Genocide Awareness Month Testimony Series

To commemorate Genocide Awareness Month listen to clips of testimony from survivors across six genocides represented in the Visual History Archive. This testimony series follows the narrative of the "Pyramid of Hate," which lists the steps, beginning with Prejudiced Attitudes, Acts of Prejudice, Discrimination and then Violence, which lead to Genocide and Genocide Denial.

Explore full-length testimony from the Visual History Archive

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  Nurusseher's Message for Help

  Language: Rohingya

  Nurusseher is a Rohingya refugee. An English transcript of Nurusseher's message is below:

  “Greetings. I am from Shoab Prang  village which is in the township of Rathidaung. We were persecuted and tortured by the military. We lost our relatives and our children, all innocent people. Then, we fled to Bangladesh. My husband’s name is Bellu. In Shoab Prang, 350 people were killed by the military and 56 men were arrested, including my husband. The military tightly bound their bodies with steel rope and took the men away. I do not know where he is. It is not even clear to me if he is alive or dead. The ones who would know what happened are the Ukhangda [the local Rakhine leader] Aung Chay and  the military representative. They know if he is alive or not. We urge to the international community to seek justice for us and to find out if our missing Rohingya are alive or not. We fled here to Bangladesh and want the international community to know about what happened to us. We are depending on you. Please help us.”
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  Prejudiced Attitudes: Kizito Kalima on the dangers of prejudice

  Language: English

  Kizito Kalima, a survivor of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, recalls the negative effects of labeling in the classroom before the genocide.

   
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  Prejudiced Attitudes: Yehudi Lindeman on anti-Semitism in Holland

  Language: English

  Yehudi Lindeman reflects on his childhood in Holland and recalls the anti-Semitism he experienced from other children.
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  Prejudiced Attitudes: Rose Burizihiza Remembers School anti-Tutsi Prejudice

  Language: Kinyarwanda

  Rose Burizhiza speaks on the discrimination she faced in school before the genocide began in Rwanda. Rose’s testimony is featured in the IWitness activity, Information Quest: The Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
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  Prejudiced Attitudes: Ellen Brandt on Jewish identity

  Language: English

  Ellen Brandt recalls the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws in Berlin and her participation in a Jewish youth movement BDJJ or Bund Deutsch-Jüdischer Jugend. She also reflects how the organization helped her connect with her Jewish identity.
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  Acts of Prejudice: Henry Laurant on experiencing anti-Semitism

  Language: English

  Henry Laurant remembers the first time he experienced anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. He was targeted by other children who were influenced by Nazi rhetoric. His testimony is featured in the multimedia professional development program, Echoes and Reflections.
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  Acts of Prejudice: Emmanuel Muhinda on anti-Tutsi propaganda

  Language: Kinyarwanda

  Emmanuel Muhinda describes the persecution of Tutsi and anti-Tutsi propaganda he witnessed before the genocide started in April 1994. His testimony is featured in the IWitness activity, Information Quest: The Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
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  Acts of Prejudice:Ruth Brand on Jewish Persecution Bystander Response

  Language: English

  Ruth Brand remembers how the non-Jewish people in her neighborhood taunted her family while they were being forced out of their home in Romania. She also describes how members of her family tried to reclaim their property after the war.
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  Acts of Prejudice: Holocaust survivor Lea Schabinski-Faranof

  Language: English

  Holocaust survivor Lea Schabinski-Faranof remembers the prevelant anti-Semitism in her school.
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  Discrimination: Peter Braunfeld on Anti-Semitism

  Language: English

  Peter Braunfeld recounts experiencing anti-Semitism as a child in Vienna after Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany.  This testimony clip is featured in the new IWitness activity, A thing of the Past? Anti-Semitism Past and Present.
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  Discrimination: Roma Sinti Survivor Julia Lentini

  Language: English

  Roma-Sinti Survivor Julia describes how her family’s lack of awareness of war events led to their incarceration at Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

   
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  Discrimination: Homosexual Survivor Stefan Kosinski

  Language: English

  After his arrest in September 1942, Stefan Kosinski was incarcerated while awaiting his trial. In this clip, he recounts the conditions in the jail and his memory of seeing his mother out the window of his jail cell keeping vigil. She is also present during his trial before the Nazi court, which sentences Stefan to five years hard labor. 

  Foreign words in this clip:

  • pedo (Polish): derogatory term for a gay person
  • schwul (German): gay, homosexual
  • Zuchthaus (German): penitentiary
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  Discrimination: Rita Feder remembers the 1936 Olympics

  Language: English

  Rita Feder was a young girl during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and remembers how desperately she wanted to attend the games but was unable to because she was Jewish. Feder recalls how dangerous it was for Jews during that time even though there was an international audience in Berlin.
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  Discrimination: Eva Bergmann on anti-Jewish Employment Exclusion

  Language: English

  Eva Bergmann remembers when she was forced to leave her job at a public kindergarten school in Berlin because of Nazi enforced anti-Jewish restrictions. Eva also reflects that her gentile friends remained loyal and friendly to her even after she was labeled as “non-Aryan.”
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  Discrimination: Alphonse Kabalisa on anti-Tutsi propaganda

  Language: Kinyarwanda

  Alphonse Kabalisa recalls listening to anti-Tutsi propaganda on the radio with his father, after the death of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana. Alphonse’s testimony is featured in the IWitness activity, Information Quest: The Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda
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  Violence: Lina Jackson on the roundup of her family

  Language: English

  Lina Jackson remembers the roundup of her family members because they were Sinti and Roma, and their subsequent deportation to Auschwitz. She describes the difficult conditions of the cattle car. This testimony clip is featured in the book, Testimony – The Legacy of Schindler’s List and the USC Shoah Foundation.  
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  Violence: Guatemalan Genocide Survivor Jesús Tecú

  Language: Spanish

  Guatemalan survivor Jesús Tecú speaks about his parents going into town to take care of business in 1982, and never returning home. He later discovered that they were killed that day during the massacre Río Negro. Tecú’s testimony was recorded through a partnership with  La Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala (FAFG), a Guatemalan forensics organization, to collect video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Guatemalan Genocide, which killed some 200,000 civilians in the early 1980s, mainly indigenous Mayans.
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  Violence: Chaim Borenstein on the Warsaw Ghetto

  Language: English

  Chaim Borenstein remembers the brutality of the SS guards while imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto in Nazi occupied Poland.
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  Violence: Madame Xia remembers the 1937 Nanjing Massacre

  Language: Mandarin

   Madame Xia discusses her family's experiences on December 13, 1937, when Japanese forces entered Nanjing, China.
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  Violence: Armenian Survivor Dirouhi Haigas

  Language: English

  Dirouhi Haigas was a young Turkish-Armenian girl of 7 when she and her family were abruptly uprooted from their home and deported on foot to the southern desert. A native of Konya, Turkey, she had lived an idyllic life up to that time with her parents, grandparents, aunt, and uncles. Her father was in the family business as a leather merchant, and her uncles were amateur musicians who loved nothing more than to get together with friends and relatives to enjoy folk music and dancing.  This life came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of World War I. In the middle of a Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1915, church bells rang out unexpectedly, calling Armenians to the church square, where they were told that they were to be deported within the next two weeks and allowed to take with them only what they could carry. Soon after, the family was forced to leave their ancestral home, never to return.

  Dirouhi’s experience was similar to that of most of the 1.5 Armenian victims of the Armenian Genocide. The difference is that Konya is located in the center of Anatolia, far from the war zone to the east where most of the Turkish Armenians lived and where the Turkish Government claimed the exigencies of war as an excuse for their actions. There was no fighting in the Konya area, the Armenians posed no threat, and the deportations were clearly part of the Turkish Government’s brutal policy to eliminate its Armenian population.

  Author: Barbara Merguerian, PhD, Director of the Armenian Women’s Archives of the Armenian International Women’s Association. www.aiwainternational.org
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  Language: English

  Freddy Mutanguha remembers saying goodbye to his mother before she was murdered during the Rwanda Tutsi Genocide.
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  Violence: Holocaust survivor Milton Belfer

  Language: English

  Milton Belfer remembers when his parents were arrested and his father's beard was forcibly shaved.
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  Genocide: Holocaust survivor Itka Zygmuntowicz

  Language: English

  Holocaust survivor Itka Zygmuntowicz on the last time she saw her mother.
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  Genocide: Live Wesige on Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda

  Language: English

  On April 6, 1994, an aircraft carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down by a surface-to-air missile as it was about to land in Kigali airport. Everyone aboard the plane was killed: Habyarimana; president of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira; and a three-man French crew. While it remains unclear who fired the missile, the event is viewed as having ignited the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide.

  Live Wesige remembers hearing the news about the president’s death and describes the violence that ensued in his neighborhood the next day, April 7, 1994.
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  Genocide: Armenian Survivor Sam Kadorian

  Language: English

  Sam Kadorian remembers the separation and killings of Armenian families during the 1915 genocide.

   

   
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  Genocide: Dario Gabbai on his Sonderkommando experience

  Language: English

  Dario Gabbai recalls his experiences as a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz II-Birkenau. He was forced to usher people into gas chambers, and then haul out the bodies, take them to the crematorium, and clean up the room for the next group of victims.
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  Genocide: Phansy Peang on the loss of her family

  Language: Khmer

  Phansy details how she was affected by losing both her parents and children during the genocide.
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  Genocide: Ella Davis on Arriving to Auschwitz

  Language: English

  Sinti and Roma survivor, Ella Davis speaks about arriving to Auschwitz and how SS guards took all her possessions and cut off her hair. This is the fifth testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.
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  Genocide: Aurora Mardiganian on the Armenian Genocide

  Language: English

  Aurora Mardiganian speaks here as a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. But from 1918-1920, she was also the face of the Genocide to literally millions of Americans and to others throughout the world. Her tragic, horrific story was told through a 1918 semi-autobiographical book, Ravished Armenia, and a 1919 screen adaptation, also known as Auction of Souls. With the immediacy of a newsreel, the human side to the Genocide was brought to the screen. Working with Near East Relief and with the support of the wealthiest and the most prominent members of New York society, Aurora and her film helped raise some $117 million (the equivalent of $2 billion today) for the relief of Armenian suffering.
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  Genocide: Erna Anolik on arriving at Auschwitz

  Language: English

  Erna Anolik recalls the intake procedures at Auschwitz, including shaving off her hair, undressing in front of soldiers, and only being given a grey dress and wooden shoes.
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  Genocide: Aracely Garrido

  Language: Spanish

  Guatemalan Genocide survivor Aracely Garrido reflects on the seemingly eternal suffering endured by indigenous civilian non-combatant populations in a Guatemalan village who practiced their own limited form of resistance during the war.
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  Genocide: Bronia Hatfield on Wolyn

  Language: English

  Bronia Hatfield speaks on the mass killings that took place near her village in the region of Wolyn. By the end of World War II, 98.5 percent of Wolyn’s Jewish population was dead and most of the towns destroyed.
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  Genocide: Abraham Bomba on Treblinka

  Language: English

  Abraham Bomba remembers arriving to the Treblinka extermination camp and the selection process for the gas chambers.
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  Genocide: Sara Pol-Lim on Survivor's Guilt

  Language: English

  Cambodian Genocide survivor Sara Pol-Lim explains that she feels a responsibility to make something of her life to honor her family members who did not survive.
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  Genocide Denial: Holocaust Liberator Martin Becker

  Language: English

  Martin Becker talks about having various people walk through the concentration camp in Dachau and overhearing a man explaining that the various corpses lying around were brought in from Russia to "scare everyone." He says that responses like that are contagious when you are under stress and caught "red-handed."
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  Genocide Denial: Armenian Survivor Haigas Bonapart

  Language: English

  Armenian Genocide survivor Haigas Bonapart talks about denial of the genocide. This clip is one of the newest to be published on the IWitness "Watch" page.
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  Genocide Denial: Holocaust survivor Nina Kaleska

  Language: English

  Nina Kaleska talks about how she responds to people that say the Holocaust never happened. She says it is not worth arguing about because it only gives their ideas more attention and the evidence of the Holocaust is overwhelming. 
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  Genocide Denial: Holocaust Liberator Ed Carter-Edwards

  Language: English

  Holocaust liberator Ed Carter Edwards on how his eyewitness testimony along with others helps combat Holocaust denial.