Unremembered Days

Written by ninety young people Unremembered Days

Unremembered

days

A vital history of modern genocides told through the true stories of tragically unforgettable but unremembered days 1

Unremembered Days

Unremembered days An awareness raising history of genocide

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Unremembered Days

CONTENTS Forewords Introduction Unremembered Days The authors

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Unremembered Days

Foreword As a young man, while at school, Rafael Lemkin liked to read and to ask questions. One book he read was Quo Vadis. Why did the police not intervene when the Romans started to throw the Christians to the lions, he asked his mother.

Later, while at university, he read about the trial of an Armenian man who was said to have assassinated one of the alleged organisers of the mass slaughter of the Armenians. Why is it a crime for the Armenian to strike down one Turk, but not a crime for the Turks to have struck down one million Armenians, he asked his professor.

Rafael Lemkin’s education instilled a sense of curiosity, which in due course led him to invent the word ‘genocide’, which catalysed the creation of modern human rights law.

One thing leads to another, it might be said.

One question leads to another. By asking questions about genocides, young people learn about history and atrocities. They also become, in the words of Elie Wiesel, “a witness” to the crimes.

Those who learn about genocides today, and feel impelled to ask questions about them, will also open new doors, and maybe help us to address problems of the kind that Rafael Lemkin identified.

Philippe Sands Author, East West Street London, May 2021 4

Unremembered Days

Foreword There has been huge progress over the past few decades in progressing human and civil rights. The UK offers legal recourse if racial, age, disability or gender discrimination takes place, civil rights have at last been enshrined in law for gay people, and a hate crime based on someone’s faith or culture is just that: a crime.

However we are, sadly, not short of examples today of where our current leaders are getting things badly wrong. We stand by feeling impotent as we see Uighur Muslims face horrific persecution, we see Holocaust denial and antisemitism flourish on social media platforms - we need young people to do a better job than we’re managing to do.

Young people can decide to make choices that ensure a better society. Learning about the Holocaust and recent genocides, and the steps that led to them, show us where persecution based on someone’s identity can ultimately lead, if it is normalised and unchallenged.

At Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, we know that increasing knowledge about the past equips young people to challenge fake news today. And developing empathy for those persecuted can help see the humanity in others today – we can then make the choices to take action for a better future.

Olivia Marks-Woldman Chief Executive Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

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Unremembered Days

Foreword The evening of April 6 1994, I was having dinner with friends in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. I had moved there a few months earlier to work for UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund, a brief detour in my career as a journalist.

We were inside when we heard what sounded like a giant explosion. We rushed into the garden and could see what looked like a fire over towards the airport. Something terrible had happened, but we didn't know what. I drove home, just a few streets away, and as I entered the house the phone was ringing. (This was in the days before mobile phones.) I picked up: it was a friend who worked for BBC World Service telling me that the plane carrying the presidents of both Rwanda and the country next door, Burundi, had crashed over Kigali. It wasn't confirmed, but it seemed to have been brought down by a missile.

It was the trigger for the genocide. The government that rose to fill the void after the President's death was headed by people who espoused an ideology called Hutu Power. They ordered members of the majority Hutu ethnic group to attack the minority Tutsis.

As I was on the phone, bands of killers were assembling. In the days that followed I saw the most terrible slaughter.

Genocide, whether of the Jews in Germany in the 1940s or the Tutsis in Rwanda half a century later, is the attempt to wipe out a people, an ethnic group. That's what the Hutu Power ideologues were trying to do in Rwanda, just like the Nazis. It is a monstrous crime. After the Holocaust the world said "Never Again". But it happened again in Rwanda that April. And it has happened elsewhere too.

When I was a teenager I thought history was boring. I wasn't interested in the past, I was heading for the future. Now I know that if we don't understand what happened in the past, we have no hope of making a better future.

History matters. And maybe the history of genocide and the resolve to say "Never Again" and mean it, matters more than anything else.

Lindsey Hilsum International Editor, Channel 4 News 6

Unremembered Days

Foreword The schools involved in this excellent project aiming to raise awareness of the Holocaust and other genocides deserve massive praise for what they are doing.

As President of Remembering Srebrenica I know just how important it is to raise awareness of how awful genocides constitute massive blots on the history of the world. The Holocaust constituted a most dreadful attempt to exterminate an entire race of people, the Jewish race, as well as Romas and Sinti, gays and others. Many thought the lessons had been learned. The Genocide Convention signalled that we must learn from the Holocaust and that genocide would be no more. Alas it did not turn out like that with genocides in Darfur, Cambodia, Rwanda, and in Europe 25 years ago in Bosnia Herzegovina.

We must all learn lessons from the suffering of those killed and those left behind to ensure that we never forget and that genocides are no more. We can all act to learn the lessons and make sure this never happens again.

This valuable work that is being undertaken in this project is an important part of that.

Thank you very much for what you are doing.

Lord Nicholas Bourne President of Remembering Srebrenica

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Unremembered Days

Foreword I offer my profound congratulations to the students who have written this immensely important, challenging and inspiring book.

I strongly recommend it because it highlights one of the most urgent priorities of our time: the need to recognise genocides and thereby to implement the associated requirements to ‘provide and to protect’.

I was in Armenia on April 24th this year for the commemoration of the Armenian Genocide beginning in 1915 and I witnessed the joy and relief of the Armenians when their historic, horrendous suffering was acknowledged by the President of the United States as a ‘Genocide’.

Many countries (including Wales) have made their recognition known. Sadly, the UK Government has not done so.

The significance of recognition is profoundly important. It has been well said that every genocide not acknowledged is an encouragement for further genocides.

Your book contains powerful examples of the suffering of genocidal policies which are very important in highlighting the horror, anguish, fear, terror, death and associated suffering of different genocidal situations, Sadly and disturbingly, current situations such as the war unleashed by Azerbaijan, assisted by Turkey, against the historic Armenian land of Nagorno Karabakh, have been recognized by independent organisations such as Genocide Watch as fulfilling all the criteria of genocide - but have not recognised as such by the international community.

There is a genuine and rational fear that the failure to recognise this recent genocide will encourage the escalation of genocidal policies, not only by Azerbaijan and Turkey, but by other regimes similarly intent on perpetrating genocide.

Therefore, your book is immensely important in highlighting the reality of genocide, the suffering it inflicts and the crucial importance of knowledge leading to definition and an appropriate response.

Very many congratulations on this inspirational, well written and very significant book.

Baroness Cox 8

Unremembered Days

Introduction ‘Genocide, what’s that?’ This was the question that Rafael Lemkin jokingly asked at parties he attended. Everyone knew the man who coined the term ‘Genocide’ and how he had dedicated his life to have the crime recognised by as many people around the world as possible.

Today, it might be a little different. It is probably fair to say that most young people have never heard of Lemkin nor can precisely define what ‘genocide’ means. Similarly, awareness of genocides that occurred both before and after the Holocaust are dreadfully low.

If genocide is not known about then it cannot be prevented.

So, that is the point of our book. If we can help other young people understand just a little bit more about genocide then we’ll judge our endeavour a success.

Each page tells the story of a different day in a different year. It tells the story of people and events that were part of genocides that happened more than a hundred years ago and those of genocides that are happening today. The authors have worked in their spare time to research and write what you’ll find in the following pages. Reputable sources of information have been used.

We would like to thank many who have helped us with our book. It has been a privilege for us that such eminent people as Philippe Sands, Lindsey Hilsum, Olivia Marks-Woldman, Lord Bourne and Baroness Cox have written very powerful messages for us. We’d also like to thank our teachers for all their hard work behind the scenes to make the project a reality.

Lastly, a plea to our readers. We hope that you find our book interesting and that you might learn something from it. More than that we hope that you use it as a starting point to learn more, to think more and to talk more about genocide. If more people know, think and talk about genocide then maybe, maybe there will be a greater desire to stop it from happening again.

Hampton June 2021

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Unremembered Days

January 7 1979 Pol Pot’s regime is toppled It was the end of the nightmare. January 7 1979 marked an end to the Cambodian Genocide, where 1.5 – 2 million people died. The Vietnamese army had invaded Cambodia in late 1978 after years of attacks by Pol Pot’s ‘Democratic Kampuchea’ and massacres of ethnic Vietnamese on both sides

of the border.

On December 25 1979 around 150,000 Vietnamese soldiers began a full-scale invasion of Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge regime proved to be no match for their adversaries and resistance soon crumbled. Pol Pot and his henchmen were forced to flee.

The path to the invasion and the tragedy of the Cambodian Genocide had begun four years earlier. Pol Pot’s purpose was to completely change Cam-

bodia in the most brutal of ways. The Khmer Rouge wanted a “classless communist state”, capitalist-free and based on a rural agrarian economy. In their quest for this ideal Pol Pot’s regime targeted many groups of people including Cham Muslims, ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese Cambodians, Buddhists, students, lawyers and even doctors. From the estimated 2 million deaths, it is predicted that 100,000 Cham Muslims and 20,000 Vietnamese died. On January 7, the Khmer Rouge regime came tumbling down. Their legacy would be one of pain felt by the survivors of the terrible genocide that

Pol Pot and his followers perpetrated. Four years of genocide would take a lifetime to recover from.

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Unremembered Days

January 11 1994 Romeo Dallaire sends the ‘Genocide fax’ from Kigali January 11 1994. Just weeks before the Genocide against the Tutsi would begin. An urgent message is sent by General Dallaire, the commander of United Nations soldiers in Rwanda, to his bosses in New York. In the message Dallaire warned of a plot to exterminate the Tutsi people in Rwanda.

Dallaire’s message became known as the ‘Genocide Fax’.

Dallaire would express his concerns about Rwanda and its vulnerability to violence. Unfortunately, he was right: within three months what we know as the ‘Genocide against the Tutsi’ would erupt. The General’s fax is perhaps evidence that the horrendous events of the genocide were foreseeable, therefore preventable. Many say that by neglecting the warning in Dallaire’s fax the outside world missed a chance to stop the catastrophe. Rwanda, much to its misfortune, endured the sickening consequences of this supposition. The fax became a symbol of the world’s failure to prevent the genocide.

The letter contained key information about Dallaire’s suspicion concerning a ‘likely’ attack as well as valid justifications, validating his warning. The fax reported that there was a plan to exterminate the Tutsi and gave details of weapons that Dallaire sought permission to seize. He was denied that permission.

Dallaire sent this fax as an act of a responsible peace-keeper with the UN. His role as the leader of the UN troops in Rwanda make his perspective on these affairs valuable, and yet this letter was infamously disregarded by those in power at the UN - they would later go on to say that the were in fact in ‘shock’ that the genocide had even taken place and insinuating that it was completely unforeseen. Dallaire ended his fax with a phrase: ‘Peux ce que veux: allons-y’. ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Let’s go’ Unfortunately, those in power in the UN seemed not to have a will to find a way to stop the genocide.

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Unremembered Days

January 16 1942 The Nazis begin the deportation of Jews from Lodz to Chelmno Not many people in our school will have heard of ‘Lodz’ or ‘Chelmno’. Even those who have studied the Holocaust might not remember the names of those places. But they are important. Important to historians. More important to those who were there and those who would not survive or would

be born. Lives extinguished, hopes quashed, dreams unrealised, futures destroyed.

Lodz’s ghetto was the second largest ghetto that the Nazis established for Polish Jews and Roma people. When it was sealed from the outside world there were more than 160,000 imprisoned in terrible conditions there. In February 1940 the Nazis ordered that Jews of Lodz be confined to just a few streets…and that the streets be surrounded by wooden fences and wire. The Nazis only allowed starvation rations for the human beings trapped in the ghetto. The cramped conditions meant that disease was rife.

On January 16 the Nazis decreed that Jews should be sent to Chelmno, about 30 miles away.

Chelmno was a death camp. Its sole purpose was to murder. Jews were murdered by gas and their bodies dumped in mass graves. Between December 1941 and 1944 it is estimated that at least 1720,000 people were murdered at Chelmno.

Achingly few survived. But some did. Szymon Srebrnik was one of the handful. He had seen his father killed in the Lodz ghetto and then been deported to Chelmno. He was thirteen. He was selected to be one of the ‘Sonderkommando’ of Jewish prisoners who were forced to work for the Nazis in Chelmno. Despite being shot in the head and left for dead Szymon miraculously survived.

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Unremembered Days

January 17 1945 Raoul Wallenberg disappears No one really knows what happened to Raoul Wallenberg. Not much is known beyond the fact he was arrested by Soviet soldiers in Budapest. What is certain, however, is that Raoul Wallenberg heroically saved the lives of thousands of Jewish people during the Holocaust.

Wallenberg came from a privileged household. He had no experience as a diplomat but was a charming and powerful character. In the summer of 1944 he was sent by Sweden to Hungary. His task now was to, by any means possible, assist and rescue Hungarian Jews.

Although Hungary and Germany were allies, Germany enforced its laws onto the former, leading to Hungarian officials rounding up and deporting 440,000 Jews to their deaths.

Wallenberg arrived in Budapest on July 9, 1944. Though inexperienced, he managed to lead one of the most successful and large-scale rescue efforts during the Holocaust. His most notable actions were the distribution of certificates of protection to Jews in Budapest, furnished by the Swedish legation, the introduction of hospitals, nurseries and a soup kitchen and the designation of over 30 “safe” houses creating the core of the “international ghetto”. The international ghetto in Budapest was kept specially for Jews and their families in possession of a certificate from a neutral country.

The liberation of Budapest in February 1945, supported by the efforts of Wallenberg and his colleagues, led to more than 100,000 Jews to be freed.

On January 17 1945, Wallenberg and his driver were arrested by the Soviets.

He was never to be heard from by the outside world again. In 1957, it was revealed that he had been imprisoned by Soviet forces and that he succumbed to heart failure, however, proof was never given to the Swedish authorities and no explanation was given regarding his arrest. Throughout the years, the case gained international interest but no certain proof of his fate has ever been discovered. It was a sad end to an heroic life.

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Unremembered Days

January 20 1942 Fifteen ‘educated’ men meet at a villa Many people will have heard of the ‘Final Solution’, the euphemistic term used by the Nazis attempt to destroy innocent Jewish men, women and children during World War II. However, very few will know of the specific day when a vital meeting took place to discuss and co-ordinate the ‘Final Solu-

tion’. In the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, a conference between officials from the Nazi government and the SS took place. The ‘Final Solution’ had already been given the ‘green light’ by those higher up in the Nazi hierarchy; Hitler himself had already authorized this European-wide scheme for mass murder sometime in 1941. The Wannsee Conference, as this meeting has come to be called, served as a means of discussing the implementation of the ‘Final Solution’.

The meeting took place at a villa in Wannsee, where fifteen high-ranking officials from the Nazi regime gathered to discuss the ‘Final Solution’.

Among those officials was a man named Reinhard Heydrich, SS General.

Heydrich was also one of the top deputies of Heinrich Himmler, one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi party and a key architect of the Holocaust.

It was Heydrich who convened the conference.

The goals of the Wannsee Conference were to inform and gather support from government agencies regarding the implementation of the ‘Final Solu-

tion’; and to inform those attending that Hitler himself placed Heydrich in charge of coordinating the mass murder. During the meeting, Heydrich stated that about 11 million Jews would perish due to the ‘Final Solution’. None of the participants opposed it.

The Wannsee Conference serves as a crucial yet unremembered day in the history of World War II. Due to the Wannsee Conference, the Nazis were able to carry out their planned murder of European Jews.

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Unremembered Days

January 28 1945 Private Harry L. Ettlinger is assigned to a special unit Harry L. Ettlinger celebrated his 19th birthday surrounded by 2,500 other soldiers: sat in trucks in the bitter cold waiting to depart their camp on the France-Belgium border. They were headed to join the 99 th Infantry Division and some of the fiercest fighting of the war, the Battle of the Bulge. At the

last minute, a sergeant appeared and a few men were summoned without explanation from amongst their ranks, including Harry Ettlinger.

Harry Ettlinger was born in Karlsruhe, Germany on January 28 1926 to a Jewish family. When the Nazi party’s antisemitic laws started to come into place from 1933, even as a small child Harry felt himself being distanced from the rest of his community. With the ever-increasing Nazi threat closing in on them, on September 24, 1938, Harry celebrated his Bar-mitzvah in Karlsruhe’s Kronenstrasse Synagogue. Harry was to be the last boy ever to celebrate his bar-mitzvah in that synagogue, as on ‘Kristallnacht’ (9 November 1938) – exactly one month after the family arrived safely in America – the beautiful hundred-year-old synagogue was burned to the ground by the Nazis. Along with this, the majority of the male-Jewish population of the town, including Harry’s maternal grandfather, were rounded up and taken to Dachau concentration camp. 1,421 of Karlsruhe's Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

On January 28, 1945 Harry was given a new position. Due to his fluency in German, he had been selected to work as a translator from the upcoming Nuremberg trials. On May 7, 1945, (one day before Germany’s formal surrender) he volunteered to become the replacement translator for the Seventh Army Headquarters (in Munich), of the ‘Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives’ division of the army. Comprised of members from 13 different countries, and numbering about 345 personnel, this group was responsible for recovering artwork stolen by the Nazis.

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Unremembered Days

February 1 1943 Selek and Eda Kuenstler plead for their child to be saved The letter is written in pencil. The paper is not proper writing paper but looks like it might have been taken from an exercise book. The handwriting seems hurried and bunched.

However, the message contained within the letter is probably the hardest that any parents would ever have had to write: please save our child.

Selek and Eda Kuenstler were parents to little Anita. She had been born in the Krakow Ghetto in November 1942. Now the Kuenstler parents pleaded with a Mrs Zendler to take Anita and save her life. They offered 30,000 zloty in return for caring for the child. Little did they know that the ghetto would be finally liquidated just a few weeks later in March 1943.

The letter worked and Anita survived the war, living with Sophia Zendler and her three children. Eda Kuenstler survived too. She endured Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen before finding Anita once again.

Sadly Selek would not see his daughter ever again. He was killed in the Mauthausen camp.

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Unremembered Days

February 2 2021 The BBC publishes horrific reports from Xinjiang Perhaps we have grown used to the media reports about the ‘re-education’ camps that house thousands upon thousands of Uighur people. Perhaps because we have seen these stories so often we are no longer shocked by them.

For many people that changed in early February 2021.

What the reports revealed was quite horrific. They detailed allegations of depraved abuse of Uighur women by camp guards and other men from outside the camps.

The reports gave the testimony of not just one human being but many. They related the awful recollections of many Uighur women...as well as other witnesses. These witnesses sometimes said that the women they say were abused were never seen again.

Chillingly, the report ends with a sentence that should not easily be forgotten: "Their goal is to destroy everyone," she said. "And everybody knows it."

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Unremembered Days

February 17 2009 The trial of ‘Comrade Duch’ begins Can there be justice after genocide? On this day, nearly thirty-five years after the Khmer Rouge began their genocidal rule of Cambodia, the UN-backed tribunal tasked with prosecuting the vicious war crimes of the Khmer Rouge commenced its work. Two million Cambodians lost their lives. Justice was a long time coming. Even after Pol Pot lost his grip on power the consequent surge of civil war after 1979 effectively diverted attention from the heinous war crimes of the ‘red’ era. The persistence of the Khmer Rouge’s power urges one to question whether true justice could ever be achieved.

On February 17 an old, withered man stood in the dock. Kaing Guek Eav (“Comrade Duch”) was the first to be tried. He was accused of being in charge of the torture and execution of in excess of 12,000 men, women and children in the notorious Tuol Sleng prison in the capital, Phnom Penh. He was convicted of crimes against humanity, persecution on political grounds and other breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. However, Duch was sentenced to just 19 years in prison when discounting time served.

Duch was the first Khmer Rouge figure to face justice for the atrocities perpetrated during the genocidal dictatorship. As the first Khmer Rouge officer to stand trial, his testimony was a watershed moment for the millions of Cambodians who endured the regime’s atrocities

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Unremembered Days

March 4 2009 A warrant for the arrest of Omar Al-Bashir is issued Omar Al-Bashir, former president of Sudan, is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for committing numerous war crimes, including genocide, pillaging, forced transfer, torture and rape. He is currently accused of three separate counts of genocide and has continually managed to avoid be-

ing sent for trial by the international court.

The Darfur genocide is the mass slaughter and rape of Darfuri men, women, and children in west Sudan. In 2003 the conflict began when rebels launched an uprising to protest against the policies of President Omar Al-Bashir, his Sudanese government, and his neglect for the Darfur region and its black African population. Bashir targeted the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa populations for their alleged connection to armed opposition groups protesting against the Sudanese government. These attacks were largely racially motivated.

These staged attacks and sexual abuse were being carried out by a group of government armed and funded soldiers called the Janjaweed which translates to “Devils on horseback”. This armed militia destroyed Darfuris villages: burning, looting, polluting, raping, torturing, and murdering anyone they wanted. This led to the death of 200,000 – 400,000 civilians, however other estimates say this figure could be a lot higher. Inhabitants of the Darfur re-

gion were forced to move into refugee camps because of the genocide, and as a result 2.6 million people are still displaced in Darfur today.

Al-Bashir has still not been brought to justice in front of an international court and continued to serve as head of state of Sudan 10 years after the warrant was issued for his arrest. To this day, Omar Al-Bashir has not been tried for genocide.

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Unremembered Days

March 10 1933 Dr Michael Siegel is attacked in Munich Dr. Michael Siegel, my great-grandfather was an established and respected Jewish lawyer in the city of Munich, Bavaria. On March 10 1933, Michael got a call from a client and a friend of his: a fellow Jew and owner of a local department store, Max Uhlfelder, had been suddenly and unlawfully arrested, and sent to one of the first concentration camps: Dachau.

Michael immediately went to lodge a complaint to the police. Before the complaint was registered, he was advised to wait in a specific room. He was ambushed by a gang of Sturmabteilung, also known as the SA, or Brownshirts. With the rise of Hitler, this paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party had been converted into an auxiliary police force for the Nazi government - in other words, thugs. The Brownshirts immediately began beating him, bursting his ear drum, smashing out some of his teeth. They then cut off his trouser legs, and they wrote on a sign in German: 'I am a Jew, and I will never again complain to the police', which they hung around his neck. They then marched him through the streets of Munich, humiliating him.

As my great-grandfather and the Nazis reached their destination, the train station, the thugs aimed their guns at him. 'You are now going to be done in', they laughed. But they did not fire, and walked away. After this, a bloodied Michael walked back toward the street to get into a taxi.

My grandmother, just eight years old at the time, had been in bed all day due to a cold. She heard the key in the door, and thought it was her mother.

When nobody came into her room to check on her, she got up from the bed, and went to her parents’ bedroom. What she found when she entered, shocked her. Her father, battered and bloody, was in bed, desperately covering himself with his sheets from the confused gaze of his daughter.

'Wait till your mother returns,' he cried. She shut the door. Obscuring his face with the bedclothes is a detail my Grandma never misses in retelling the story. It pains me a little every time, to think of how they each felt, hurt, and confused by a government that was now starting to persecute them for who they were.

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Unremembered Days

March 11 2021 Musa Hilal is released from detention in Sudan Musa Hilal is most well-known as a leader of the Janjaweed—the violent militia group responsible for the genocidal campaign against Sudanese people in 2003. Hilal has admitted that he assisted in recruitment for the Janjaweed, but continues to deny that he was in any way a commander.

The Janjaweed were a largely Arab Sudanese militia, accused of committing genocide against black African Muslims in Darfur, these acts include burning villages, sexual violence and murdering between 100,000 and 500,000 people (exact figures are unknown). The ethnic groups mostly attacked by the Janjaweed included the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa.

Hilal has faced prison time on many separate occasions throughout his life, in the 1990s, early 2000s and the 2010s. He served time for a range of offenc-

es, including robbery and murder.

Hilal was re-arrested in 2017 along with several hundred other people who were involved with the Janjaweed and their crimes. He was charged with offences such as pre-meditated murder; however, he was not convicted of any crimes surrounding the ethnic cleansing of the Darfuri people. Unfortunately, Musa Hilal was released from military detention on March 11 2021 following a pardon from the Sudanese government.

It is technically still possible (albeit unlikely) that Hilal will be charged with any crimes against Darfuri citizens following his sovereign pardon. His release from prison brings a fresh wave of grief and injustice upon those affected by the conflict in Darfur, ripping any closure away from them that Hilal’s arrest might have initially provided.

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March 13 1943 Krakow Ghetto is liquidated There had been a Jewish community in Krakow since at least the 13th century. The Nazis aimed to destroy that thriving, age-old community in just a few days in March 1943.

Germany invaded Poland in September 1939,and very soon after, the persecution of Jews began. They were stripped of most of their civil rights. In April 1940, Nazi commander Hans Frank decided he wanted Krakow to be a “Jew-free city” and in March 1941, all remaining Jews were placed in the Krakow Ghetto in the Podgórze district.

The ghetto was enclosed by barbed wire fences and in some places, a stone wall in order to trap those inside. The lives of the people living there were extremely difficult as they had been practically cut out of society. Since they

had been cut out of the outside world, medical supplies were very scarce and quickly ran out altogether. The same thing happened with food, so, many of the inhabitants died of starvation. In order to eat, many people risked their lives to smuggle food into the ghetto. Their housing situation made things even more difficult. Since there were so many people in a small place, many families were forced to share one house. Due to this overcrowding and a lack of clean water, there was poor sanitation and diseases were rampant.

The liquidation of the ghetto lasted from March 13 to 16 1943. About 2’000 jews were shot and killed in the streets, 2,000 others were transferred to the Plaszow forced labor camp and 3,000 were deported to the AuschwitzBirkenau killing center. Of those deportees one fourth of them were registered as prisoners while the others suffered a worse fate, immediately being killed in the gas chambers.

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Unremembered Days

March 17 1943 Dimitar Peshev writes a letter of protest Dimitar Peshev was an important man on the political scene in Bulgaria… and was part of the political party that started to discriminate against Jewish people after the start of the Second World War. Bulgaria had become an ally of Nazi Germany and began to bring in laws that said that Jews could not be citizens of their own country and were not allowed to do certain jobs or even go to certain places. Bulgarian Jews were also forced to wear the yellow star to mark them out.

Dimitar Peshev did not protest against these measures.

But he would make a protest.

In February 1943 Bulgaria signed an agreement with Nazi Germany to deport 20,000 Jews to territory controlled by the Nazis. Peshev felt he had to act. On 17 March 1943 he wrote a letter protesting against the deportation of Jews and persuaded more than forty other politicians to sign it. Because of the protest the deportation of the Jews was stopped…but not before some were sent to their deaths in Treblinka.

Peshev lost his job because of his protest and lived in obscurity until he died in 1973…the same year that he was recognised as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

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Unremembered Days

March 19 1944 Manny Mandel’s neighbourhood is invaded by Nazis As a young child Manny Mandel longed to have a bicycle. He knew that his family could afford one but, for some reason, his father said ’No’. He was against it. Manny couldn’t really understand why. Later he realized that the reason his father refused was the danger that Manny would face riding a

bicycle in the park whilst having to wear a Yellow Star. Mandel only really understood this, and the severity of the situation, after he grew up.

The symbol marked Jews out, isolated them and made them an easier target for antisemites. Many, of course, did not know then where this evolving discrimination and persecution would end up. They could not predict that it would end with the Holocaust.

In Hungary the Nazis ordered Jews to wear a yellow star after they took con-

trol in early 1944. Manny Mandel was a young Jewish boy in Hungary when he and his family were ordered to wear the Yellow Star. In Mandel’s account of wearing the star he describes how he was, almost thankfully, oblivious to his surroundings. Strangely, Mandel was proud and honored to wear the yellow badge as a child, as he felt, at the time that it made him feel on a par with the adults who wore the same matching badge. He had no idea at the time that it was a demeaning symbol. He also didn’t know that his father followed him on his way to school each day to make sure that he got there

safely. It was only when Mandel grew up that he recognized the impact of wearing the badge and how it targeted a cohort of people making them feel inferior and in effect dehumanised them. His story shows how children often have misconceptions of the badge and did not fully understand what it meant. Manny’s experiences show how even the most innocent were cruelly targeted by those with hatred in their hearts.

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Unremembered Days

April 6 1941 The Kavilio family are sheltered by Mustafa Hardaga The German invasion of Yugoslavia began with bombs. One of them fell on and destroyed the Kavilio’s family home. They were homeless and decided to spend the night at the family factory. When they were on their way to their factory they met Mustafa Hardaga, the owner of the building. Mustafa

Hardaga offered them a place to stay in his house. The Hardagas were a Muslim family. However, as they described it many years later, the Kavilios became now be part of their family. “Our home is your home”, they said.

The Kavilio family were sheltered by the Hardagas until they were able to move to Mostar, an area under Italian control, where Jews were a little safer.

However, the Germans soon took control of the Italian area. Signs were posted in the neighbouring stating that those who hid Jews would face the death penalty.

Once the “safe” Italian areas came under German control the Kavilio family moved to the mountains, and after the war, they returned to stay with the Hardagas.

Fifty years later it was the Hardagas who were in danger as Bosnian Serbs shelled Sarajevo. The Hardagas were allowed to move to Israel where they were welcomed by the Kavilios whose lives they had saved half a century earlier.

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April 6 1994 An assassination triggers the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda On April 6 1994, in the capital of Rwanda, Kigali, two loud explosions were heard at 9:30 in the evening. They were the explosions of the plane that carried President Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda, on the way back to Rwanda from a meeting in Tanzania. He, along with several others, died in the crash.

Habyarimana’s death was the final trigger for the genocide. Hutu extremists blamed Tutsis for the attack and hate speech immediately after the event encouraged ordinary Hutus to wipe out the Tutsis. Roadblocks were set up around the country and Interahamwe (a Hutu extremist youth wing) began exterminating Tutsis.

The Genocide against the Tutsi resulted in the deaths of around one million Rwandans in just 100 days. The main perpetrators included: the Hutu-led

government; Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, Hutu militia groups; as well as opportunistic Hutus who joined in on the massacres. The effects of the genocide are still felt today throughout Rwanda, for example, almost 30,000 people were left disabled by the violence.

The consequences of Habyarimana’s death were severe and far reaching.

Innocent people still suffer today as a result of the atrocities that followed his assassination.

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Unremembered Days

April 7 1994 Christophe Dupont is murdered

It is hard to think about genocides, the mass killings and the violence but these events should be remembered. That might help us not to repeat past mistakes.

Christophe Dupont was part of a group of Belgian peacekeepers under the flag of the United Nations in Rwandan when the Genocide started. Dupont, along with some of his Belgian colleagues were stationed to protect the moderate Rwandan Prime Minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana. On April 7, rumors had gone around that the Belgian troops had a hand in the death of the president the day before. People were going against not only the Tutsi, but also some Belgians.

That day, it is said that the Prime Minister wanted an escort to the radio station to make a broadcast appealing for calm. To do so the Prime Minister left the safety of her house with just a ten UN soldiers for protection. Christophe Dupont was one of them. The Prime Minister and the Belgian troops were ambushed by the presidential guard. The Belgian troops were not heavily armed, and were thus easily forced to surrender. They were brutally killed.

As the Hutu extremists wanted this led to Belgium to take back their troops, and for the UN forces in Rwanda to be weakened.

Christophe Dupont was just twenty five years old when he was murdered.

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Unremembered Days

April 11 1994 The miracle of Sophie Masereka’s survival Sophie Masereka was came from a loving family and she had ambitions to be a nurse and help others. Her dreams turned to nightmares in 1994.

Many attempts were made on Sophie’s life, starting with an incident where a killer dragged her brother onto the road and shot him dead. By the time the killer returned, Sophie escaped to her parents. Another time, her leg was slashed with a machete, and she fell amongst the dead bodies. Again, she made her escape. On a different day a group of killers came for Sophie in the house, calling her name. Her mum insisted that she should escape through another door, by the time they entered she had gone yet the killers spared her mother’s life.

One time, she was found by a killer who took her to his home. His aim was to kill her family then keep Sophie for himself. She stayed in his home where he did not harm her until she escaped. She saw killers preparing a pit near her home. ‘It was our time.’ As she approached, her brother made a signal to run away.

She needed to flee further from her home for safety. She fled towards a cathedral in Kigali. She was stopped at a roadblock, and a soldier said that Sophie had to be killed immediately. He stood in front of her and raised his gun, she prayed and waited to die – but a miracle happened.

A bullet dropped on the floor. Sophie saw a man come towards her and told her ‘You are not going to die because you sang a song about the story of Job in the Bible’. Sophie believed this was God. When she reached the cathedral, there were around 1,500 people hiding but she was not guaranteed survival. When Sophie survived, she said to herself, ‘I will not get married nor have children.’ I went to study in India where she met someone, she got married and had kids. Sophie described what happened to her as ‘a miracle’.

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Unremembered Days

April 15 1998 The Silent Death of Pol Pot Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge. Born Saloth Sar on May 19 1925, Pol Pot was a Khmer politician and opposition leader. He was the leader of Khmer Rouge, a totalitarian regime in Cambodia.

Many people believe that Pol Pot was inspired by his time in the secluded north-east of Cambodia. Whilst there Pol Pot observed the surrounding hill tribes. These tribes had formed an autarky and no longer saw any value in money. When Pol Pot took control of Cambodia, his government immediately began modifying Cambodia (which they re-named Kampuchea) into an ‘agrarian utopia’. For millions it would not be a utopia but hell...

During the Khmer Rouge’s time in control, supposedly the idea was that everyone was equal, cordial to their communist doctrines, in terms of educa-

tion, social and economic status and such. But books were destroyed. Doctors, lawyers, political leaders were all killed. Under the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot 1.5 - 2 million people were killed from famine, forced labour, and detention centers. The extent of how Cambodia was affected were better seen after the Khmer Rouge, when it had once been a prosperous country, Cambodia, previously referred to as the “Pearl of Asia” was reduced and diminished to death, war, and an impoverished and vapid demographic.

Pol Pot died on 15 April 1998 from a heart attack. Before his death while under house arrest, Pol Pot announced that he cleared his conscience of his crimes; he had washed his hands of the blood. The man who was responsible for the gruesome and grotesque death of millions, died a peaceful death in his sleep from natural causes.

Pol Pot never truly faced justice.

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Unremembered Days

April 16 2020 A ship filled with Rohingya people is found drifting On April 16, 2020, a ship filled with Rohingya refugees was rescued after having been stranded at sea for two months. After fleeing terrible persecution and atrocities in Myanmar the refugees were desperately searching for a better life in Malaysia.

One hundred and eighty two women, one hundred and fifty men and sixty four children were rescued from the boat. They were severely malnourished, dehydrated and could barely walk when they landed. At least thirty of the original number of passengers had been starved, and their bodies had been thrown into the water.

The Rohingya Genocide is the ongoing mass killing and ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. Persecution of and assaults against Rohing-

ya Muslims date back to the 1970s; however things became more sever in 2015: the army of Myanmar launched a deadly crackdown against the Rohingya civilians .

Entire villages were burned to the ground, families were separated and killed, and women and girls were physically and sexually assaulted. Families were forced to leave their homes and flee across the border to Bangladesh.

The vast majority of the men, women and children who managed to escape Myanmar have been deeply impacted. These refugees currently reside in refugee camps around Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh where the conditions are utterly appalling. The camps are one of the most crowded places on Earth.

It is naïve to assume that the days of genocide lie behind us. Around the world such calamities still continue. This is something that we cannot ignore: by doing so, we are simply turning our backs on humanity.

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Unremembered Days

April 17 1975 Khmer Rouge soldiers enter Phnom Penh On the early morning of April 17 1975, the soldiers of Cambodia’s Communist insurgents began entering the capital of Phnom Penh. Many of the city residents turned out to welcome the Khmer Rouge soldiers in the hope that they would finally have peace after five years of bloodshed. At first, there was jubilation then came shock as the soldiers clad in black uniforms began firing into the air. The Khmer Rouge began looting items such as watches and cameras.

People of all ages and social classes were ordered at gunpoint on to streets and highways leading them to the countryside. Those who survived the relocation were forced to work in agriculture for exhausting 16 or 17 hour days where they planted rice and built new irrigation systems. Many died as a result of harsh conditions, unsanitary situations and lack of food. Those lucky enough to survive would live in fear as their neighbours were taken away at night by the Khmer Rouge guards to be shot or bludgeoned to death.

The tale of Phnom Penh was tragic. The city was emptied of its inhabitants, as urban Cambodians were forced to relocate to grow rice in the countryside.

Money became worthless, basic freedoms were curtailed and religion was banned. The Khmer Rouge referred to this year as ‘Year Zero’. Hundreds of thousands of the educated middle-classes were tortured and executed in special centres while others were starving or dying from exhaustion.

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Unremembered Days

April 24 1915 Red Sunday One of the main aims of the Armenian Genocide was to decimate the culture of the ethnic Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire.

The night of the 24th/25th April 1915 is known as Red Sunday. Many see it as the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, when Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha gave the order to round up Armenian leaders in what was then Constantinople and several other locations.

Those rounded up included clergymen, journalists, lawyers, politicians and teachers—the leaders of the Armenian spiritual, cultural, political and social life. It is estimated that on that first night, between 235 to 270 leaders were arrested by the police in Constantinople alone. In further waves of arrests around 2,500 Armenian leaders were detained and eventually deported. Most of them perished in the wave of brutality and killing.

This attack was designed to deprive Armenians of leadership and the ability to form a meaningful resistance to their persecution in a prelude to the mass killings that would follow. Their leaders were accused of working with the Franco-British forces to facilitate an attack on Constantinople.

April 24 is now Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

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Unremembered Days

May 8 1943 Mordechai Anielewicz’s brave resistance ends The name Mordechai Anielewicz represents, perhaps more than anyone else, the desire of the Jewish people to resist the Holocaust. Whilst there were thousand upon thousand of Jewish people who resisted the Nazis in different ways the actions taken by Anielewicz are a symbol of the spirit to fight

back.

Just a few days after the Second World War started, Mordechai and his friends tried to flee to Eastern Poland, to escape capture by the Germans.

However, the Soviet Army closed in from the east and he was captured by the Soviets and put in jail. It was after his release that he went to the Warsaw Ghetto.

By January 1940, he had become a professional underground activist. He

was in-charge of organizing the cells, giving instructions, making underground publications and conducting meetings and seminars regarding the escape of those in the ghetto.

When the first news about the mass killings was out, his first task was to organize self-defense groups in ghettos and when the mass deportations started, leaving only 60,000 out of the 350,000 residents of the ghettos, he founded the Jewish Fighter Organization (JFO), in which he was elected as Chief Commander.

As the Nazis went about the destruction and final deportation of the Warsaw Ghetto in April Anielewicz and his comrades acted. They fought from bunkers that they had constructed and with weapons that they had smuggled in.

The resistance in the Ghetto was heroic but by early May Anielewicz and those who had survived were cornered in his command post at 18 Mila Street. The precise circumstances of his death are unknown and Anielewicz’s body was never found. Whatever the case, the actions of Anielewicz should

never be forgotten.

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Unremembered Days

May 19 1944 Settela Steinbach is deported to Auschwitz The Porajmos. The Pharrajimos. The words translate as ‘the Devouring’ or ’the Destruction’. Both recount the effort made by Nazi Germany to annihilate the Roma and Sinti people of Europe. Settela Steinbach was a Sinti.

The Roma and Sinti people have lived in Europe for centuries. Because of their different lifestyle they have been discriminated against and by the beginning of the 20th century, the police in Germany had begun to keep a record of the Sinti population. This later allowed National Socialists to persecute the minority, regarding them as “racially inferior”. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 and their interpretations targeted the Sinti as a racial group, claiming that they had “alien blood”, and deprived them of their civil rights.

Over 220,000 died, either killed in concentration camps and other horrific circumstances or due to starvation and disease as a result of their treatment.

Anna Maria ‘Settela’ Steinbach was a young Sinti girl born in the Netherlands on December 23, 1934. She came from a traditional Sinti family who lived in a caravan for the majority of the year. Her father was a trader and a violinist in a Sinti orchestra and her mother raised their seven children, all whilst moving from area to area. When the Nazis conquered the country in 1940, neither the Roma nor Sinti were the principal target. However, three years later the Nazis began sending them to Westerbork transit camp, and later put them on a cattle train due to arrive in Auschwitz-Birkenau, including Settela and her family.

On March 19, 1944, a still from a film made by the Nazis showed the Settela on the train to Auschwitz, covering her head with a loose piece of cloth to conceal her shaved head. Once they arrived, the Roma and Sinti were led to the Auschwitz ‘Gypsy Family Camp’ - as the Nazis called it. Some individuals that were deemed “fit” by Nazi officers were transported to labour camp and would later be exploited. However, Settela and her family were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

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Unremembered Days

May 23 1992 Professor Muhamed Čehajić is taken by Bosnian Serbs in Prijedor “Since my departure, since that 23rd of May [1992] when they came to our house to get me, I have been living in another world. It seems to me that everything that is happening to me is just an ugly dream, just a nightmare. And I simply cannot understand how something like this is possible…. I just keep wondering whom and how much I have offended so that I have to go through all this. But I still believe in justice, and I believe in truth, and I believe that this will all be cleared up.”

These are the words of Professor Muhamed Čehajić taken from a letter that he wrote and later read out by his wife, Minka Čehajić. Minka read the words as part of her testimony in the the trial of Milomir Stakić - later to be sentenced to forty years in prison for his actions in and around Prijedor in 1992.

Bosnian Serb extremists took control of Prijedor on April 30 1992. Professor Čehajić, like so many others were thrown out of his job simply because he was not a Serb. When he had gone to work that morning there were soldiers guarding the building where he worked. It was part of a campaign carried out by Bosnian Serb extremists to ‘ethnically cleanse’ the town and surrounding area of everyone who was not a Serb.

Later, on May 23, Professor Čehajić was taken from his home and detained in the local police station. He was then transferred to the infamous Keratem and Omarska concentration camps.

Minka was never to see her husband again.

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Unremembered Days

May 24 1992 Kemal Pervanić’s life changes forever After World War Two Bosnia was one of six republics in former Yugoslavia.

Mashal Tito, the leader, was able to suppress ethnic and racial tensions between the different republics. When he died in 1980 nationalist parties emerged in Bosnia and in the early 1990s Yugoslavia split into six different

states. The Bosnian War started shortly after Bosnia gained independence in 1992.

On May 24, 1992, 24-year-old Kemal’s village was attacked by Bosnian-Serb forces and he and his brother Kasim were arrested and brought to the Omarska concentration camp, a camp for non-Serb men and boys over the age of 12, as they were Bosniak. He knew some of the guards at the camp as they were former teachers and classmates. The conditions in the camp were horrible: there was little food and drink and not enough space for people to sit. Sometimes prisoners were taken away to be tortured - some of them never returned. To cope with these experiences, Kemal had to hide his emotions and learn to become indifferent to others being slaughtered around him.

After Kemal had spent ten weeks in the camp it was discovered by three British Journalists who published their findings. It was for this reason that Kemal and Kasim were transferred to a facility of the International Committee of the Red Cross along with 1250 others. The conditions in this new

camp were still bad but Kemal felt safe there. He was able to leave the country shortly after that and he and his brother came to the UK where they started a new life without any of their belongings. Nine months after they had arrived the rest of their family was brought to the UK, and they were able to reunite.

Kemal Pervanić suffered severe trauma and yet he was considered one of the lucky ones – because he survived.

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Unremembered Days

May 25 1992 The concentration camp at Omarska is opened Omarska. Not a word or a place that many people had heard of before 1992.

Now it is a term that brings shudders of fear and memories of horror.

In May 1992, the Bosnian Serb extremists took control over the town of Prijedor. As part of their plan to rid the area of non-Serbs the Bosnian Serb military unleashed a campaign of terror against the men, women and children just because they belonged to the ‘wrong’ group.

Part of this campaign included the opening of cruel and brutal concentration camps. The Omarska Concentration Camp was one of these. It was originally constructed as a mining complex. Inside the buildings the prisoners of the Bosnian Serbs were interrogated, tortured and often killed. These buildings had named that gave no hint of their true purpose: “the white house”, “la

pista” and “the red house”.

Even for those that lived the conditions were horrendous. The detainees in the Omarska Camp were given little food which had to be eaten quickly.

With food often came violence from guards.

The world thought that concentration camps were a thing of the past.

Omarska proved that Europe had not learned the lessons of the Holocaust.

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Unremembered Days

May 26 2020 Simeon Karamaga passes away Simeon Karamaga was a brave man. In 1994 he fought for his life and those of his family and people against terrible odds. He survived but his family sadly did not.

Even before 1994 Simeon and his family were discriminated against and persecuted because they were Tutsis. His children were not awarded the grades that they deserved in school. Extremists tried to steal his livelihood by planting pine forests in an effort to to stop his cows grazing.

Simeon was born in 1944 and grew up in Bisesero in Rwanda. He married there too and had eight children. He worked everyday looking after his animals on the green and lush hills that are typical in the beautiful Rwandan countryside. His children helped him by looking after the younger animals.

He and his family lived a simple life.

During the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda that took place over one hundred days Simeon was targeted by the Hutu killers. He faced death because he was Tutsi. The day that the President of Rwanda was killed the Interahamwe killers came for Simeon. They falsely said that Simeon and his family were relatives of those who had murdered the President. With no place to escape to Simeon stood and fought. He went to a hill called Umwira along with other Tutsi and waited for the killers to come. They knew many of the Interahamwe – they were neighbours. For the whole of April Simeon fought and survived. By May 13 they were surrounded. Simeon fought hand -to-hand. Not many survived. But Simeon did.

Simeon Karamaga passed away on May 26 2020.

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Unremembered Days

May 31 1994 Mbaye Diagne is killed That first night, the army arrived to kill Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana. The assassins have already left, but Mbaye Diagne, a Sengalese soldier serving with the UN in Rwanda, notices the Prime Minister’s children hiding beneath clothing and furniture in a dark room in a neigh-

bor's house. Mbaye chooses to accompany them till they reach safety. Regrettably, no car arrives. Consequently, he decides to risk his life and hide the children in his car and transport them to a relatively safe place: Hotel de Mille Collines, guarded by the UN. This was just the start of Mbaye’s heroic actions.

Mbaye Diagne was assigned to Rwanda as a UN military observer but later broke the official rules to make it his mission to help as many Tutsis as he could. This is because the UN ordered the withdrawal of many of its troops.

Yet, Diagne remained and continued to transport others to safety.

He used his sense of humour to talk his way through the roadblocks and kept goods and cash in his car as a way to travel and bribe his way past the killers. This allowed him to go anywhere he wanted without infuriating the militiamen. That's how he saved individuals who were about to be killed by the militia – five or six people at a time in his car.

On May 31, Mbaye Diagne’s jeep was hit by a rocket, and he was killed. The day before he was talking to his wife and told her that he only had twelve days of duty left.

Mbaye Diagne died as a hero. He committed to doing everything he could to safeguard innocent people while the rest of the world preferred to turn a blind eye. Diagne was not a Tutsi, nor was he from Rwanda. But he persisted in saving hundreds of lives for one simple reason. He believed it was the right thing to do.

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Unremembered Days

June 9 1933 Johann Trollman fights for a boxing title Johann Trollman was given the nickname ‘Rukeli’, meaning ‘tree’, when he was young. From a photograph of him taken in 1928, when he was twenty or so, you can see why. He stands tall, strong and determined – it looks like it would take a lot to blow him over. In the photograph, with his boxing gloves

on, Johann looks determined, like a champion. That is what he would become.

On June 9 1933, Trollman fought Adolf Witt for the German light heavyweight championship. Trollman’s performance that night was a masterclass and it was clear to all who had triumphed in the bout. Except that the Nazi chairman of the boxing authorities instructed the judges to declare a ‘draw’.

The crowd erupted at such injustice and the fight was rightly awarded to Trollman. The euphoria of the victory lasted until a letter from the authorities arrived to tell Trollman that his victory would again be taken from him.

As a ‘non-Aryan’ Trollman could not be allowed to succeed.

For the rest of the 1930s Trollman tried to avoid the authorities and boxed to acclaim in fairs. After the persecution of the Sinti and Roma people increased after the Nuremberg Laws Trollman was deported to a labour camp for a period.

In June 1942 Johann was again arrested and sent to a concentration camp.

The Nazi guards forced the champion to do forced labour in the daytime and then fight guards in the evening. On April 9 1944 Trollman was forced to fight a criminal and hated Kapo in the Wittenberge camp. Trollman again won the fight…but whilst working outside the camp the Kapo attacked him from behind with a shovel and killed him.

Johann ‘Rukeli’ Trollman was just thirty-five years old when he was murdered.

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Unremembered Days

June 22 1994 France sends troops to Rwanda Opération Turquoise, a French lead mission of 2500 soldiers, during the Genocide against the Tutsi was (and still is) controversial.

When it was proposed France said that the aim of the mission was to contribute to the ‘security and protection of displaced persons, refugees and civilians in danger in Rwanda’.

Many have noted that the objectives of Opération Turquoise did not acknowledge the genocide of the Tutsi people. Similarly, some commentators have believed that the French soldiers were sent to help protect not just Tutsi but also some Hutu government officials and genocide perpetrators.

Although this is highly debated to this day, there is speculation that France may have intentionally helped these government officials flee the country by

setting up the protection zone. This would have been very advantageous to France since it would potentially lead to the preservation of the old government which they were particularly close to.

This sparked a lot of controversy that is still unresolved to this day. Were France’s true intentions of conserving the genocidal government to keep their influence over the country? On this date, many people rejoiced when they heard that the international community might be sending help. The French soldiers agreed to this mission not knowing that their actions would cause controversy for many years to come.

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Unremembered Days

June 24 2011 Pauline Nyiramasuhuko is convicted of genocide On 24 June 2011, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko was convicted of genocide and incitement to rape, and sentenced to life in prison.

Under President Habyarimana, she had been Minister for family affairs and women’s development. When he was assassinated, the genocide began and decided not to save lives but to take them.

During the 100 day massacre of the Tutsis in Rwanda, she ordered her son to organise militias and take part in the kidnap, rape and murder of girls in Butare. She would force people to undress before loading them onto trucks to their deaths, organised the killing of Tutsis that had taken refuge in the Butare Government offices, and aided and abetted rapes. The UN reported that in the genocide 250,000 women were raped, amongst these 67 per cent

contracted HIV/ AIDS from men who used it as a weapon of genocide.

After the three-month killing frenzy in the summer of 1994 ended, with the Rwandan Patriotic Front seizing power, she fled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She and her son, Arsene Shalom Ntahobari were arrested in 1997 in Kenya, their trial lasting ten years.

On June 24, 2011, Pauline was found guilty of seven charges including genocide and incitement to rape. She was the the first women to be convicted of

genocide.

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Unremembered Days

June 30 2007 Darfuri children draw pictures of their experiences Anna Schmitt, a researcher for the Waging Peace organisation, began a "three -week fact-finding journey" in Eastern Chad on this unremembered day. This was put in place to collect evidence from Darfuri refugees, fleeing from genocide.

Anna gave children a chance to draw their future dreams and their strongest memory which left a profound impression on them. However, what she received was appalling, as the drawings revealed the children’s first hand experiences of the attacks on their villages by the combination of both the Sudanese Government forces and the Janjaweed militia. The images contained graphic content of their daily life in the village or in the refugee camp.

The drawings included houses being burned and civilians being shot, fleeing

citizens being stopped by the Janjaweed. Bullets are seen coming from all over, tears falling down people's cheeks and the colour red; depicting blood loss.

The people in the children’s work are represented differently. The assailants arrive on horseback and in pickup trucks equipped with machine guns, both of which are common among the Janjaweed militia. Despite this, they are dressed in Sudanese Government uniforms, demonstrating a clear relationship between them. The deployment of a tank in the raid (which is depicted with a Sudanese flag) is particularly intriguing considering the Sudanese government has constantly denied employing such heavy weaponry in Darfur.

Even though this day continues to be unheard of among many people, it will always haunt the children who had to relive these memories when drawing the attacks.

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Unremembered Days

July 1 2015 Sir Nicholas Winton passes away On July 1 2015, a 106-year-old man passed away peacefully in his sleep. This otherwise unassuming man was Sir Nicholas Winton MBE, whose prestigious accolades had been awarded for no less than saving over 650 Jewish children from the Nazi regime.

For every child that he rescued, Winton put his life on the line—discovery of his actions by Nazi officials would have resulted in extremely severe punishments. This did not deter Winton, however. Despite, the huge risk to his safety, Nicholas continued to pay for train tickets, forge documentation and organise host families for children who were unable to remain in Prague due to fear of being sent to concentration camps.

These were organised as a part of the ‘Kindertransport’ programme, a

scheme set up in Britain to assist those who lives were threatened in Nazioccupied Europe. It offered children under the age of 17 refuge in the UK if they had a foster family they could stay with.

In total, Winton saved 669 children from almost certain death, his actions offered innocent Jewish people another chance at life following such horrific times of persecution, with many going on to live largely normal adult lives, all of which is worlds away from the fate they would have met had they not been saved.

Winton was very private about his actions in the war. It was only revealed when his wife, in 1988, found a scrapbook documenting his work and the lives of the children he saved. A number of these ‘Winton’s children’ (now adults) were brought together to celebrate his achievements on an episode of “That’s life” in February 1988.

Thankfully, Winton’s heroic actions were finally recognised after half a century and his endless bravery was rightfully commended.

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Unremembered Days

July 8 1993 RTLM begins to broadcast in Rwanda Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) was a Hutu-led radio station in Rwanda, credited with playing a significant role in inciting the violence in Rwanda that led to the deaths of almost 1 million innocent people. It cunningly increased its number of listeners by playing more modern music

than the state-led radio and used this to its advantage when it would later use the station to broadcast anti-Tutsi propaganda. Its first broadcast occurred on July 8 1993.

RTLM polarised Rwandans, developing an intense public hatred towards Tutsis-referring to them as ‘cockroaches’ and ultimately, calling for them to be killed, either with guns and/or machetes. Many young militia members were encouraged by the station to commit horrendous acts of genocide.

The RTLM broadcasts further created an ‘us and them’ mentality in Hutus towards Tutsis. It dehumanised the Tutsis and provided mitigation to potential perpetrators as to how they could excuse murdering hundreds of thousands of people, presenting them as ‘vermin’. Furthermore, the radio station helped to organise and radicalise groups of Hutus to kill their Tutsi neighbours.

Some of those involved in the station faced justice for their actions. In August 2003, two leaders of RTLM: Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean Bosco Barayagwiza were charged with incitement of genocide; genocide and crimes against humanity for their roles in RTLM and the effect it had on the murders.

The violence that is directly associated with RTLM makes clear the dangers of widespread hateful media and the effect it can have on radicalising perpetrators within society and the ultimate loss of life it can bring. .

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Unremembered Days

July 13 1942 Irène Nèmirovsky is arrested in France Irène Nèmirovsky was an acclaimed novelist. Her life had started in Ukraine, continued in France and ended tragically in Nazi-occupied Poland.

By the time that the Second World War began Irène was already an accomplished writer and had multiple of her works developed into films. Irène was plagued by antisemitism for much of her life, being denied French citizenship because of her heritage in 1938, despite having lived in France for around half of her life. Irène then made the choice to convert to Catholicism, being baptised in 1939; unfortunately, this was not enough to save her from discrimination by the Nazis, whose racial discrimination laws viewed her as Jewish (and therefore warranting persecution) because of her heritage.

After being arrested as a ‘stateless person of Jewish descent’ by a policeman

in Vichy France, Irène was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Irène died in the concentration camp six months later, she succumbed to typhus which was contracted as a result of the camp’s inhumane conditions.

Irène’s story challenges many common perceptions of the Holocaust. For one, she did not die in the gas chambers, Irène is one of many who fell victim to the abominable conditions in the camps, in which disease and malnutrition was prevalent. She was not German – having been born in Ukraine and then emigrated to France. Furthermore, she was arrested by a French policeman in France – showing us how Nazi allies played a key part in the Holocaust. Lastly, Irène was persecuted by the Nazis and their conspirators because she had Jewish heritage. She had been baptised into the Catholic Church in 1939. To the Nazis this made no difference: this reveals how the Nazis’ antisemitism was a racial rather than religious one.

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Unremembered Days

July 15 2013 Thein Sein makes a declaration about the Rohingya The President of Myanmar Thein Sein stood and boldly declared ‘we do not have the term Rohingya’. This may not seem to be an important issue. What, after all, is a ‘term’ really and how significant must it be? Surely it is just a word? But in this case, it is extremely significant. In fact, for Rohingya indi-

viduals, this ‘term’ is quite literally a matter of life or death. And for the Rohingya group, it is a matter of survival or genocide.

It was in 1982 that the Rohingya were removed from the national list of officially recognised ethnic minorities. Since then, this has effectively served as governmental sanction, and even encouragement, for the mistreatment, stigmatisation and persecution of the Rohingyas. Clearly the situation has not improved since then, if the President of Myanmar still felt entitled to deny the existence of the Rohingyas.

However, even worse than the discrimination against the Rohingyas is the dehumanisation they are subject to. Not only their ethnic identity, but also their humanity has been stolen from them. in 2015 Win Mra, the Head of the Myanmar Human Rights Commission, said ‘As human beings… we have the right to food, health and other human rights, but when you claim yourself as a Rohingya, that's a different issue’. This dehumanisation is certainly not accidental either. Step 4 in Genocide Watch’s 10 Stages of Genocide, it is a vital part of the process that allows previously friendly citizens to butcher and slaughter their neighbours for no other reason than their ethnic identity.

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Unremembered Days

July 22 2018 Hatidža Mehmedović Dies Hatidža Mehmedović died after a long fight with breast cancer. During the Bosnian Genocide her entire family was killed, not just her sons and husband, but her brothers and their sons and other family members as well.

Srebrenica was supposed to be a safe place, the UN said so as well but that was not the case. On July 11 1995 it was overtaken by Ratko Mladić and his troops. People were separated into different columns and Hatidža was separated from her husband and sons. This was the last time she saw them alive.

She was recommended to go to the UN base in Potočari, but once she got there Ratko Mladić separated everyone into columns as well. The men and boys were taken away from the women and the elderly. They were being

taken to Tuzla, another safe area which was nearby. It took Hatidža three attempts before managing to escape Srebrenica to a safe area close to Tuzla by the name of Kladanj. She thought that she would see her family again soon, but it took two to three days before she got the news that the body of her youngest son, Almir, had been found. The bodies of her husband, Abdullah, and her other son, Azmir, had not been found alongside his. Only in 1998 did they find a few bones belonging to Abdullah, and two leg bones belonging to Azmir.

Instead of wanting revenge on the Serbs for killing her family, Hatidža Mehmedović decided to create the Mothers of Srebrenica Association which represents the 6,000 women who lost their families in the genocide. She led the campaign for the establishment of the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial Complex and Cemetery, where her husband and sons were then laid to rest.

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Unremembered Days

July 23 1944 Karolina Juszczykowska is caught hiding two Jews Karolina Juszczykowska showed great courage, bravery, and determination in the face of one of the darkest periods of modern history. On 23 July 1944, she was caught hiding two Jews named Janek and Pawel in her cellar and unfortunately paid the ultimate price for it; she was executed on 9 January

1945.

At the time Karolina was in a bad financial situation, due to the deficient state of the economy of wartime Poland, so when the two men offered her 300 zloty per week, she took them up on it. Or at least that is what she told the Nazis when they interrogated her. In order to minimize her sentence, she told them she hid Jews out of greed rather than out of a desire to dismantle the Nazi regime. We still do not know what her true intentions were, but she must have known what the consequences of being caught would have been therefore showing a substantial amount of fearlessness even though she was being paid for it. Having never been to school or attained any level of education, she could not even read or write, and as a result she inscribed her interrogation statement with three crosses.

Due to her defiance of the Nazi regime, she was transferred to prison in Piotrków. Despite her sentence, three judges added a special plea requesting her pardon and yet nothing worked and she was executed for keeping inno-

cent people safe.

On May 17 2011 she was acknowledged as ‘righteous among the nations’ for the valiance she displayed.

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Unremembered Days

July 23 1992 Bosnia Serb soldiers arrive in Sudbin Music’s village Sudbin Musić will never forget the words that his last school teacher said to him and his class: “I look forward to seeing you all in the new school year, well, those of you who survive.”

Sudbin Music was just eighteen years old in 1992.

His community was a traditional farming one but he loved MTV just like everyone his own age all around the world. He lived with his family in the small village of Čarakovo near to the bigger settlement of Prijedor in the north western part of Bosnia Herzegovina.

However, the summer of 1992 would force Sudbin to experience things that no teenager should ever endure. From May his village had had their electricity and water cut off and on July 20 refugees from other villages arrived with stories of terrible things. Sudbin and others did not want to believe the things that they were hearing. Three days later, however, their worst fears were realised. Bosnian Serb soldiers arrive in Čarakovo. They burned houses and killed anyone that they could find. Sudbin and his brother were arrested by the soldiers before setting fire to their house. Sudbin’s father was murdered and his body thrown without respect into a water reservoir just by the house.

Prisoners were put on buses. There were two buses, one of them driven by a friend of Sudbin’s father. The driver was a Serb but a good person…and he managed to persuade the soldiers to allow Sudbin and his brother to travel on his bus. Every person on the other bus was later murdered.

The bus that Sudbin was on took him to a concentration camp at Trnopolje.

Those detained here lived in fear for their lives and the constant beatings and torture that they faced. Many did not survive but somehow Sudbin did.

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Unremembered Days

August 2 1944 The liquidation of the ‘Gypsy Family Camp’ As night came, on August 2, the trucks arrived to take the remaining Roma from the what the Nazis called the ‘Gypsy Family Camp’ to the gas chambers. Two thousand eight hundred and ninety seven men, women and children would be murdered.

The Nazi soldiers had been planning on liquidating the camp long before August 2. On May 15, Nazi soldiers surrounded the barracks, planning to lure them out and murder them. However, the families stayed inside the barracks as a form of resistance, forcing the soldiers to draw back lest they cause fighting to occur.

Starting on May 23, the healthy prisoners of the ZigeunerFamilieLager camp were deported to other camps in Auschwitz-Birkenau, under the pretence

that they would build better living spaces for relatives. This helped to both lull the families into a false sense of security and to keep using those who could still work.

The final order, which sentenced the remaining Roma families to their fate, was given out by SS Heinrich Himmler.

The process of loading the trucks was laced with cruel deception on August 2. The Nazis gave food to the men, women and children, telling them that

they were to be transferred to another camp. Unfortunately, this would prove to be hopeless in their case, as the remaining , mostly sick, men, women and children would perish, with their ashes and remains either used as fertilizer and fue, or thrown away senselessly.

Not many Roma survivors have lived to the modern day, and those who have are largely ignored by the world at large due to antiziganism (antiRomani racism). Which means that the cruelties they went through largely go unnoticed and unknown.

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Unremembered Days

August 3 1943 Frumka Płotnicka dies in the Będzin Ghetto uprising There had been a vibrant Jewish community in the Polish town of Będzin for years and years. However, once the Nazis occupied Poland the Jewish community was cruelly targeted. On September 5 1939, the German army entered the town and immediately unleashed terror over the Jews. The Nazis

had burnt the Great Synagogue in the Old City and sixty Jewish people were to death.

When the German authorities declared the formation of the Jewish quarter in Będzin, over 20,000 local Jews were forced to live in the ghetto until 1943. In September 1942, Frumka Płotnicka, an activist from the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) was involved in the escape of Jews from Będzin. She was sent by the ZOB to strengthen the underground, and help it prepare for armed resistance. Płotnicka was one of the leaders of the underground and from Będzin helped with the escape of Jews being held in the Ghetto.

The ZOB had found a way out of Poland for her but Frumka Płotnicka decided to stay behind and finish what had been started. On August 1, 1943 a group of activists led by Frumka Płotnicka barricaded themselves in a bunker at Podsiadły Street. They fought for days, however all of them were killed as they bravely resisted the German forces.

Frumka Płotnicka was just twenty nine years old when she died.

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Unremembered Days

August 3 2014 Layla’s ordeal begins Sinjar, a town in Northern Iraq, is inhabited mostly by Yazidis, an ethnic and religious group. On August 3 in 2014, as ISIS swept through Northern Iraq, they surrounded and occupied Sinjar. Layla, a 27-year-old Yazidi woman, was captured by the militants, along with nineteen members of her family and thousands of other Yazidis.

Those who were captured suffered terrible abuses. Most of the men were executed, and the women and girls were enslaved and forcibly transferred across Iraq and Syria as sexual slaves. They were kept in atrocious conditions, where they suffered starvation, beatings, and illness. Layla and her two children were taken to the ISIS stronghold in Raqqa, Syria. Over the next two years in Raqqa, she was sold to nine different men, who repeatedly beat and raped her. Layla was forced to have multiple abortions after becoming pregnant. She knew many Yazidi women and girls who tragically committed suicide after suffering similar abuse. Layla documented many of the experiences she suffered in a notebook, in order to bear witness to the crimes and give evidence in the future.

After two years, Layla’s family was able to pay a smuggler for her release.

Layla has used her experiences to advocate for the rights of the Yazidi people and her family, many of whom are still missing. Layla said, “I hope that telling my story will help me convey my suffering and the suffering of all Yazidis, especially women, to the world so that they may know the truth of the oppression, persecution, rape, murder and displacement that happened to us.”

It is important to listen to the testimonies of Layla and other victims of the genocide, in order to ensure that the Yazidis are not abandoned or forgotten .

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Unremembered Days

August 16 1977 Ma Yoeun is murdered On August 16 1977, amidst the Cambodian genocide, Ma Yoeun was killed.

She was likely killed by the relentless torture administered to prisoners, and then driven, with a truckload of bodies, to Choeung Ek, “the Killing Fields”, to be disposed in a mass grave dug by teenage executioners. She was the

wife of Bou Meng, one of the seven known adult survivors of S-21.

As a result of the Khmer Rouge’s malignant intentions, they turned a high school in Phnom Penh into an interrogation, torture, and execution prison, renamed S-21, which is where Bou Meng and Ma Yoeun were brought. Upon arrival, the Khmer Rouge would take photographs of the victims to prove that the orders from the leaders had been carried out Both Bou Meng and Ma Yoeun were arrested together in 1976 and brought to the S-21 prison. Subsequent to entering the prison center, he and his wife never saw each other again. Ma Yoeun was taken away from her husband, she was yelled at, tortured and eventually brutally murdered by the Khmer Rouge on August 16 1977. During the time when the Khmer Rouge regime were in power, out of the 12,000-18,000 prisoners that were brought to S-21, only seven survived.

Bou Meng did not “get lucky”, he was kept alive because he was an artist.

The man in charge of the camp, ‘Duch’, found out and requested a black and white portrait of Pol Pot, with high stakes: it would be lifelike, or Meng would be executed. He used his artistic talent and three months later presented Duch with a 1.5 by 1.8 metre portrait. Not only did Duch enjoy his portrait, but he requested portraits of Mao Zedong, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and even more of Pol Pot. Meng’s artistic prowess kept him alive, and at one of his later visits to the prison, he found his name in a list, with a scribbled note next to it “Keep for a while”.

Afterwards Bou Men drew an illustration of his beloved wife. In the illustration, Bou Meng and Ma Yoeun stand together, in happier times before the genocide. Behind them is a beautiful full moon and a star filled sky.

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Unremembered Days

August 24 1941 Winston Churchill describes a ‘crime without a name’ Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered a live broadcast from London.

He was speaking two months after Hitler suddenly broke the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, proceeding to invade the Soviet Union. With British cryptographers breaking the Nazi “enigma” code six weeks earlier, Churchill had been receiving first-hand account of the atrocities taking place. With the code being used by Berlin to communicate with the Eastern Front, Churchill heard of these harrowing events from the very men that were carrying them out, with the Einsatzgruppen giving detailed accounts and specific numbers of their killings throughout the occupied territory.

In the Soviet Union’s Nazi occupied territories, the Nazis initiated the “Holocaust by bullet”. All Jews were classified as enemy partisans: men, women and children. On Himmler’s orders they were reduced to military targets, to be imprisoned or executed. With Hitler and Himmler’s authorisation, and under the command of Reinhard Heydrich, the Einsatzgruppen proceeded to round up Jews in the territory and execute them by the thousands.

This was not a war against a nation or an opposing faction, but a war waged in the name of annihilation, in the racial restructuring of a continent. It was an idea built into the blueprint of Nazi ideology, laid out in Mein Kampf, and being realised by the SS death squads sweeping through the territory.

This realisation reached the Prime Minister in detailed accounts and specific statistics of the ‘Jews’ and ‘Jewish Bolshevists’ being killed en masse. Whole districts were being exterminated, ‘scores of thousands’ executed methodically every day. However, Churchill could not reveal the full detail of the intelligence he received. He could merely describe the soulless statistics as a ‘crime without a name’.

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Unremembered Days

August 30 2003 A history of life in Mororo is extinguished “We must get all of these people out of this place!” Reportedly these were the words shouted by one of the leaders of the murderous gang who attacked the village of Mororo in Darfur, a part of Sudan. We cannot be certain what the man meant by these words (he will probably never be brought

to justice) but his actions indicated that he wanted to destroy the lives of those who lived in Mororo, obliterate their existence and make it seem as if their culture and history in that place had never existed.

On August 30 sixteen people were killed. The next day the gang returned and killed a further twenty-four people. All of those murdered were young men as the women and children of the village had already run away. The village was burned. Cattle, the means by which the inhabitants of the village survived and made a living were stolen.

The village had been attacked because the people that lived there were the ‘wrong’ kind of people. These innocent, peaceful villagers were seen by their own government as undesirable, unwanted, expendable. That is why the government sent the Janjaweed, the gang of murderous thugs, to burn, rape, pillage and murder.

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Unremembered Days

September 6 2013 Hasan Nuhanović finally gets some justice It had been almost two decades since the Srebrenica genocide. After years of legal proceedings, Hasan finally got some justice. His father, brother, and mother were murdered. Murders whose blood many say rests on the hands

of the Dutchbat, who handed 8,372 people over to Ratko Mladic’s killers.

And their story was erased. By the families of murderers who moved into their deserted homes, by the United Nations, who should have done more, so much more to stop the genocide in Srebrenica. But Hasan held on to their story. He devoted his life to seeking justice—for his family, and for the 8,372 people who lost their lives in the summer of 1995.

Hasan’s family had fled to Srebrenica as refugees. He found work at the UN’s base as a translator, and thought that he and his family would be safe.

Then, Mladic’s men stormed Srebrenica. Hasan’s family fled to the UN base, along with thousands of others. The Bosnian Serb soldiers closed in. They came with machine guns. Tanks. Hasan’s father was chosen as a representative of Srebrenica to meet with Ratko Mladić, the army’s general, accompanied by the Dutchbat commander. Mladić promised that the residents would be safely relocated. The Dutchbat trusted Mladić’s word and did nothing when Mladic’s men began to prepare a massacre. Hasan was told that they had to evacuate the base. He tried to convince the Dutchbat to let him and

his family stay. People were being hauled out in lines, knowing what was going to happen to them. Some murders happened outside the base. All the while, the Dutchbat were waiting for the base to be emptied. Hasan begged.

He wanted to go to his death with his family, but they didn’t let him. As they were being taken away, the refugees were split between men and women.

The women suffered brutalisation, and the men were herded into buildings and massacred by machine gunfire. Hasan survived but his family didn’t. In 2013 a Dutch court agreed with Hasan that the Netherlands was liable for

the deaths of Ibro Nuhanović and Mohammad Nuhanović.

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Unremembered Days

September 9 2004 Declaration of genocide in Darfur by the US Secretary of State On this day, Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared before the US Senate’s Foreign Relations committee to give a statement on the crisis unfolding in Darfur.

In his speech, Powell explained that the State Department had conducted interviews with over a thousand refugees, painting a picture of ‘a consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities: Killings, rapes, burning of villages’ by the Janjaweed, a militia group which had been supported by the Sudanese government, as well as reportedly by the Sudanese military, and that this amounted to a genocide, a view which had been asserted a few months prior by the House of Representatives.

The 30-day deadline for the government to disarm the Janjaweed, established by UN Security Council resolution 1556, had recently passed, and motivated the US to begin calling for sanctions against Sudan. Even though these were eventually passed, the remaining response to the genocide by the US, and the rest of the world was lacking.

Humanitarian aid money from other nations such as Japan and Italy was small, giving $6m and $10.8m respectively, an amount criticised by Oxfam and Save the Children, amongst others. An earlier humanitarian aid drive by the UN raised only $276m when it aimed to garner $531m. Other criticisms include the delays for action, such as giving Sudan an additional 30 days to comply with demands despite having already done so, with little signs of compliance.

Overall, the day had a great political significance, and marked an escalation in how seriously the international community was taking the crisis, but did not necessarily lead to the necessary action required to stop the genocide and mitigate the humanitarian effects it had.

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Unremembered Days

September 15 1935 The Nuremberg Laws are imposed The Nuremberg Laws were a series of rules established in September 1935 in Nazi Germany. They had the intention of depriving Jews of basic human rights.

They were created by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime and agreed upon by the Reichstag (the parliament) on September 15 1935 at the Nazi’s rally in Nuremberg.

The antisemitic rules were separated into two main laws: the ‘Reich citizenship law’ and ‘protection of German blood and honour’. The first law meant that Jews could no longer identify as German citizens, which also meant that they had lost the right to vote. Hitler defined a Jew as someone who had at least three grandparents who practiced the religion or who had had any connections to the religion through their lifetime. So even if the individual themselves was not a Jew, or had not even practiced the religion for years, they were subject to discrimination.

The second law meant that Jews were not allowed to marry non-Jews or have any sexual relations with them. It was also stated that Jews were not allowed to display the German flag and failure to abide by these laws would either result in imprisonment, a fine or hard labour. These laws eventually extended to Roma and ethnic minorities across the country.

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Unremembered Days

September 25 1915 The Glasgow Herald headline The newspaper headline is only nine words long. It reads: ‘Armenian Massacres. Turkey’s extermination policy. A tale of horror.’ In those nine short words the people of Britain were alerted to the horrific policy of extremists in the Ottoman Empire who were trying to destroy the Armenian people.

The article sets out what has happened to the Armenian people. It talks of ‘terrible massacres…organised by the Turkish government’ and states that ‘more than half a million Armenians who inhabited the province have been deported’. All this has been carried out, so the report states, in a ‘systematic’ fashion. Even though Rafael Lemkin would not invent the term ‘genocide’ for another three decades these events were at the front of his mind when he was finding a definition for these crimes.

The report in the Glasgow Herald describes how the process of extermination was being carried out. The Armenians were disarmed, and the police (who should protect not persecute) were used, alongside criminal gangs inflicted terrible tortures during searches of homes and villages. Property was confiscated, goods were stolen. Then the deportations of whole communities began. The report details this as being ‘Put on the road to die.’ The massacres followed.

This was genocide in 1915 and the world knew about it.

Today the British government does not recognise the Armenian Genocide.

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Unremembered Days

October 10 2018 Xinjiang legalises 're-education' camps The term ‘unremembered days’ is rather difficult to apply to an ongoing genocide, and so it was difficult to associate a specific day to the genocide of the Uighur Muslims in China.

After researching, I found that in October of 2018, China legalised the ‘re-education camps’ in Xinjiang. The ’wiping out’ of the Uighurs began in 2014, but the project expanded vastly in 2017, when the building of camps began. According to NBC News, by 2019 there was an estimate of 1 million Uighur Muslims detained. This genocide has multiple reasons behind it; rather than being solely based on Islamophobia and racism, there are other intentions. As a highly communist country, China commits their citizens to their government, but the Uighurs differ from this ideal, therefore meaning they are ‘disloyal’. This triggered the beginning of what would become the fast-growing building of concentration camps and indoctrination. So, after categorising people through religion and ethnic background through the new identification technology, the removal of the Uighurs began.

There are articles, by well-known publications such as the BBC and Al Jazeera, written with the intention of raising awareness about this controversial matter.

However, despite the objections to the cruel discrimination, many influential figures ignore or disregard the genocide. Nonetheless, the genocide is still widely unknown as it is being masked by the Chinese government’s tactics. Similar to the beginning of the Holocaust, when the Nazi Party attempted to convince their citizens and the world that their camps were simply joyful and habitual places, the Chinese government claim their concentration camps are ‘re-education centres’.

They claim that the Uighurs are on the verge of crime, and therefore need to be educated before they commit one, they coin this “thought crimes”. However, this ‘education’ is simply a way to essentially destroy the Uighur culture.

We naturally presume genocides are in the past. We forget that such tragedies are currently happening, as awareness on such subjects are sparse. The genocide of the Uighur Muslims is happening in China right now and we need to recognise it, just as we recognise other genocides in history.

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Unremembered Days

October 14 1943 Leon Felhendler organises a revolt in Sobibor death camp Sobibor was a Nazi extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. It was built in 1942 with the sole purpose of killing Jewish people. In the camp, 250,000 Jewish people were killed from 1942 to 1943.

There had been a rumour circulating around that since the number of killings in the camp had started to decline, the prisoners forced into labour would soon be killed too. This led to Leon Felhendler and a group of Jews forming a secret committee to plan an escape. However none of them had any military experience which resulted in them not advancing much in their planning. Thankfully, a group of Jewish Red Army prisoners of war, including Alexander Pechersky, arrived at the camp and helped to plan the revolt.

On 14 October at around 4pm, the uprising began. First of all, several mem-

bers of the SS were lured alone into different places such as the tailor shop to have a jacket fitted, and were then killed with an axe. About 11 Nazis were killed in total. The SS noticed soon after that some of them were missing and started to open fire on the Jewish prisoners during roll call. Some of the Jews, who had stolen guns from the killed SS members, fired back and around 300 of them managed to escape.

During the next few weeks, the Jews that had escaped were hunted down by around five hundred Nazi police. Some were helped by the locals in villages surrounding the camp and stayed in hiding, whereas others were reported by them and brought back to the camp. In the end, fifty out of the three hundred people that escaped survived the war. The camp was then closed down soon after and the remaining prisoners were all shot.

Leon Felhendler was one of those who survived the escape from Sobibor...only to die tragically after being shot in mysterious circumstances in April 1945.

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Unremembered Days

October 16 1946 Ernst Kaltenbrunner is executed On this day the infamous Ernst Kaltenbrunner was executed by hanging. He had been found guilty at the Nuremberg Trials of committing or overseeing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In 1932, Ernst had made the decision to join the Austrian Nazi party. By 1935, Ernst was appointed as leader of the SS in Austria. Ernst continued to make an infamous name for himself in Austria, until he was handpicked by Henrich Himmler (known as the architect for the Holocaust, and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany) to be the new head of the Reich Security Central Office in January 1943, following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942.

By accepting the role to be the Head of the Reich Security Central Office,

Ernst was, in a sense, in charge of the Gestapo (secret police for Nazi Germany) and the concentration camps, effectively overseeing both systems. Ernst was described by many as a “rabid” antisemite, who idolized Hitler. It is said that Ernst was a key figure in the decision of whether to use gas chambers as a means to exterminate the Jews, concurring with Heinrich Himmler during a Nazi conference in 1942.

Due to his vote for the use of the gas chambers in order to slaughter the Jews, as well as his intensely strong antisemitic beliefs, Ernst was made the main figure in controlling the administrative apparatus, its goal being to carry out the extermination of all European Jewry. Finally, Ernst was captured

by American troops on May 15 1945, eventually to be indicted on charges of war crimes by the International Military Tribunal located in Nuremberg, on August 29, 1945. Ernst Kaltenbrunner was convicted of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, and due to this, he was sentenced to hang on October 1, 1946.

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Unremembered Days

October 26 1961 Gregoire Kayibanda elected as President of Rwanda Grégoire Kayibanda was the first elected president of Rwanda. In this period he strived to establish a pro-Hutu policy and a one party system where no other political parties could challenge for power. Kayibanda’s party was known as Parmehutu. His role and influence which led up to the 1994 Geno-

cide against the Tutsi is not discussed frequently even though it was significant.

Kayibanda’s ideology can be seen as a long-term cause of the Genocide against the Tutsi in 1994. When Kayibanda was elected to be president one of his promises he made was to allocate more power and resources to the Hutus. This way of thinking was one of the root causes of the ideology that led to genocide. This ideology could also be seen in the way that Kayibanda’s government operated: because of the presence of so many Hutus in the government the few Tutsi who were left experienced bad treatment and intimidation which forced more of them to leave their jobs. Restrictions were placed on the number of Tutsi who could go on to further education and the numbers of Tutsi who could work in certain jobs was also limited.

By the time that Kayibanda was overthrown by Juvenal Habyarimana the idea of discrimination and persecution of the Tutsi held sway in Rwanda.

Habyarimana’s party, called the MRND (National Revolutionary Movement

for Development and Democracy) was derived from Parmehutu and had the same goals which were Hutu supremacy and Tutsi suppression.

All this shows that genocide often takes a long time to happen, it is a process that begins a long time before any killing: even though Kayibanda died in 1976 it is possible to trace his influence on the dreadful events of 1994.

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Unremembered Days

October 28 1978 Chum Mey is sent to S-21 S-21. It doesn’t sound like much. A letter. A number. It seems insignificant, it doesn’t really deserve a second glance. However, for thousands of people in Cambodia in the late 1970s it was hell. Chum Mey was one of those people.

The Khmer Rouge, the genocidal regime who ruled for four blood-soaked years from 1975 to 1979, set S-21 up as a killing centre. They took pictures of those they would kill – the last tortured glimpses of the humanity of the innocent people who were to be killed simply because of their identity.

On October 28 1978, workers from Phnom Phen were informed that they were being transferred to “fix vehicles”. This made sense as Chum Mey was a mechanic. Instead he was taken to S-21 and accused of being a spy.

In fact, it was his skills with his hands that saved his life. He was spare almost inevitable execution in S-21 because he could fix the sewing machines that the Khmer Rouge soldiers had.

Chum Mey survived for two years in the death camp. In 1979, as the Khmer Rouge regime was collapsing it seemed as if his nightmare would end. He was even reunited with his wife and child as Pol Pot’s soldiers marched him and other prisoners out of S-21 and into the countryside. The nightmare would grow even darker though. Chum Mey witnessed his wife and young

child being shot in a field. Chum Mey ran and was able to hide in a forest.

He survived. He still sees the faces of his wife and child today, decades later.

The nightmare continues.

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Unremembered Days

November 11 1938 The Gerechter family flee to Albania...and meet the Pilku family Johanna Gerechter and her family had to flee Nazi Germany in the aftermath of the November Pogrom. The Jewish family was denied refuge in the United States...but found safety in Albania. It was here that the Gerechter family met the Pilku family.

Few countries had actually helped the Jews but in Albania many people risked their lives to hide their Jewish neighbours and refused to hand them over for deportation even after the Germans invaded. A variety of different ethnic groups with different beliefs and religions had helped the Jews, including the Albanian Christians and Muslims. These people showed the world a sense of humanity and compassion.

A huge majority of people often forget that Muslims helped in the protection

of the Jews. The Pilku family are one example of Muslims who had helped to protect the Jewish community. The Pilkus lived in the port of Durres, on the caost of the Adriatic Sea. The family of father Njazi, mother Liza and their two sons, Edip and Luan made friends with their new neighbours from Germany. Even after the Nazis invaded Albania in 1943 the Pilkus gavea a refuge to the Gerechters, pretending that they were relatives from Germany.

The entire Pilku family worked tougher to protect Johanna and her family from the Nazis.

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Unremembered Days

November 19 1941 Mina Blechner writes a last letter Mina Blechner was a mother and wife from Munich, Germany; and November 19 marks the last sign of her life. As a German Jew, Mina was scheduled for deportation to the East, she realised this amounted to a death sentence for her.

In her final days of life, Mina writes a letter to her son, Jakob. In this letter, Mina maintains an unimaginable level of outward stoicism, wishing her children well and attempting to assure them of her safety, despite her knowing she does not have long left to live. She urges her children to have faith in the Almighty and carry on with pride and optimism and whilst she laments that she is not with them the exchange of addresses that is suggested in the letter reveals Mina’s attempts to uphold a façade of normalcy within such an incomprehensible tragedy.

It is assumed that after writing this letter Mina was marched to the Milbertshofen Freight Depot, where she spent three days on a train to Kaunas, Lithuania. On 25 November she was murdered by the notorious Einsatzkommando 3, joining her husband Markus in death and being torn from her children, who were left behind.

The Einsatzkommando massacred a further 1600 women, 1159 men and 175 children by shooting on the same day, sadly many of these will be forgotten forever.

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Unremembered Days

November 20 1945 Nuremberg Trials begin to prosecute the Nazis' crimes After the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Second World War, the Allies needed to set up a new system to prosecute the crimes. The trials were held in the German city of Nuremberg, which had escaped relatively unscathed by the war and brought a symbolic close to the Nazi regime

(many Nazi rallies had been held in Nuremberg). The trials continued until 1949. However, the highest Nazi officials were tried between 1945-1946.

The Allies, which were the USA, Soviet Union, UK and France, conducted the trials and set up this new means of prosecution. Unlike most court systems, there was a tribunal of four judges, one from each country. During the aftermath of the Second World War, the Allies knew that it would be difficult to conclude how to try the Nazis for their crimes as each country had their own set of rules, regulations and procedures associated with trying war criminals. Thus, the Allies had to come up with new procedures for international events such as these. The main concern was how the Nazis had committed crimes so horrendous the Allies did not know how to go about prosecuting them.

In total 199 Nazis were tried, including 24 high ranking Nazi officials. Out of these 161 were convicted and 12 were sentenced to death. However, the month of November was mainly preserved for reviewing evidence to build

up to court cases. The Nuremberg trials also included ones related to the Holocaust and the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis. Many Nazis committed suicide before the trials, including the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler who killed himself shortly before the war was over.

The Nuremberg Trials would go on to revolutionize the way international law and justice functioned. The trials would pave the way for other organizations to be set up to prosecute other war crimes including genocide (such as the ICTY, an organisation set up in The Hague to try war criminals involved in crimes against humanity in the Former Yugoslavia).

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November 22 1992 Léon Mugesera makes a speech How could it happen? How could thousands of Rwanda’s be motivated to turn on their neighbours, killing without mercy: Rhetoric.

In the run-up to genocide in 1994, aggressive and hateful rhetoric contributed to the beginning of genocide by inciting violence and even calling for total annihilation of the Tutsis. One such speech was made by Hutu extremist Léon Mugesera, who was later found guilty of incitement of genocide.

In November 1992, Mugesera delivered a speech to 1000 Rwandans, a speech that documents the earliest evidence of Genocidal discourse expressed by a Hutu politician in public. Experts consider Mugesera’s speech to be the “blueprint” for the practical implementation of genocide.

In his speech made in November 1992 to a local meeting of the MRND, the Hutu-dominated and largest political party in Rwanda at the time, Mugesera used dehumanising language to describe the Tutsis and directly called for their murder. Mugesera used words such as ‘vermin’ to stir hatred of the Tutsi people as well as claiming that they posed a direct threat to the Hutu people calling on them to ‘not let themselves be invaded’ and stated that ‘the person whose throat you do not cut now will be the one who cuts yours’. His language deliberately tried to divide and ethnically separate the Hutus and Tutsis; Mugesera even said that the Tutsis ought to be sent ‘back to Ethiopia’.

Perhaps more troublingly, Mugesera made direct and immediate calls to violence inciting Hutus to be aware of any Tutsis so that they can later ‘liquidate’ and ‘crush’ them. The following day, there was a spate of violent killings of Tutsis in the local area of Gisenyi, as well as elsewhere in Rwanda.

Mugesera’s speech was just one example of a much wider campaign by many extremists attempting to vilify and generate hatred of the Tutsis via radio and other methods. These campaigns used made up events and false accusations of Tutsi violence to achieve their aims, such as prior to the regional massacres of the Tutsi from 1990-1993 when local authorities used false claims to incite attacks. As a result, when systematic killings broke out in 1994, the Rwandan population had already been exposed to Tutsi vilification and dehumanisation for many years.

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November 26 1935 The Nazis Revoked the Citizenship of all Roma and Sinti People Even before November 26, 1935 the Roma and Sinti people were discriminated against. They were often attacked both verbally and physically. In Germany, they were forbidden access to certain public areas such as parks and public baths. However, November 26 1935 marks the day that the Roma/Sinti

people lost citizenship in Nazi Germany, thus leaving them open to “legal violence” and deportation.

The Roma and Sinti people were now considered state subjects, forced to obey the laws but not protected by them.

Andreas Bern was born in 1928. He grew up on the outskirts of Essen, Germany in a “Gypsy camp”. By the time he was 14, in 1942 his mother had been taken away to a labour camp and two years later so was he. He was

then gassed and killed. Unfortunately but not unsurprisingly, Andreas was part of the rule, not the exception. He was one of many Romani who were deported, either out of the country or to concentration camps such as Dachau, Dieselstrasse and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

After arriving they were identified by a brown triangle, signifying they were “asocial”. Josef Mengele was known for his experimentation on people, in particular the Roma. He would put them under dangerous conditions such as extreme heat or cold and test their reactions. It is because of actions like this that more than 130,000 people (by conservative estimates) were killed between 1935 and 1945. Though it has been acknowledged as a genocide by many countries, there is a lack of awareness of what happened to the Roma and Sinti people under Nazi rule.

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December 9 1948 The Genocide Convention is signed In Paris on December 9 1948, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations, as General Assembly Resolution 260. The convention received 39 signatories, from 152 parties, and came into effect as of the January 12 1951.

The convention was the tireless result of years of campaigning from a Polish lawyer named Rafael Lemkin, who is most remembered for being the person that first used the word genocide, as well as the person, who’s campaigns resulted in the cause of the UN genocide convention.

The aims of the convention, was to define the crime of genocide in legal terms. All the countries that signed the convention were also advised that they attempt to not only prevent, but also punish any countries that com-

mitted the crime of genocide, in either a time of war or a time of peace.

Around 40 years after the convention was signed by some UN countries the USA signed the convention in 1988, but the US insisted that they could include reservations precluding the countries punishment, is they were ever to be accused of the crime of genocide. July 8 2019, saw Mauritius, the 152 nd state to sign the convention.

Despite, most countries having signed the convention, there have still been

breaches of the act. The first person convicted of genocide was in 1998, when the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found that Jean-Paul Akayesu was guilty of genocide by nine accounts.

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December 17 2018 The death of Zura Karuhimbi Some people have heard of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. But if I asked you to tell me a specific date, or event in the Genocide, you may struggle a bit more. The name Zura Karuhimbi most likely means nothing to you, but her brave actions saved the lives of around a hundred people in

1994.

Many people saved lives during the horrendous hundred days of killing during the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. One such person was Zura Karuhimbi.

A traditional healer, Zura was around seventy years old and a widow at the time of the genocide. She lived in a small village called Musamo, to the south west of the capital of Rwanda, Kigali.

Zura hid people in all kinds of places in her house and fields – under the bed, in the roof, even holes in the ground. Nevertheless, the extremist authorities knew full well what Zura was doing.

The killers arrived at Zura’s house and demanded to be allowed to hunt for those that she was sheltering. They had guns and machetes. She was a frail old lady…but she fought them with her intelligence and humanity.

Ingeniously, Zura, pretended to be a witch and possessed with evil spirits.

She threatened the Interahamwe (the organised gang of killers) with this ‘witchcraft’ whenever they came to attack those hiding in her house. The frightened killers stayed away.

Zura saved close to a hundred Tutsis...quite possibly more.

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December 25 1978 Sokphal Din is forced to become a soldier When the Khmer Rouge, toppled the Cambodian government in 1975, Sokphal Din was a student. He and his family were forced out of their home on 17 April 1975 and taken to work in a labour camp. Had Sokphal not lost his student ID Card on the journey and claimed he was illiterate, he would have

been executed.

The Khmer Rouge wanted to form a society of farmers. Sokphal was forced to work in ‘The Killing Fields’, every day with very little food. Anyone who disobeyed was severely punished. When his father left to be ‘re-educated’, Sokphal was left in charge of the family. He worked hard to look after the family and survive. However, one day, the Khmer Rouge said they would be reunited with others in his family. Instead, they were led into the jungle and abandoned.

In the jungle, Sokphal’s grandmother died in his arms. Recaptured and separated from his family, Sokphal returned to a labour camp after his brother begged him to stay. He would soon learn his brother has died.

When the Vietnamese invaded on 25 December 1978, Sokphal was forced to become a soldier but vowed he would never kill anyone. He was captured by the Vietnamese Army who put him in a brick oven with other prisoners.

Sokphal was sure he would die there.

Instead, he was moved to a prison in Siem Reap. He was interrogated and tortured. His family followed on foot...and finally Sokphal was released to be reunited with his family. From there, Sokphal snuck carefully to the Thai border, living there for years, his future unclear.

Finally, the family contacted a cousin in England. They arrived on 4 August 1987, with the family soon building a new life.

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December 29 2003 Hawa Mohammed’s village is attacked Hawa Mohammed was feeding her cows early in the morning when they came to village. Armed men on camels, horses and in vehicles. Frightened as the men riding camels and horses started shouting while setting houses on fire, her brothers, uncle and nephews rushed towards her to take her to safe-

ty. When they started running towards her, the Janjaweed shot them dead.

The militiamen ordered her to lie down seconds after she witnessed her family members being murdered. She threw rocks at them after refusing to follow the order. The militiamen forced her to the ground, shot her in the back and raped her repeatedly until she was unconscious. Hawa woke up to discover she was bleeding and then pretended to be dead until the men left as night came. Hawa, a mother of four at the time, started looking for her children the moment the men left. Walking on dead bodies she realized that the

Janjaweed had killed almost all of the villagers. She later heard how around one thousand people were killed on that day. An injured person approached her, explaining that her children were hiding in the nearby forest.

Hawa was reunited with her children two days later. Once they found each other, Hawa’s first thought was to get away from the killers. A long journey lay ahead. After reaching another village, some millet flour and water was given to her to soothe her hunger and traditional medicine to help heal her wounds. They walked for an unimaginably arduous month to reach a refugee camp in Chad where she received help and was reunited with her missing husband. Because Hawa talked openly about her experiences the Sudanese government ordered her to be killed. Fortunately she and her family were allowed to go to the United States.

Hawa has accomplished much since 2003 and plans are to continue to fight against genocide. She wishes to study law to help pursue justice for her people and most importantly herself.

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Unremembered Days Afterword—a poem Genocide is the mass killing of people with intent to completely destroy them How much do you know about genocide?

How much genocide do you know about?

Do you know a little or a lot?

How much do you know?

Do you know about World War II, the Holocaust?

The mass killing of the Jews among others?

Do you know about the Cambodian Genocide?

Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge killing many Cambodians in the hopes of forming a Republic?

Do you know about the Romani Genocide?

The Nazis and their allies killing Romani’s in order for a ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the ‘enemy of state’?

Do you know a little or a lot?

How much do you know?

Do you know about the genocide in Rwanda?

A genocide where a million Tutsi were slaughtered by the Interahamwe?

Do you know about the Bosnia genocide?

A genocide where many Bosnian Serb forces killed so many Bosniaks, concentration camps returning to Europe once more?

Do you know about the Darfur genocide?

The first genocide of the 21st Century? The killing and rape against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes? Including children?

Do you know a little or a lot?

How much do you know?

There is so much genocide that nobody knows about Does that include you?

So much suffering that has not been heard about Stories have not been told, unable to tell people who need to know Do you know a little or a lot?

How much do you know?

How much does the world truly know?

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The authors This book has been a team effort. More than ninety young people from seven different schools have worked in their spare time to research and write about the days that you have read about. They have done an incredible job. Thank you and well done to you all!

Giulia, Giorgio, Phileas, Arvène, Ahmed, Yasmine, Nour, Ana, Yasmeen, Milosz, Zazaia, Iris, Haimanot, Alena, Satya, Rusne, Oskar, Carlota, Bridget, Alexandra, Danna, Tatjana, Ujjay, Aitana, Akina, Jose, Sophie, Mikai, Nicola, Alice, Benito, Olivia, Nathalie, Mithila, Jaime, Ali, Abdullah, Luka, Tchengiz, Gonzalo, Srivaass, Qeis, Sofia, Samanyu, Drin, Alivia, Maïa, Li Jiun, Mahault, Aidan, Levi, Maripaz, Audrey, Mikhail, Lea, Max, Juliet, Daniel, Madeleine, Sam, Charlotte, Max, Casey, Cecily, Maja, Stephen, Aisha, Tiana, Zac, Jack, Zara, Mariyah, Kaiden, Raisharnai, Luke, Catherine, Isobelle, Lara, Kate, Ellyson, Niamh, Charlotte, Defne, Venetia, Pietro, Joe, Will, Chris, Maxi, Ben, Nayaaz A big thank you to Jack for arranging the tremendous Forewords.

The authors are students at seven schools—six in the UK and one in Switzerland. We’d especially like to thank the wonderful teachers who have given up their time in such a challenging school year to make the project happen.

Brighton College—thanks to Mr Worrallo Enfield County School for Girls—thanks to Ms Costa Hampton School International School of Geneva, Campus des Nations —thanks to Ms Coller Newport Girls’ High School—thanks to Mrs Seys St Edward’s School, Poole— thanks to Mrs Sinaguglia Turing House School, Teddington—thanks to Ms Riglin 76

Unremembered Days

What is genocide?

How does it happen?

Why does the world do nothing to stop it?

These and other questions are answered in this awareness raising book written by young people, for people everywhere.

The stories of tragic days, drawn from the Holocaust and other genocides, are told by young authors so that they may be known and not forgotten...

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