Good books and films about The Holocaust

Holocaust. A mother tries to save her child

April is Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month. In honor of this, we have compiled a Resource List of books and films themed around each of the past genocides that have commemorative dates in April, plus the areas that we cover.

We hope you will make use of this list as a way to both remember these genocides, and learn more about them.  This is our sixth post, The Holocaust.

Recommended Books:

All But My Life, by Gerda Weissman Klein
Gerda was a teenager during the Holocaust, when she lost her home, her friends and her family. After many years of torture, she was finally rescued.  This is her memoir of her early life, six years in the concentration camps and liberation by American troops, one of whom later became her husband.

Auschwitz, A New History, by Laurence Rees
The author provides a portrait of the death camp through more than 100 original interviews with survivors and perpetrators.  The story of the camp becomes a morality tale in which evil is shown to proceed until the horror of the slaughter that was inflicted in Auschwitz.

Berlin Diaries 1940-1945, by Marie Vassiltchikov *favorite
The secret diaries of a 23-year old White Russian princess who worked in the German Foreign Office from 1940-1944 and then as a nurse, weaving history, memoir and autobiography.

Children of the Holocaust: Conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors, by Helen Epstein
This daughter of Holocaust survivors interviewed hundreds of other descendants of  survivors in America, Europe and Israel and tells their stories.

Crystal Night, by Rita Thalman and Emmanuel Feinermann
This documentary, based on contemporary documents from both the Nazis and their victims, recreates the night of November 9-10, 1938, when Nazi terrorism of the Jews climaxed in nationwide riots, a foreshadowing of the Holocaust.

Diary of Anne Frank, by Anne Frank
Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank’s remarkable diary has become a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit.  This vivid, insightful journal is a fitting memorial to the gifted Jewish teenager who died at Bergen-Belsen, Germany, in 1945.

Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl
Viktor E. Frankl is among the most influential works of psychiatric literature since Freud.  The book begins with a lengthy, austere, and deeply moving personal essay about Frankl’s imprisonment in Auschwitz and other concentration camps for five years, and his struggle during this time to find reasons to live.

Night, by Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, a scholarly, pious teenager is wracked with guilt at having survived the horror of the Holocaust and the genocidal campaign that consumed his family.  His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur.

Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew, by Richard Breitman
The author examines how and when German leaders carried out the policies that led to and implemented the Holocaust.  He assesses the British and American responses to information about Nazi killings and the tension between them in 1942-43 over what to do.  He concludes by examining consequences of having kept this information secret for so long.

Silvie, by Sylvia Grohs-Martin
The story of  this actress, dancer and singer who worked at a Jewish theater in Amsterdam, worked with the Dutch resistance, and then survived the horrors of Auschwitz and two other concentration camps.

Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky *favorite
This book contains two narratives, one fictional and the other a fragmentary, factual account of how the fiction came into being.  Suite Française consists of two novellas portraying life in France from June 4, 1940, as German forces prepare to invade Paris, through July 1, 1941.  A series of appendices and a biographical sketch provide information about the author who was arrested in 1942 and died in Auschwitz a month later.

The Hiding Place, by Corrie Ten Boom with Elizabeth Sherrill and John Sherrill
In World War II, Corrie ten Boom and her family risked their lives to help Jews escape the Nazis, and their reward was a trip to Hitler’s concentration camps.  But she survived and was released–as a result of a clerical error–and now shares the story of how faith triumphs over evil.

The Holocaust Kingdom, by Alexander Donat
This memoir of a Polish-Jewish family who survived the Warsaw Ghetto as well as concentration and death camps reaches beyond their personal experience to capture the story of doomed millions.

The Words to Remember It: Memoirs of Child Holocaust Survivors, by Sydney Child Holocaust Survivors Group
The 31 members of the Sydney Child Holocaust Survivors Group share personal stories of their unfathomable experiences of loss—and of their ultimate endurance—from their youths in Nazi Germany.

War Orphan in San Francisco, by Phyllis Helene Mattson
In 1940, 10-year old Lizzi left Vienna, Austria, joining a transport of children seeking refuge in America.  Two weeks later she began e new life in San Francisco.  Her family was scattered on three continents, but linked by letters. Her story is told through the letters in this memoir.

Recommended Films:

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas *favorite
Set during World War II, a story seen through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a concentration camp, whose forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences.

Defiance
This film involves an unusual group of brothers who run off into the woods after the Nazis kill their family and neighbors — and then wind up playing leaders to other Jews who wander into the woods as well.  This is a true story and some of it is a bit difficult to watch.

Forgiving Dr. Mengele
Eva Mozes Kor, who survived Josef Mengele’s cruel twin experiments in the Auschwitz concentration camp, shocks other Holocaust survivors when she decides to forgive the perpetrators as a way of self-healing.

Life Is Beautiful
A Jewish man has a wonderful romance with the help of his humour, but must use that same quality to protect his son in a Nazi death camp.

Night and Fog
The history of Nazi Germany’s death camps of the Final Solution and the hellish world of dehumanization and death contained inside.

The Pianist
This is the true story of Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman.  Set in Poland, it runs through a number of ridiculous edicts tossed out by the Nazis.  It depicts the relocation of Jewish families into the ghettos.  It shows the walls closing in a little more every day, until finally there is nothing left.

Schindler’s List
In Poland during World War II, Oskar Schindler gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the Nazis.

Shoah *favorite
Claude Lanzmann directed this 9 1/2 hour documentary of the Holocaust without using a single frame of archive footage.  He interviews survivors, witnesses, and ex-Nazis (whom he had to film secretly since though only agreed to be interviewed by audio).

Background on The Holocaust: After coming to power in 1933 on the basis of providing an ethnic and political scapegoat for Germany’s post-World War I problems , the Nazi Party implemented a highly organized strategy of the persecution and murder of “undesireables” including Jews, Slavs, Roma, the disabled, Jehovah’s Witnessess, homosexuals, as well as political and religious dissidents.  The Nazis promulgation of the Nuremburg Laws stripped citizenship from German Jews on the basis of their religious identity.  Shortly thereafter, in November 1938, the organized pogrom of Kristallnacht signaled a change in policy, featuring the mass deportations of German Jews to concentration camps.  As the Nazis conquered large areas of Europe, Jews and other undesirables across Nazi-controlled areas were similarly deported. When the German Army invaded the Soviet Union, it soon gave rise to Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing squads operating throughout Eastern Europe and Russia, killing more than one million Jews and tens of thousands of other civilians.  In 1942, a conference at Wansee developed the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, the systematic extermination of European Jewry.  The construction of extermination camps at Auschwitz-Birkanau, Treblinka, Belzec, Chelmno and Sobibor enabled the Nazis to kill 2.7 million Jews and other “undesirables” through the use of cyanide gas, summary executions and medical experimentation.  Poor living conditions in non-extermination camps led to the deaths of millions more.  It is estimated that 6 million Jews, two out of every three living in Europe, and another 5 million undesirables were killed by 1945.

– From GI-Net / Save Darfur Coalition (link)

Compiled by Paulina Robles and Barbara English of Orange County for Darfur and Martina Knee of the San Francisco Bay Area Darfur Coalition.

Good books and films about the Armenian Genocide

MASSACRES OF ARMENIANS. This is a sketch by an eye-witness of the terrible massacre of Armenians by Softas (fanatical Moslem Students) near St. Sofia.

April is Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month. In honor of this, we have compiled a Resource List of books and films themed around each of the past genocides that have commemorative dates in April, plus the areas that we cover.

We hope you will make use of this list as a way to both remember these genocides, and learn more about them.  This is our fifth post, the Armenian Genocide.

Recommended Books:

Children of Armenia: A Forgotten Genocide and the Century-long Struggle for Justice, by Michael Bobelian
From 1915 to 1923, the ruling Ottoman Empire drove 2 million Armenians from their ancestral homeland; 1.5 million of them were viciously slaughtered.  While there was an initial global outcry and a movement to aid the “starving Armenians,” the promise to hold the perpetrators accountable was never fulfilled and a curtain of silence soon descended on one of the worst crimes of modern history.

Jail to Jail: Autobiography of a Survivor of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, by Hagop S.  Der-Garabedian, Aghop H. Der-Karabetian
Jail to Jail is the personal account of an Armenian soldier in the Ottoman army during the First World War who survived the genocide of his people.

Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide, by Donald E. Miller
Combining a compelling oral history with a trenchant analysis of the first major genocide of   the 20th century, this moving study focuses on the Turkish murder of more than one million Armenians between 1915 and 1923 in a systematic campaign of mass deportations, slaughter, forced labor and starvation.

The Armenian Genocide, by Jeri Freedman
The Armenian Genocide outlines the circumstances that led to the Turkish government’s forced annihilation and deportation of the Armenian population within its borders, and discusses international reactions and the aftermath.

The Knock at the Door: A Journey through the Darkness of the Armenian Genocide, by Margaret Ahnert
This personal, homespun account by an American of Armenian descent interweaves two narratives in alternating chapters: Ahnert’s mother Ester’s firsthand description of  coming-of-age during, and miraculously surviving, the Turkish-sponsored Armenian genocide of 1915, and the middle-aged author’s own tender yet urgent reflections on her connection to the distant world of her 98-year-old mother.

Vergeen: a survivor of the Armenian genocide, by Mae M. Derdarian
Derdarian tells the story of her mother’s friend, Vergeen, who survived rape, starvation, and  mutilation at the hands of the Young Turk regime in the last years of the Ottoman Empire.

Recommended Films:

Aghet: Nation Murder
German filmmaker Eric Friedler, compellingly proves the absolute truth of the genocide of the Armenian people.  Using the actual words of 23 German, American and other nationals who witnessed the events, and armed with archival materials, his film expertly takes on the challenge that PM Erdogan hurled at the world by stating: “Prove it.”

Ararat
Ararat, Atom Egoyan’s mysterious drama about the horrors of the largely unknown Armenian genocide in Turkey, unrolls through a film within the film (also titled Ararat).  Jumping back and forth in time, Egoyan weaves together the lives of several people.

Armenia: The Betrayed
Fergal Keane investigates how a terrible slaughter, three quarters of a century ago, has returned to haunt the relationship between Turkey and its western allies.  This 2002 documentary shows the horrors of the Armenian genocide and the lengths that the Turkish government goes to cover it up.

Destination Nowhere:  The Witness
The documentary depicts Armin Wegner’s personal testimony to the Armenian Genocide through vivid and often disturbing photographs, which were taken while he served in the German army in Ottoman Turkey in 1915-1916, dramatically bringing to life the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

The Armenian Genocide
The Armenian Genocide is the complete story of the first Genocide of the 20th century, when over a million Armenians died at the hands of the Ottoman Turks during World War I – an event that is still denied by Turkey to this day.

Background on the Armenian Genocide: Beginning in 1915, ethnic Armenians living in the Ottoman empire were rounded up, deported and executed on orders of the government. The combination of massacres, forced deportation marches and concentration camp deaths due to disease is estimated to have resulted in the deaths of more than 1 million ethnic Armenians and Assyrians between 1915 and 1923.

– From GI-Net / Save Darfur Coalition (link)

Compiled by Paulina Robles and Barbara English of Orange County for Darfur and Martina Knee of the San Francisco Bay Area Darfur Coalition.

Good books and films about the Darfur Genocide

April is Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month.  In honor of this, we have compiled a Resource List of books and films themed around each of the past genocides that have commemorative dates in April, plus the areas that we cover.

We hope you will make use of this list as a way to both remember these genocides, and learn more about them.  This is our fourth entry, the Darfur Genocide.

Recommended Books:

A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide, by Eric Reeves
The Khartoum regime is committing genocide in Darfur while the international community watches in silence or with mere hand-wringing.  Action is essential now if we are not to see a further extension of the international failures so conspicuous in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide, by Rebecca Hamilton *favorite
This is the story of the individuals who organized protest marches, lobbied government officials, and raised funds in the belief that the outcry they created would force world powers to save the millions of Darfuris still at risk.

Heart of Darfur, by Lisa French Blaker
An experienced nurse with Doctors without Borders, the author was posted to Darfur in 2005 for nine months to “provide assistance to populations in distress”. In Darfur she found plenty. She worked not only under harsh physical conditions, but also the deliberate brutality and malice of the janjaweed and Sudanese government soldiers.

Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond, by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast
Don Cheadle teamed with human rights activist Prendergast to plead for greater awareness of the horrors of genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and issue a call to action.

Sudan: Darfur and the Failure of an African State, by Richard Cockett
The author provides an account of Sudan’s descent into failure, looking at all of Sudan’s numerous internal wars and rebellions since independence and showing how they are interconnected and looking at the country’s complex relationship with the wider world.

Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur, by Halima Bashir w/ Damien Lewis *favorite
Bashir, a refugee living in London, offers a vivid personal portrait of life in the Darfur region of Sudan before the catastrophe.  She anticipated a bright future after medical school, but tensions between Sudan’s Arab-dominated Islamist dictatorship and black African communities’ tribe finally exploded into conflict.

The Translator: A Tribeman’s Memoir of Darfur,  by Daoud Hari
The Translator is a suspenseful, harrowing, and deeply moving memoir of how one person has made a difference in the world–an on-the-ground account of one of the biggest stories of our time.  Daoud Hari has helped inform the world about Darfur.

Recommended Films:

Darfur Diaries
In October, 2004, three activists snuck across the Sudanese border into rebel-held territory to document the atrocities in Darfur.  They returned with some of the first footage exposing the massive war crimes being perpetrated by the Sudanese government

Darfur Now
Theodore Braun’s absorbing documentary about the atrocities in Darfur, the westernmost region of Sudan, Don Cheadle poses a fundamental question facing moviegoers attending a film about African strife: How do you respond to an event as difficult to understand as a government-sponsored mass murder of part of a country’s civilian population?

On Our Watch *favorite
Three years of fighting in Darfur have destroyed hundreds of villages, displaced 2.2 million and led to more than 400,000 deaths.  President Bush has accused the government of Sudan of genocide, but the U.S. has taken few concrete actions to stop the fighting.  This Frontline documentary tells the story of those who have lost their loved ones to this war, those who are fighting to survive and those who are working to bring peace to the region.

Sand and Sorrow *favorite
Offered exclusive and unparalleled access to the situation on the ground inside Darfur, Peabody award-winning filmmaker, Paul Freedman, joins a contingent of African Union peacekeeping forces in Darfur while a tragic and disturbing chapter in human history unfolds.

The Devil Came On Horseback *favorite
A documentary that exposes the genocide raging in Darfur, Sudan as seen through the eyes of a former U.S. marine who returns home to make the story public.

Background on the Darfur Genocide: Since 2003, the genocidal conflict in Darfur has devastated millions of non-combatant civilians and resulted in the death of at least 200,000 people. As of 2010, Sudan continues to direct its troops and proxy Janjaweed militias to systematically destroy the livelihoods of Darfuris by bombing and burning villages, looting economic resources, and murdering, raping, and torturing non-combatant civilians. A proliferation of rebel groups in Darfur is also complicit in the recruitment of child soldiers and the commission of other acts of violence against civilians.  The Darfur conflict has displaced over 2.7 million people within Sudan, with an additional 250,000 crossing the border into Chad. The actions of the Sudanese government, particularly the expulsion of 13 international aid groups in March 2009, continue to affect those who have sought safety in towns and displaced persons camps.

– From GI-Net / Save Darfur Coalition (link)

Compiled by Paulina Robles and Barbara English of Orange County for Darfur and Martina Knee of the San Francisco Bay Area Darfur Coalition.

Today April 17th, remembering the Cambodian Genocide

Hi everyone,

Click here to see our recommendations of good books and films about the Genocide in Cambodia

Have you seen the film “Small Voices: The Stories of Cambodia’s Children”?  If ever we needed a reminder that when a genocide ends, it doesn’t really end, this film provides it.  Some on this list might not be old enough to recall when the “Killing Fields” took place.  Yet when we hear the stories of the children, we recognize that the Khmer Rouge’s destruction is not a thing of the past as tens of thousands of children in Cambodia today are still suffering, and struggling to survive.  How often do we really open ourselves enough to absorb and deeply feel what it must be like for these children, so young, longing for love, leading a life that would terrify most adults, with no one on this earth available to turn to for help?

April 17th marks the start of the Cambodian genocide.  On this day in 1975, the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

When the Khmer Rouge took control of the Cambodian government in 1975, they declared the beginning of a new age dedicated to a peasant-oriented society. After outlawing education, religion, healthcare and technology, the Khmer Rouge ordered the evacuation of Cambodia’s cities and forced these residents to labor without adequate food or rest. At the same time as summarily executing those who were unable to keep up, the Khmer Rouge began to target suspected political dissidents. These citizens, including doctors, teachers and those suspected of being educated were singled out for torture at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison. In four years, between 1.7 and 2 million Cambodians died in the Khmer Rouge’s ‘Killing Fields’.

– from GI-Net / Save Darfur Coalition [link]

As we continue through the month of April, taking note of California’s first official Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month, our Resource List on Cambodia is available to make it easier for you to find books and films, allowing the stories of Cambodians to become part of you.  We remember the atrocities. We remember those killed. We remember those who survived, but endured torturous sufferings in order to do so. We remember the next generation born into Cambodia, portrayed in the film… and we know we must not only end genocide, but prevent it, knowing that otherwise the atrocities live on within the living and endure into the next generations.

May we find our path to healing in this world… together.  For today, we remember the people of Cambodia.

Barbara & Anshul
Orange County for Darfur, a project of Living Ubuntu
ocfordarfur.org | blog | facebook

Good books and films about the Cambodian Genocide

A Khmer Rouge soldier waves his pistol and orders store owners to abandon their shops in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on April 17, 1975 as the capital fell to the communist forces. A large portion of the city's population was reportedly forced to evacuate. Photo from West German television film. (AP Photo/Christoph Froehder)

April is Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month. In honor of this, we have compiled a Resource List of books and films themed around each of the past genocides that have commemorative dates in April, plus the areas that we cover.

We hope you will make use of this list as a way to both remember these genocides, and learn more about them.  This is our third entry, the Cambodian Genocide.

Recommended Books:

After the Killing Fields: Lessons from the Cambodian Genocide, by Craig Etcheson
How did the Khmer Rouge get away with genocide?  Craig Etcheson’s After the Killing Fields answers this deceptively simple question.  Etcheson has mapped killing fields, interviewed the killers themselves, and his decades of empirical research in Cambodia have endowed him with refreshing common sense.

Alive in the Killing Fields: Surviving the Khmer Rouge Genocide, by Nawuth Keat and Martha Kendall
Alive in the Killing Fields is the real-life memoir of Nawuth Keat, a man who survived the horrors of war-torn Cambodia. He has now broken a longtime silence in the hope that telling the truth about what happened to his people and his country will spare future  generations from similar tragedy.

Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors, by Dith Pran
Dith Pran, the Cambodian photojournalist portrayed by Haing S. Ngor in The Killing Fields, compiled this collection of eyewitness accounts to the genocide perpetrated by Pol Pot’s regime from 1975 to 1979.  All of the survivors who recount their stories here were children when the Khmer Rouge took power.

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, by Lung Ung
Covering the years from 1975 to 1979, the story moves from the deaths of multiple family  members to the forced separation of the survivors, leading ultimately to the reuniting of much of the family, followed by marriages and immigrations.

Getting Away with Genocide: Cambodia’s Long Struggle Against Khmer Rouge, by Tom Fawthrop and Helen Jarvis
This book covers the history of Cambodia since 1979 and the various attempts by the US and China to stop the Cambodian people from bringing the Khmer Rouge to justice.  Tom Fawthrop and Helen Jarvis reveal why it took 18 years for the UN to recognise the mass murder and crimes against humanity that took place under the Killing Fields regime.

Survival in the Killing Fields, by Haing Ngor
In Haing Ngor’s memoir, Survival in the Killing Fields, he tells the gripping and frequently terrifying story of his term in the hell created by the communist Khmer Rouge.  Like Dith Pran, the Cambodian doctor and interpreter whom Ngor played in an Oscar-winning performance in The Killing Fields, Ngor lived through the atrocities that the 1984 film portrayed.

The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79, by Ben Kiernan
Offering an account of the Cambodian revolution and genocide, this book includes a preface that takes the story up to 2008 and the UN-sponsored Khmer Rouge tribunal.

Recommended Films:

Cambodia: The Betrayal
The world was horrified to learn of the holocaust which had taken place in Cambodia at the hands of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.  This film exposes the hypocrisy of the Western nations which continue to support Pol Pot, despite the atrocities of his regime.

Enemies of the People
The Khmer Rouge ran what is regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most brutal regimes.  In Enemies of the People the men and women who perpetrated the massacres – from the foot-soldiers who slit throats to the party’s ideological leader, Nuon Chea aka Brother Number Two – break a 30-year silence to give testimony never before heard or seen.

New Year Baby
As a child in the United States, filmmaker Socheata Poeuv knew that her parents had survived oppression and genocide under the Khmer Rouge, but they never spoke of it aloud.  After a startling admission from her parents, Socheata travels to Cambodia to unravel the mystery shrouding her family’s survival and eventual escape.

Return To The Killing Fields-Investigative Reports
Bill Kurtis takes a trip back to the “killing fields” of Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot ordered the torture and murder of millions of peasants, business people, army officers, and the educated in a cruel social experiment to create a pure Communist society during the years 1975-79.

Small Voices: The Stories of Cambodia’s Children *favorite
The film looks at the children born to the uneducated, poverty-stricken survivors of the Khmer Rouge and the reality of their day-to-day lives.

The Killing Fields
This 1984 drama concerns the real-life relationship between New York Times reporter Sidney Schanberg and his Cambodian assistant Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor), the latter left at the mercy of the Khmer Rouge after Schanberg–who chose to stay after American evacuation but was booted out–failed to get him safe passage.

Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia
John Pilger vividly reveals the brutality and murderous political ambitions of the Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge totalitarian regime which bought genocide and despair to the people of Cambodia while neighboring countries, including Australia, shamefully ignored the immense human suffering and unspeakable crimes that bloodied this once beautiful country.

Background on the Cambodian Genocide: When the Khmer Rouge took control of the Cambodian government in 1975, they declared the beginning of a new age dedicated to a peasant-oriented society. After outlawing education, religion, healthcare and technology, the Khmer Rouge ordered the evacuation of Cambodia’s cities and forced these residents to labor without adequate food or rest. At the same time as summarily executing those who were unable to keep up, the Khmer Rouge began to target suspected political dissidents. These citizens, including doctors, teachers and those suspected of being educated were singled out for torture at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison. In four years, between 1.7 and 2 million Cambodians died in the Khmer Rouge’s ‘Killing Fields’.

– From GI-Net / Save Darfur Coalition (link)

Compiled by Paulina Robles and Barbara English of Orange County for Darfur and Martina Knee of the San Francisco Bay Area Darfur Coalition.

Good books and films about the Rwandan Genocide

The genocide in Rwanda started in April 1994 and resulted in the deaths of over 800,000 people

April is Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month. In honor of this, we have compiled a Resource List of books and films themed around each of the past genocides that have commemorative dates in April, plus the areas that we cover.

We hope you will make use of this list as a way to both remember these genocides, and learn more about them.  This is our second entry, the Rwandan Genocide.

Recommended Books:

A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide, by Linda Melvern
Melvern gives a shocking portrait of calculated mass murder, revealing how the international community, and especially the U.S., failed to act in the face of a carefully executed plan to murder one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994.

An Ordinary Man, by Paul Rusesabagina
The book explores the inner life of the man who became one of the most prominent public faces of the Rwandan genocide.  Rusesabagina tells the story of his life which led him to become the first Rwandan manager of the Hotel Milles Collines and brings the reader inside the hotel for the days depicted in the film, “Hotel Rwanda”.

God Sleeps in Rwanda, by Joseph Sebarenzi
In this memoir, Joseph Sebarenzi presents a thoughtful critique of Kagame’s regime.  His tale is a provocative warning to the many outsiders who are ready to canonize Paul Kagame, the ruler of Rwanda since the genocide.

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, by Immaculee Ilibagiza
This searing firsthand account of Rwandan native Ilibagiza’s experience in 1994 cuts two ways: her description of the evil that was perpetrated, including the brutal murders of her family members, is soul-numbingly devastating, yet the story of her unquenchable faith and connection to God throughout the ordeal uplifts and inspires.

Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak, by Jean Hatzfield
In this French-English translated book, the author made several trips to the Bugasera-one of the region’s most devastated by the genocide.  In the villages of Nyamata and N’tamara, he interviewed 14 survivors. From child farmers to school teachers, each person gives accounts of their experiences.

Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak, by Jean Hatzfeld
This book features the testimony of 10 friends from the same village who spent day after day together, fulfilling orders to kill any Tutsi within their territory during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.  Hatzfeld offers an analysis of the psychology of the perpetrators and how the Rwandan genocide differs from other genocides in history.

Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, by Roméo Dallaire
As former head of the late 1993 U.N. peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, Canadian general Dallaire’s initial proposal called for 5,000 soldiers to permit orderly elections and the return of the refugees.  Nothing like this number was supplied, and the result was an outright attempt at genocide against the Tutsis that nearly succeeded, with 800,000 dead over three months. The book documents in horrifying detail what happens when no serious effort is made.

We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories From Rwanda, by Philip Gourevitch *favorite
The stories in this book are unrelentingly horrifying and filled with “the idiocy, the waste, the sheer wrongness” of one group of Rwandans (Hutus) methodically exterminating another (Tutsis).  With 800,000 people killed in 100 days, Gourevitch found many numbed Rwandans who had lost whole families to the machete.

Today April 5th, remembering the Bosnian Genocide

Hi everyone,

Click here to see our recommendations of good books and films about the Genocide in Bosnia.

April is here and as you are likely aware by now, it is the very first time the state of California has given it the official designation as Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month.  In honor of this, we have compiled a Resource List of books and films themed around each of the past genocides that have commemorative dates in April, plus the areas that we cover.  We will be sending you emails this month noting each of the commemorative dates and encouraging you to make use of the Resource List as a way to both remember these genocides, and learn more about them.

April 5th marks the start of the Bosnian Genocide. On this day in 1992, the government of Bosnia declared its independence from Yugoslavia, which immediately prompted the Bosnian leaders to launch a war to create a separate state.  An estimated 100,000 people were killed 80% of which were ‘Bosniak’ civilians was eventually labelled a genocide.

In the late-1980’s, the heterogeneous Yugoslav federation began to cleave along ethnic lines. Civil war erupted in 1992 against a backdrop of increasingly nationalist politics, including the idea of “Greater Serbia”. Between 1992 and 1995, Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks soldiers and paramilitaries used widespread use of rape, torture and forcible displacement against civilians. The actions of some Serb units were particularly heinous, featuring attempts to eliminate non-Serb culture, a tactic soon to be known as “ethnic cleansing”. Across Bosnia and Herzegovina civilians were herded into camps as small scale massacres were committed. The most notorious of these was the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995, when more than 7,500 Bosniak men and boys in the U.N.-safe area, were executed by forces under General Radko Mladic. The estimates for the human cost of the Bosnian civil wars range from 96,000 to 200,000, with a recent University of Washington-Harvard University study placing the fatalities near 167,000.

– From GI-Net / Save Darfur Coalition [link]

Click here to see our recommended list of books and films about the Bosnia Genocide.

As we approach this remembering, there is no getting away from the horror that is inextricably linked to genocide. Yet, in contrast to the utter inhumanity of genocide, it is hard to point to anything more genuinely human than the act of remembering.  When we remember, we demonstrate the willingness the hold another in mind and absorb their story allowing it to become part of us.  We hope you will use this Resource List on Bosnia as a way to learn more of the stories.

On this day, holding the people of Bosnia in our hearts,

Barbara & Anshul
Orange County for Darfur, a project of Living Ubuntu
ocfordarfur.org | blog | facebook