Winnipeg men to speak about experiences in Holocaust, Rwandan genocide at CMHR on Saturday

Two Winnipeggers are expected to share stories of survival at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights on Saturdayas part of Genocide Prevention and Awareness Month, which is inApril, Canada's Parliament declared in 2015.

The gathering falls two days after the anniversary of the beginning of the Rwandan genocide, where as many as one million Tutsis were murdered by the Hutustarting on April 7, 1994.

CBC'sTerry MacLeodsat down with Joseph Ngoga, who is Tutsi, survived the genocide in Rwanda and now lives in Winnipeg and Dr. Stefan Carter, who survived the Holocaust and also lives in the city now. Both men are expected to publicly reflect on those parts of their lives in the Manitoba Teachers Society Classroom in the museum starting at 1:30 p.m.

Terry MacLeod: Dr. Carter, what do you remember of your experience in the Holocaust?

Dr. Carter:I was then hiding under false papers as a known Jew People were assigned from Warsaw, which was essentially emptied and most of it destroyed completely in the countryside until the war finished.

So, you had false papers saying that you were not Jewish?

Dr. Carter: Yes.

And Joseph, when you were in Rwanda since you're Tutsiand the Hutuwere targeting the Tutsisspecifically did you try to disguise your identity as we heard from Dr. Carter?

Joseph: Yes, for sure. Back at that time, I was 16 and I didn't have ID because usually in ID they were putting ethnicity. At that time, many people they even didn'twant to take the ID with them because they knew it'sgoing to show who they areThey could look at you and stereotype. They look at the noseTutsis and Hutu stuff started itThey used to measure the nose. Long nose, that's Tutsi But for me, I was not looking asTutsi. That saved me.I'm not tall, I don't have a narrow nose.

I made a decision to go far away nobody knows me in that area. They ask me, I say I'm Hutu.

I heard some people got their noses operated on to change theshape in the hope that they couldsurvive.

Joseph: Yeah, I heard that but I don't know personally anybody who did that. I know it's expensive but I think if people could get that chance, I'm sure they would do that.

Dr. Carter what was it like for you having to disguise your jewishness?

Dr. Carter:Yeah, well, actually if I may relate to what Joseph said that the nose was also very important in the Holocaust because Jewish people often have a crooked, protruding nose and I had, too. What happened at one time over the year or two that I was in hiding andnot going out, my cousins arranged for me to go to the clinic and have an operation on my nose so that it would straighten out and then I could go outside and I was a little safer that way. That was very similar, amazingly, to what happened in Rwanda, which I didn't know.

Were you two being scrutinized on the streets for the shape of your nose? Were people looking to see is he the enemy or not?

Dr. Carter: There were people and there weremany cases where Jewish people who escaped the ghetto and were in the polish part of Warsaw were recognized byanti-Semiticpeople, blackmailed if they had money or turned into gestapo and they died. So, that certainly was the case because as I mentioned, polish people were very good at recognizing Jews. Better than the Germans, actually.

You two haven't met before but as you meet here today, what goes through your mind as you hear one another's stories?

Joseph: It's amazing how the story is most similar Rwanda was after 50 years Holocaust, again, genocide again. Exactly the same method. That's why we need to speak out. I don't know if this will change anything because nobody wants to see this again. To hear his story, this is exactly what happened in Rwanda Nobody came to save us and I'm sure they could but if it's not happening in your backyard, it doesn't mean anything I guess.

Dr. Carter, 50 years after the Holocaust, after the Jewish genocide, another one happens in Rwanda and the same methods are used to identify. What do you think of what you've heard from Joseph here today?

Dr. Carter: I think that we're not learning from history, obviously. I think it's part of human nature and I don't know if it will ever change and that's one reason thatit's an ongoing process that we have to speak out as Joseph and his friends do and as my colleagues and myself have been doing for years now to commemorate people who have died and also to counterbalance the denial, whichtends to occur and to counterbalance the hatred that's part of going on in recurring genocide.

Maybe we are succeeding because it took us some decades before we started talking but Joseph and his people are talking now, less than two decades [later] It took us 20 or 30 years before we woke up and decided that we must speak the truth because people wouldn't believe it.

Joseph, you're nodding as Dr. Carter speaks.

Joseph: I'm agreeing with him, how it took him 20, 30 years. Even me, it took me maybe 10 years before I was able to speak out. It's not easy to talk about it. I wasn't able to talk about it at all. My brother, who survived, too, even when I try to talk with him he can't face it.

The interview has been edited for clarity and length.