conditions and lack of food Sokphal’s beloved grandmother grew weaker and died in his arms. Soon, Sokphal was separated from his family to go to work in another work camp where he heard the news that his younger brother had died of malaria. 9
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Why is it important to learn about Safet? Safet was born in the town of Prijedor in the former Yugoslavia. There were lots of different people in Safet’s region: At school Safet’s class was a mixture of Muslim and Serb children. Nevertheless, when Safet was young his school mates did not take any notice of any differences that separated them, especially when they played football together. Safet, who was born into a Bosniak family, was best friends with a Serb. The Serbian, Muslim and Croation communities in Prijedor co-existed peacefully. People from the different groups often married and, like Safet, there were many friendships amongst Serb, Muslim and Croats. All that was soon to be changed, however. Towards the end of the 1980s nationalism and division began to creep into Yugoslavia as Communism crumbled. In 1992 a civil war broke out as individual parts of Yugoslavia declared independence. Bosnian Serbs did not want to be a part of Bosnia, instead fighting for a separate Serb state in Bosnia. In Prijedor tension rose. The Serb newspaper ‘Kozarski Vjesnik’ began to publish accusations against non -Serbs. Derogatory terms were used for non-Serbs such as ‘Ustasa’ and ‘Mujahideen’. In April 1992 Serbian extremists seized control of the local government of Safet’s town. Around four hundred Bosnian Serb policemen were used to takeover important buildings in Prijedor and to seize control of the town. After they had seized control the Bosnian Serbs used propaganda to sow hatred of Muslims. The local radio station broadcast false rumours that Muslims were planning to murder all the Serbs in the town. Non-Serb leaders were portrayed as criminals and extremists who should be punished. One non-Serb doctor was accused of injecting drugs into Serb women so that they couldn’t have male children. All this propaganda had the intention of turning ordinary Serbs against their neighbours and to ensure that they feared those who had been their friends and workmates.
By June 1992 the persecution of Muslims intensified. Mosques were attacked and set alight. Similarly, Muslim villages were attacked by Serb forces and people forced from their houses. Serb soldiers arrived in Safet’s neighbourhood and demanded that all men should assemble in the street outside their houses for ‘questioning’. Safet’s dad and brother walked outside and Safet was about to follow. His mum had different ideas and told him not to leave the house. She was right to stop him frim joining his father and brother— as soon as they reached the road the soldiers starting beating them up. Luckily one of the soldiers told the other to stop the violence. Safet’s father and brother were taken away to the notorious Keratem and Omarska concentration camps that had been set up by the Serbs. They were lucky to survive. Safet described the day that he heard that his dad had been taken to Omarska as ‘the worst day of my life’. Such were the terrible conditions and the use of torture and murder at the camp that Safet assumed that he would never see his dad again. It was not until June 1994 that Safet and his family were finally reunited in the United Kingdom. Safet fought hard to complete his education and gained important qualifications. He now lives near London with his family and works tirelessly to educate others about his story.
Radio broadcasts made by the Serbs who had seized control of Prijedor ordered anyone who was not a Serb to hang a white cloth outside their house to distinguish them from Serb residences. Similarly, all non-Serbs were ordered to wear a white arm band to identify them as ‘different’.
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Why is it important to learn about Sophie? Sophie was the seventh child in a family of ten children. Her dad was a pastor and Sophie enjoyed singing the songs that her dad composed in church with the rest of her family. She also loved going to music festivals with her friends and brothers and sisters. During the school holidays, when living in the village, Sophie’s dad would take us to the garden to dig or to harvest. The community in which Sophie grew up was a close one with everyone getting on with each other.
phie’s brother was dragged off the road and murdered. His body was never found. On another occasion Sophie was taken with another group of Tutsi people to be killed. She was struck with a machete on the leg…but just as she was going to be thrown into a pit another Tutsi ran for his life. The killers all chased the man and Sophie was able to escape. After Sophie’s father, brother and niece were killed near to their house Sophie was able to make her way to a cathedral in central Kigali, thinking that it would be a place of refuge and safety. The Nevertheless, that would all change. One day at school Sokillers would murder a few people every day in the cathedral phie’s teacher told all ‘Tutsi’ to stand up. Sophie didn’t know and promised that they would return the next day to kill everywhat this meant but was told that she and her family were one with hand grenades. However, that night, the rebel army, ‘Tutsi’. Discrimination against Tutsis began long before the the Rwandan Patriotic Front, approached the church and resgenocide began in 1994. Most of the Tutsi children came from cued Sophie and some poor families so were not others from the catheable to afford private dral. Sophie had surschools, while many revived. ceived no education at all; those in public schools Today, Sophie lives in were prevented by the London and works as a Hutu government from nurse. She is married, completing their education has a wonderful family due to their ethnicity. Sowith one of her daughphie wanted to be a doctor ters having just startbut, because she was not ed at university. Soallowed to continue to phie regularly speaks higher education due to in schools to educate her being a Tutsi her young people about dream never came true. her experiences. In 1990 a civil war started in Rwanda. The Hutu government used propaganda to say that all Tutsis were the enemy of Rwandans. Tutsi girls were mistreated, sometimes spat at, and verbally abused whilst Tutsi boys were beaten, taken to prison and sometimes never seen again.
Sophie has visited our school on lots of occasions and is a really inspirational person.
The genocide started on 6th April 1994. Sophie and her family heard shooting and saw houses being set on fire. The government radio told people to stay indoors – Sophie looked outside and saw people running in all directions and dead bodies on the road. Sophie lived in Kigali, the capital city, and there was nowhere to hide but one of her neighbours allowed her family to hide in his spare room. The killers searched Sophie’s home every day but could not find them initially. On 11th April So11
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How does Genocide happen? Ever since the Holocaust people have tried to work out how such terrible crimes could happen—so that, in theory, they could be stopped from happening again. Professor Gregory Stanton has identified a process that genocide follows—the ten stages below. Genocides are more likely to happen in societies where people are really divided. Every society has different groups of people but where these divisions become ‘them’ and ‘us’ it helps to create division, suspicion and tension. In Germany the Nazi regime wanted people to see Jewish Germans as a different group . A census in 1991 recorded residents of Bosnia and Herzegovina as being ethnic Muslims, Serbs and Croats. In Rwanda the formal division of people into ‘Hutu’, ‘Tutsi’ & ’Twa’ with the introduction of identity cards by Belgian colonisers sowed the seeds of division and tension.
CLASSIFICATION Societies that try to draw attention to ‘others’ could allow hatred to creep into everyday life and bring genocide closer. Where names or symbols are attached to the classifications of people isolation follows. The Nazis and their collaborators forced Jewish people to wear identifying symbols (usually a Yellow star but sometimes an armband like in Yugoslavia) from 1939 onwards. The Khmer Rouge forced the Cham people to wear a blue scarf that marked them out to others. Likewise, in the Bosnian town of Prijedor the Muslim people were forced by the Serb perpetrators to wear white arm bands and hang white sheets from their houses to mark themselves out as ‘different’.
SYMBOLISATION A country that allows a government to target a minority group is headed into dangerous territory. Politicians may use laws to discriminate against the isolated ‘others’ and to remove their rights. They may even say that the ‘others’ don’t even belong in the country any more. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 said that Jewish & Romani people were no longer Germans. In Cambodia the Khmer Rouge perpetrator government ‘abolished’ the nationality, language, customs and religious beliefs’ of the Cham Muslim minority. Similarly, the Citizenship Law of 1982 deprived the Rohingya people of citizenship in Myanmar.
DISCRIMINATION Those who seek to destroy a group of people next try to portray them as not being human at all. They compare them to bacteria, insects, rodents or other animals. Once a population is persuaded that the ‘others’ are not really human then it is easier to kill them. Normally civilised people would not want to murder other human beings but if they are persuaded that they are ‘Curing a disease’ or ‘getting rid of dirty rats’ it becomes easier to participate in. In Nazi Germany the racist, antisemitic Der Sturmer newspaper published cartoons like the one that was captioned ‘When the vermin are dead, the German oak will again flourish.’ Similarly, in Rwanda Tutsis were labelled as ‘inyenzi’, (cockroaches). In Myanmar Facebook has been used by some to dehumanise the Rohingya people calling them ‘non-human…dogs’.
DEHUMANISATION The crime of genocide does not happen randomly. It has to be organised – normally by a government. The organises recruit & train killers and buy weapons. Often the organises will use groups that seem unconnected to them so that they can avoid taking responsibility for their actions. In Rwanda the Hutu extremist government recruited young men to join the Interahamwe (meaning ‘Those who fight together’) whilst in Bosnia the Serb perpetrators used groups such as ‘Arkan’s Tigers’. More recently, in Darfur the Sudanese government has perpetrated genocides with the help of the Janjaweed militia.
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How does Genocide happen? With the rights of the minority group taken away extremists seek to use propaganda to successfully divide society. In Nazi Germany Jewish people were forbidden from marrying those of ‘German or German-related blood’ & they were banned from schools, cinemas & sports facilities. Radio broadcasts, social media posts and newspaper headlines are used to justify the reasons for force the minority group out. The December 1993 ‘Kangura’ publication in Rwanda showed a picture of a machete along with the caption ‘What weapons will we use to win over the inyenzi (cockroaches) for good?’. In Myanmar Facebook has been used by some to dehumanise the Rohingya people calling them ‘non-human…dogs’.
POLARISATION Perpetrators hold meetings & make plans for the destruction of the people they are targeting. At the Wannsee Conference in 1942 the Nazi Reinhard Heydrich presented plans authorised by Hitler to coordinate the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’. The Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic issued ‘Directive 7’ in March 1995 which ordered his soldiers to ‘create an unbearable situation…with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica.’ The perpetrators use language to disguise their intentions but increase the use of hate speech to persuade the population that what they are doing is ‘right’. The Hutu extremist , Theoneste Bagosora helped make plans to destroy the Tutsi people and labelled them ‘civil self-defence’ operations in Rwanda. More recently the army in Myanmar have used the term ‘clearance operations’ to try to justify their genocidal violence against the Rohingya people.
PREPARATION When the perpetrators think that the time is right they precisely identify their victims, separate them from others, make their daily lives unbearable and prepare for the killing to begin. The Khmer Rouge perpetrators in Cambodia converted a school in Tuol Sleng into the S-21 prison and used it to imprison and torture thousands of people prior to their execution. In Bosnia the Serbs deported Muslim men to concentration camps such as Omarksa, Trnopolje and Keraterm where extreme mental and physical violence was used by perpetrators such as Zoran Zigic.
PERSECUTION When their preparations are complete the perpetrators will unleash a wave of killing in an effort to destroy the group that they have targeted. The perpetrators will use everything in their power to completely wipe out any trace of those they hate: besides murder they will also use sexual violence as a way to destroy a group and they will also seek to obliterate any trace of the culture or identity of those they attack. The perpetrators call it ‘extermination’ because they do not see their victims as human beings. During the Holocaust the Nazis besides murdering Jewish people on an industrial scale they also destroyed synagogues such as the Great Synagogue in Warsaw. In Cambodia the Khmer Rouge transported more than 12,000 people from the S-21 prison to Choeung Ek where they were executed. The Interhamwe in Rwanda not only massacred Tutsi men, women and children on a huge scale but also used rape as weapon to destroy. Serb perpetrators destroyed mosques such as those in Banja Luka.
EXTERMINATION Those who commit genocide repeatedly deny and try to hide what they are doing. They may try to hide or destroy the bodies of their victims or even blame others for the crimes committed. Even years after genocide has been committed the perpetrators and their supporters will deny that any crime was committed. Satellite photographs showed how Serb perpetrators dug up the bodies of the men and boys that they had murdered around Srebrenica and sought to hide or destroy their remains in order to deny their crimes. The Nazis blew up the gas chambers at Auschwitz whilst they dismantled the Treblinka death camp and tried to disguise it as an ordinary ‘farm’.
DENIAL
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Why is it important to learn about Sophie? While looking at numbers, stats and facts is information, it is all so impersonal.
By reading each individual’s story, it makes it a bit easier to understand the extent these atrocities as we see that each number in the stats has a whole story of suffering and agony. Each victim becomes an individual with family, dreams and feelings as opposed to a number. Its important to learn about Zigi so people can understand the severity of the hardship that people during genocide had to experience, even the survivors and people considered ‘lucky’
I think it is important to learn about Safet as his story shows the injustices inflicted on an innocent human being through no fault of his own. It is important to learn about him so that we can prevent similar events from occurring in the future.
Why is it important... It is very easy to read a statistic, but reading about how Zigi was dehumanised and abused is not. I think it is only through reading first hand accounts that we can begin to comprehend how atrocious genocides are and how they affect innocent people. .
It is important to learn about Sophie because the genocide against the Tutsi occurred so recently, it reminds us of how genocides are not things of the past, to regret, but abhorrent events we should be aiming to stop.
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Why is it important to understand what survivors have been through? Sokphal has been through so much and even though he was tortured for something that wasn’t his choice, it is amazing that he is still willing to share his story. By learning about his story and informing others we can show how much we care about him and everyone else who has been through similar things.
Sokphal has been through so much pain, with his family being ripped away from him. We remember so that what happened to Sokphal does not happen again, so no innocent families are ripped apart and no innocents are wrongly accused. Finally, we remember for respect of Sokphal and so he knows that no one will forget.
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I think that it is important to learn about Sokphal’s story so that we can honour him as a person. The Khmer Rouge treated Sokphal as less than a human being and destroyed the hopes and dreams that he had for his life. By learning about his story we can at least show Sokphal that we value him as a person and respect him as the dignified, intelligent, compassionate person that he is.
I think that it is important to learn about Zigi’s story for lots of reasons. Zigi asked us not to hate and I think that one way to honour his wish is to learn from his story. His testimony tells us what happens when antisemitic hate is allowed to grow and not stopped. In a time when Holocaust denial is on the rise we need to know the facts so that we can combat such antisemitic hate.
I think it is important to learn about Safet’s story because it shows us the disaster of genocide. It shows how it can ruin so many people’s dreams. However, Safet stayed strong and it is important that we value his courage after he went through such terrible experiences.
As a human race we must learn from our mistakes and do everything in our power to prevent more genocides from happening. The first step if that is education. I think it is wrong to let these stories of suffering go unheard
...to learn about the Holocaust and other genocides? I think that it is important to learn about Sophie’s experiences so that we can pay tribute to those who no longer have a voice. Sophie told us about the members of her family, the people that she loved, who were murdered during the genocide. By learning about her story her loved ones are not forgotten and the goal of the perpetrators is denied.
The survivors’ stories are important to learn about because genocides continue today. Even if it seems that these testimonies are from a long time ago they are still a warning to us. They tell us about the price innocent people pay if the world does nothing in the face of hate.
It is important to learn about Sophie as a way to pay tribute to those who no longer have a voice.
If we learn about Zigi’s story then we help to defeat those who deny that the Holocaust happened.
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The survivors who we have learned about have been through so much pain. We learn and remember so that what happened to them does not happen again, so no innocent families are ripped apart and no innocents are persecuted. Finally, we remember out of respect for the survivors and so that they know that no one will forget.
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We wonder if you could help us with our project please?
We’d like to know why you think it is important for young people to learn about the Holocaust and other genocides. You can send us your response via the form on our website or to our Twitter account @genocide8020.
Thank you for your help...
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