2008 Woodie Awards
For the sake of the future
Derby Cox
Issue date: 5/9/08 Section: News
When David Gewirtzman was 13, he celebrated his bar mitzvah in a Polish ghetto during World War II, while fellow Jews died of starvation and disease around him.
"Every morning, I'd wake up and see corpses in the street covered with newspapers," he said. "Children ... eight years old ... not able to live any longer, their ribs showing through their skin, falling to the ground, dying."
About 120 students packed into the Prince George's Room of the Stamp Student Union on Wednesday night to hear Gewirtzman, a Holocaust survivor, speak alongside Eugenie Mukeshimana, a Rwandan genocide survivor. The event - organized by a variety of student groups and called "Remembering the Past for the Sake of the Future" - featured the pair talking about their experiences with genocide, outlooks on life and hopes for the future.
"Our goal is to create a different world than the one we used to know," Gewirtzman said.
The Nazis exterminated most of the 8,000 Jews in Gewirtzman's hometown of Losice, Poland. After the officer who captured Gewirtzman took pity on him and rescued his family from a work camp, he lived in a hole under a pigsty.
"In this hole - which we called the grave - we existed for two years," Gewirtzman said. Often, there were "rats running back and forth over our bodies," he added.
Gewirtzman's brother spent those two years hiding in a haystack. When the Russians liberated Poland, he could barely speak or walk.
"All I can say is that I'm an optimist," Gewirtzman said. "I don't hate anybody."
Mukeshimana also spoke about her past. She was eight months pregnant when members of the Hutu majority started slaughtering the Tutsi, a minority ethnic group, in 1994 as part of the Rwandan Civil War. Mukeshimana, a Tutsi, survived by hiding with Hutu families and bribing her would-be killers.
At one point, Mukeshimana hid with a family who did not want their children to know she was there, for fear they would reveal her presence. She could only come out for short periods of time when the children were away.
"Every morning, I'd wake up and see corpses in the street covered with newspapers," he said. "Children ... eight years old ... not able to live any longer, their ribs showing through their skin, falling to the ground, dying."
About 120 students packed into the Prince George's Room of the Stamp Student Union on Wednesday night to hear Gewirtzman, a Holocaust survivor, speak alongside Eugenie Mukeshimana, a Rwandan genocide survivor. The event - organized by a variety of student groups and called "Remembering the Past for the Sake of the Future" - featured the pair talking about their experiences with genocide, outlooks on life and hopes for the future.
"Our goal is to create a different world than the one we used to know," Gewirtzman said.
The Nazis exterminated most of the 8,000 Jews in Gewirtzman's hometown of Losice, Poland. After the officer who captured Gewirtzman took pity on him and rescued his family from a work camp, he lived in a hole under a pigsty.
"In this hole - which we called the grave - we existed for two years," Gewirtzman said. Often, there were "rats running back and forth over our bodies," he added.
Gewirtzman's brother spent those two years hiding in a haystack. When the Russians liberated Poland, he could barely speak or walk.
"All I can say is that I'm an optimist," Gewirtzman said. "I don't hate anybody."
Mukeshimana also spoke about her past. She was eight months pregnant when members of the Hutu majority started slaughtering the Tutsi, a minority ethnic group, in 1994 as part of the Rwandan Civil War. Mukeshimana, a Tutsi, survived by hiding with Hutu families and bribing her would-be killers.
At one point, Mukeshimana hid with a family who did not want their children to know she was there, for fear they would reveal her presence. She could only come out for short periods of time when the children were away.
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