By Ayala Ben-Yehuda
In 1904 about 65,000 Herero cattle herders in Southwest Africa were wiped out after rebelling against their German colonial rulers. Women and children were driven into the desert and died of thirst and starvation, decimating the Herero population.
In 1994 Beatha Uwazaninka had to flee her home in Rwanda when several of her family members were murdered during a genocide in which 800,000 people were slaughtered in the space of 100 days.
These stories of mass murder 90 years apart from each other are on display at “1900-2000: A Genocidal Century,” the newest exhibit at Queensborough Community College’s Holocaust Resource Center and Archives.
“As a college student, I didn’t know about all the genocides that were happening,” said Sarah Roberts, assistant director for operations at the center.
“More and more schools are getting more involved with teaching about genocide and what’s happening today in the world,” Roberts said. “It’s really scary out there.”
The exhibit opened Feb. 23 and runs until the end of this year. It features wall text by the Holocaust center’s director, William Shulman, defining genocide and describing its use against Armenians in 1915 at the hands of the Turks, Stalin’s starvation of Ukrainians, the Holocaust as well as mass killings in Cambodia in the 1970s and more recent ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s.
A chart on the wall depicts lesser-known genocides such as the Guatemalan army’s killing of 200,000 Mayans from the 1950s to the 1980s and the murder of a million Ibos and other ethnic groups in Nigeria since 1966.
School groups in Queens have been coming to the exhibit and watching films on refugees and the Rwandan genocide, said Roberts, whose Holocaust center is sending mailings about it to schools all over New York City as well as to churches and synagogues.
Roberts said so far no one who had suffered under one of the genocides in the exhibit had come up to her during a visit to the center, but said “I’m hoping I do get that reaction.”
Arthur Flug, a former teacher and chief of staff to Councilman David Weprin (D-Hollis) and U.S. Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Bayside), became the center’s educational outreach director two weeks ago.
“The Holocaust has implications that go beyond the Jewish community,” said Flug, such as ethnic discrimination and brutality — themes all too common to the human experience around the world.
The college will mark the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide with a Genocide Awareness Day on Wednesday, April 28. Scheduled to speak are Jerry Fowler, director of the Committee on Conscience from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and abolitionist Maria Sliwa, who will address modern-day slavery in Sudan.
The Genocide Awareness Day and the exhibit are open to the public. For more information, call 718-281-5770.
Reach reporter Ayala Ben-Yehuda by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 146.
