Survivors of Genocide

Survivors of genocide and crimes against humanity live among us. Many of them have the courage to tell their stories. The United States has welcomed survivors and families of the Rohingya (1,500 resettled in Chicago in 2017), the Yazidi, the Bosnian, Rwandan, and Cambodian genocides.

Sadly, the survivors of the Holocaust are dying out. A recent study noted that 41 percent of Americans and 66 percent of millennials do not know that Auschwitz was a Nazi extermination camp. The risk of forgetting is greater than ever before and at a time when minority groups in America are losing basic privileges and some are facing expulsion.

Recently, we celebrated Indigenous People’s Day, commonly known as “Columbus Day”, yet as a nation we forget that at least 50 million indigenous people were killed since his discovery. As Dr. Biron Baker said in the 3 Generations film A Different American Dream, “After Columbus lost himself and found himself here...it has to be considered one of the single biggest crimes against humanity”. However, in most states, Columbus is still hailed as a hero. His story is still taught in schools all over the country and the world. Native Americans continue to live with this trauma.

3 Generations works to make sharing survivors’ stories possible as a reminder of these events. We are now collecting stories about intergenerational trauma and have recently started an inquiry about its effect on successive generations. We plan to have a new film on this subject in 2019.

Genocide leaves its vicious legacy every single day across this nation. It is not a problem from elsewhere. At 3 Generations we continue to make sure that as few people as possible never forget. This is core of our work and has been for the last 10 years.