Genocide & Mass Violence

April is Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month. Throughout the month, we’ll be featuring stories on Facing Today that reflect upon genocide throughout history. Hearing personal stories of survival can be a powerful learning experience. In this post, we’re shining a light on the inspirational stories of two genocide survivors.

President and CEO Roger Brooks addresses a survey that finds Holocaust education among young people is lacking.

Life was pretty happy and full. Now on December 13, there came change that turned our world upside down. - Mr. Chen Deshou, a survivor of the Nanjing Atrocities

December 13th marks the 78th anniversary of the Nanjing Atrocities, when the lives of thousands of women, men, and children were turned upside down. This assault by the Japanese Imperial Army took place from December 13, 1937, through the end of March 1938. During this time soldiers ran riot in the captured Chinese capital, unleashing a spree of violence, murder, and rape on the population.

On March 20th, appeals judges of the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia voted to uphold former President of Republika Srpska Radovan Karadzic’s conviction for genocide in the Srebrenica Massacre. This genocide occurred when Serbian nationalists took over a United Nations-declared “safe area” around the town of Srebrenica and murdered 8,000 Muslim men and boys in 1995. Though Karadzic was given a 40-year prison sentence in 2016, appeals judges recently concluded that this sentence was not consonant with the severity of his crimes. After three years behind bars, Karadzic’s sentence has now been elevated to a life sentence.

Taking the Nanjing Atrocities workshop helped one teacher successfully tackle the difficult aspects of teaching genocide in the classroom.