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.

Chaim Borenstein remembers the brutality of the SS guards while imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto in Nazi occupied Poland.

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.

 Madame Xia discusses her family's experiences on December 13, 1937, when Japanese forces entered Nanjing, China.

Phansy details how she was affected by losing both her parents and children during the genocide.

Abraham Bomba remembers arriving to the Treblinka extermination camp and the selection process for the gas chambers.

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.

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.

Freddy Mutanguha remembers saying goodbye to his mother before she was murdered during the Rwanda Tutsi Genocide.

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.

Yehudi Lindeman reflects on his childhood in Holland and recalls the anti-Semitism he experienced from other children.

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.

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.

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

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

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.  

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.

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

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 personschwul (German): gay, homosexualZuchthaus (German): penitentiary

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. 

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."

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

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.

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.

Jean Greenstein describes the three months he spent with two other men and a woman hiding in an underground bunker. At one point the German troops came into the town and made their headquarters directly above the bunker where Jean and the others were hiding.

Adela Ackerman describes seeing her sister for the first time after liberation.

Louis Micheels describes the conditions inside Mechelen concentration camp in Belgium.

Sarra talks about the state of the Ukraine during the Holocaust and the many people who were killed at the Babi Yar ravine outside of Kiev.

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Eric Flagg speaks of his landlady being scared of hiding Jews for fear of risking her own life. Eric continued to do so secretly, but was concerned about this ethical dilemma. He sought the advice of a rabbi and a priest and both told him that as long as he was saving people's lives and not just his own, then it was ethical.Ethics and Genocide Watch Page Description: Reflections on the issues of human morality and the roles of complicity and involvement of ordinary people, raised by genocide.