Stories of Survival: "We had no idea of the scale of what followed."

"Stories of Survival" is an occasional series here at Stop Genocide, which seeks to break through the sterility and distance of overwhelming statistics and present the real impact of genocide on individual lives, families, and communities.

Jean Luois Mazimpaka, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, recently wrote of his experience for The Guardian:

"On 18 April the militia arrived and we saw them preparing to attack. We gathered all the old people, women and children in the buildings and formed four fronts outside to protect them. Young girls found stones for us to throw, and we kept them away for four days. By then it wasn't just the militias, it was the rest of the population as well, including the friend who had warned us - everybody had been brainwashed by the militia to join in. They had machetes, sticks, clubs and grenades. I remember seeing one of my friends hit by a grenade - it scattered his body parts all around."

The daughter of Rabbi Davin Schoenberger, who married Anne Frank's parents at his synagogue in Aachen, Germany, recalls her family's flight from Nazi persecution in Germany to France, the UK, and ultimately the US.

Finally, Holocaust survivor Josef Perl recently gave his last talk to a group of students in Kettering, after spending twenty years sharing his stories at schools around the UK.

[Photo from The Guardian: Jean Louis Mazimpaka, survivor of the Rwandan genocide, photographed at his home in West Drayton, London. Photograph: Ivor Prickett]