Why April?

April has unfortunately been a significant month in the planning and implementation of genocide. In April 1915, the Ottoman government rounded up and arrested Armenian intellectuals – the first step in the Armenian Genocide. Less than 20 years later, in April 1933, the Nazis implemented several measures restricting the rights of Jews in Germany.  That month in 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh in Cambodia and massacred over 1 million people over four years. And in April 1994, an airplane carrying the president of Rwanda was shot down by a surface-to-air missile as it was about to land in Kigali airport – igniting the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

That’s why it’s fitting for April to be designated as Genocide Awareness Month. This year, USC Shoah Foundation is anchoring its annual online exhibit for Genocide Awareness Month with recently recorded testimonies of Rohingya refugees, who have fled into Bangladesh by the hundred thousand to escape persecution from the Myanmar government.

The exhibit also features testimony clips, educational materials, blogs and an interactive photo of survivors of five genocides.