NEWSBYRIGHTEOUS PICTURES

The Last Survivor Sneak Preview from Genocide Prevention Month on Vimeo.

Undoubtedly, every time either of us presents the sneak preview of our film, The Last Survivor, we are asked about the title. "Who is the 'Last Survivor'?" People often wonder. Sometimes the questioner has already narrowed down the options in his head, "Which one of those four is the 'Last Survivor'?" It'd be a lie to say we are caught off guard by such questions - indeed, the film's title has been a favorite point of inquisition since we began presenting the film in the idea form over two years ago. In fact, at one point we considered changing the title to allow audience members to focus on the stories being played out in front of them, instead of getting hung up on the name. In the end, however, cooler heads prevailed and we have chosen to stick with a title that, to us, has great meaning. The short answer to the question above is, of course, that we cannot name for you whom the 'Last Survivor' is. What can be extrapolated however, is the fact that when such a survivor can be named, it will be the culmination of generations of hope and hard work - a bloodline of activists that includes not only the survivors presented in our film, but those who came before them, those who perished at the hands of genocide, and those of us who have taken on this cause as a great struggle to preserve the rights of humanity.

The Last Survivor: The Case For Prevention from Genocide Prevention Month on Vimeo.

Lawrence Woocher speaking before the launch of Genocide Prevention Month at the 6th & I Historic synagogue in Washington, D.C.

As we begin this final week of Genocide Prevention Month, we thought it was an important opportunity to pause and consider what it is we are advocating for – why we believe a policy of genocide prevention should be adapted both by our own national government as well as the international community at large.

Last week, our post began with a clip from Archbishop Vicken Aykazian, a leader of the Armenian community who has been a tremendous voice and advocate for the people of Darfur.  Archbishop Aykazian referred to the 20th century as “the Century of Genocide.”  It’s a troubling label to be sure, but one that is difficult to argue with.  And now, with genocide raging through six of the first nine years of this new 21st century, we must wonder how much worse it needs to get before we consider a change in our reaction. It is time that we take a serious look at how we have responded to these atrocities in the past and why these responses have continuously failed.

The Last Survivor: Denial from Genocide Prevention Month on Vimeo.
Archbishop Vicken Aykazian speaking at the “Honor the Past, Act Now for Darfur” commemoration event in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, April 19th.  Despite, the world’s refusal to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide of 1915, the Armenian community acts as some of the strongest advocates for the Darfuri people.

In the 1980s, with her children grown, Hédi Fried, decided to dedicate her life to Stockholm’s community of Holocaust Survivors of which she is a part.  Now, at 84 years old, she has dedicated her remaining years to ensuring that the stories of horror that she was made to witness and experience are passed on to future generations – allowing a new generation to take on the important responsibility of keeping and sharing such memories.  In Hédi’s view, the degree to which we allow our memory to fade is tied to directly to the persistence with which the past will repeat itself.   Voices such as Hédi’s are imperative at a time in which it has become all too common to deny that the Holocaust ever occurred.

“The first time I heard it, I laughed,” Hédi told us, speaking of her first encounter with such denial.  “The second time I heard it, I realized that this was nothing to laugh at; and the third time, I realized I had to do something.”

Gloria White-Hammond from Genocide Prevention Month on Vimeo.
Reverend Gloria White-Hammond speaks to the crowd at the Save Darfur Coalition's 'Honor the Past, Act NOW for Darfur' Event.

Yesterday, hundreds gathered in front of the White House to ‘Honor the Past’ and to ‘Act NOW for Darfur.’ Survivors from past and current genocides and mass atrocities, including Darfur, South Sudan, Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, the Holocaust, and Armenia, joined together with faith leaders, leading anti-genocide advocates, and local activists; united.  And as we stood there among those whose very lives speak to the world’s failure to uphold its sacred promise of never again, we couldn’t help but wonder how many more years we will have to gather to remind ourselves and others to ‘Act NOW for Darfur?’

The following post was written by Justin Semahoro Kimenyerwa - a Congolese refugee who was recently resettled to the United States.

I would like to tell you about my home and my people.

I was born in Minembwe in the Democratic Republic of Congo – over the mountains of the land, deep within the green fields of South Kivu.  It is a land full of green vegetation, lush forests, and beautiful wildlife.  Between the greenery, numerous rivers always flow among mountains and flat land.  We have just two seasons – the rainy season and the sunny season – both marked by favorable temperatures.  Throughout the year, a nice breeze offers comfort each morning.  Within this peaceful land, there exists a community that struggles to survive.  These are the members of the Banyamulenge tribe – they are my people.

Survivor Networks from Genocide Prevention Month on Vimeo.

At a recent screening of the 20-minute sneak preview of our film as part of Genocide Prevention Month, a rather telling question was asked. The audience was primarily, if not entirely Jewish, as the screening was held as part of a Passover Seder - a means of recognizing that the freedom from slavery and persecution that Jews celebrate during Passover very much continues for others around the world.

For the next several posts, we have asked the Survivors in our film to reflect on the month of April and the memories - both dark and hopeful - that they associate with it. Today's post was written by Jacqueline Murekatete.

15 years ago, I was a young girl of nine living in Rwanda.  I remember listening as a death sentence was pronounced on me, my family, many of our neighbors and our friends.  The crime? Our ethnicity.

For approximately 100 days, I lived in state of extreme fear, never knowing whether I was going to live to see the next day.  Every day I was exposed to horrors that no human being - especially a child of nine - should ever be exposed to. The things that I experienced between the months of April and June of 1994 are things that I will never forget.

How can I ever forget the day that I had to flee my home and everything I had ever known and loved if I had any chance of surviving? How can I ever forget my horror and lack of comprehension as I listened to a national radio station that encouraged my neighbors to pick up machetes and hunt my family and other Tutsis, calling us cockroaches that needed immediate extermination?  How can I forget the days I spent watching men, women, and children being dragged to their death? How can I ever forget the nights I spent listening to the painful cries of children whose arms and legs had been chopped off - in most cases by those they had once called neighbors and friends?

For the next several posts, we have asked the Survivors in our film to reflect on the month of April and the memories – both dark and hopeful – that they associate with it. Today’s post was written by Hédi Fried.

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is

planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal: a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”

Ecclesiastes 3:1-4

As a child, April (Nissan according to the Jewish Calendar) has always been my favorite month. With spring on its way, Pesach, our Easter Holiday approaching, and the time to shed the heavy winter clothes, life seemed wonderful.

All of this changed in 1944, when April became a month of mourning. Life changed into a black hole, and nobody would believe that any light could ever break through.

And still, one year passed and in the morning of April 15, 1945 it all changed. With the British Army liberating Bergen-Belsen, a ray of sun penetrated our darkness.

It was a miracle.

Strangely enough, miracles happen. It was a miracle that once upon a time the Jews were taken out from the Egyptian slavery. It happened in Nissan - in April. And it was a miracle that we, the slaves of Hitler in Bergen-Belsen, were liberated in April.

And I will never be able to explain this other miracle that happened.

It all started New Years Eve 1945. The girls in the Labor Camp of Eidelstedt, tired after a long day of hard work, were sitting on their bunks, evoking old memories and talking about past happy days, gay celebrations, past New Years Eves, and the hard present.

“How will next New Years Eve be? Do you think we will be out of here?” one of us asked.

“We will never get out of here. Either we will be dead or back in Auschwitz” was the answer.

Suddenly I felt that I had to contradict them, their pessimism was disturbing:

“Don´t talk nonsense. Of course we´ll get out of here.” I said

“When?” my cousin asked.

Without a moment of thinking I burst out: “The 15^th of April.”

The girls both doubted and wanted to believe, questions came thick and fast. “How do you know?” Are you sure?” “Will the war be over?”

“No, I said, but we will be free”.

Looking at me in doubt, though willing to believe, my cousin said:

“Let´s have a bet.”

So we did. I would give her my bread ration if I was wrong.

In the first weeks of April, in the Camp of Bergen-Belsen, there was hardly any food and scarcely any water. On the morning of April 15^th, 1945, the famished, dried out girls were waiting for their death. My cousin noted that it was the 15^th of April and I had lost the bet. I regretted not being able to pay her, “there will hardly be any bread today,” I said to her.

Time went by slowly, slowly, hour after hour, and the sun was already high up the sky, when suddenly the girl next to the window yelled out: “the British are here!”

Unbelieving, I also went to the window and looked.

And at that moment a tank with soldiers turned up in the yard, and I could see that they were not German soldiers.

We were free.

From

Hedi Fried:The Road to Auschwitz; Fragments of a Life

Nebraska University Press, 1996

Hedi Fried: Livet tillbaka

Natur & Kultur, Stockholm, 1995

Watch the 20-minute sneak preview of The Last Survivor now! Share with your friends and family, host local screenings at community centers, schools, universities, and your home, and start a conversation in your own community about how you can work to fight genocide.

GPM Launch Introduction from Genocide Prevention Month on Vimeo.

Jill Savitt, executive director of the Genocide Prevention Project introduces Genocide Prevention Month at the national launch in Washington, D.C. Watch the film and subsequent panel discussion at www.righteouspictures.com/gpm.

It is officially Genocide Prevention Month – a month which is dedicated to honoring the memories of the six genocides that are commemorated throughout April by working to prevent future atrocities. In working on our film, The Last Survivor, over the course of the past two years, we have learned some incredible lessons. Lessons about hope, the power of human connection, and the void that is left in one’s heart when one is separated from his family, her people, and everything he holds dear.

We have also learned much about the power of democracy.

Indeed, as we enter Genocide Prevention Month, it has become our firm belief that the tools of democracy remain our best hope in combating genocide and mass atrocity crimes both as they currently exist in Darfur, Congo, and elsewhere in the world, as well as a way of preventing future horrors. With that in mind, we can enter April with a sense of optimism. Despite the slaughter in Darfur that rages into its seventh year and the violence in Congo that continues for over a decade, we have seen young people both here in the United States and abroad using the power of democracy to insist that their voices be heard

The Last Survivor Extended Trailer from Genocide Prevention Month on Vimeo.

This blog picks up where the last one left off – in the Swedish countryside with Hédi. At the end of the “welcoming” tour she offered upon our arrival at her quaint home – a charming yellow cottage nestled against the Baltic Sea – Hédi lead us to the living room. She put on her favorite radio station and affirmed their selection of a lulling classical violin piece with a nod, “Nice.” With that, she lead us to the corner of the room, behind her favorite reading chair, where she had framed a family tree her son had made her for an earlier birthday. Hédi introduced us to the family. It began at the top with her parents, splitting out into two branches – one leading down to Hédi, her husband, their three boys and their wives and the other to Livi, her husband, and their children. Hédi read off the cast of characters that made up her family tree and paused for a moment as she admired it. “This is our victory,” she told us with a smile.

We have found such fondness for family trees common among Survivors.

After three months adjusting to life in St. Louis, Justin was honored to have Sasha in his home. To simply hear Justin welcome Sasha to his house was enough to convey the profound gratitude he will forever hold for all Sasha has done for him. After giving Sasha a tour of his apartment, Justin took him to the neighborhood park where the two sat among children who were enjoying the final dusks of summer. There, Sasha told Justin of his family’s own story of survival: that his great grandmother had fled the Soviet Union nearly a century ago, escaping the deadly pogroms that were targeted at the Jews. That she too had once arrived in America as a refugee and, lost in an unknown land, she dedicated herself to the promise etched in the progression of her family tree. Sasha’s life – his work, his family, his happiness – are linked directly back to his great grandmother – her work, her dedication, and her hope. Sasha stressed this connection to Justin – “and one day you’ll have children, and grandchildren, and great grandchildren and they’ll go on to do wonderful things. And you’re the start.”

Justin smiled quietly at this, distantly staring out at the children across the park as if he could see the line that moved from him – a family line that carried his own legacy and gave life to the memory of his missing family. A line that insisted on moving forward.

It’s certainly not surprising that those who have lost so much of their history, would find not only satisfaction, but great pride in the generations that spawn forward from them. If genocide is an attempt at destroying an entire people, then a people’s true triumph over genocide is marked by their ability to endure – to pass on not only their genes, but their values and their stories, ensuring that a piece of their family is woven securely into posterity.

In our eyes, such a notion illuminates our role in life as one of continuation – an all important link between what was and what will be – in a manner that saturates each life with meaning. But perhaps even more moving is the realization that such a perspective on life is one that insists we look forward. That no matter what we are given in this life - whether it be great gain or great loss – we accept that our role remains consistent and simple: to continue. And in doing so, we pass on the many lessons we have acquired – both those born out of our own experience and those bequeathed to us by our ancestors. It is the sum of these collective experiences that make up the future.

This has been, in many ways, a remarkable month. Most days were spent going through the hours of footage we have taken across the span of the last two years. Such a task was a daily exercise in reflection – allowing us to revisit all that we have been through over the course of the past two years – the places, the experiences, and mostly the people. From the start, we set out to make a film about connection – the links that bind our subjects as Survivors and those that bind all of us as human beings. Certainly, we have found many. And as we move on from this 20-minute cut and begin work on the final film, we are certain we will be struck by deeper and more meaningful connections that bind those we film together with one another and with ourselves.

For now, at the end of this month, the most profound connection we have discovered is this: that while we are each born out of distinct pasts, we share a common future. And as that future is the sum of all that has come before, it will be measured by the totality of its inclusiveness – made richer by the inclusion of each of our histories. Our role, then, is to move from one generation to the next, passing on a sense of who we are and from where we have come.

In this manner, we all move forward.

A 20-minute sneak preview of our film, The Last Survivor, will be available via webcast on April 2nd as part of the Genocide Prevention Month kick-off event. We encourage you to hold screenings at your home or at a community center on April 2nd or any time there after. Watch the film and subsequent panel discussion and host your own conversation on genocide awareness and prevention. For more information, please visit the Month’s official website, www.genocidepreventionmonth.org and sign the pledge to honor the six genocides commemorated in April by working to prevent future atrocities. This blog is part six of a multi-part series on survivors of genocides.

While there is no new video clip available with today’s posting – stay tuned for footage from the Genocide Prevention Month Kickoff Event with Thursday’s posting.