Truth, Memory, and Reconciliation

Day4: From Reconciliation into Action. Mayan values

2008-08-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

Transforming Reconciliation into Action

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: justice peace)

Introduction to Truth Commissions: Brief Overview around the World

2008-08-13T07:51:00.001-07:00

Day2 Intro Truth Commissions World

View SlideShare presentation (tags: movements social justice peace)

Presentation: Intro to HR Violations and Victims' Rights and Needs

2008-08-11T22:50:00.000-07:00

intro to Human Rights Violations and Victims' Rights

View SlideShare presentation

South Africa during Apartheid

2008-07-30T16:29:00.002-07:00

This shows life under apartheid in pictures. Many in the western world fail to realise that white people stood up and protested against apartheid in South Africa. You will see some of these protests which took place at the University of Cape Town.

There is a minority of South Africans who would like to portray the past as a time of peace, stability and abundance. That is far from reality. Free speech was not permitted, protesting was not allowed. Afrikaners were given priority treatment over other ethnic groups. With the rural afrikaners looking down at english speakers as inferior. People were forced to do military service--abuse took place in the military training camps. Some people who did not fit in society were sent to psychiatric hospitals given electric shock therapies (Truth & Reconcilliation Commission discovered gay people were forced to have shock treatment or sex changes). Black people were secretly sterilised against their knowledge. Opposition in the country was put down at any cost, religious minsters were sent letter bombs, people were murdered, Ruth First, a Jewish communist, was murdered by the police. The police murdered white and black people who opposed them. Let us not forget to mention all of the murders of black activists. Many times the country was on the brink of civil war, with State of Emergencies being imposed on the country. Hardly a land of utopia.

The list is almost endless. We should never forget the past, otherwise we are destined to repeat it. The video will stay to give testimony of the past, because there is so much denial that exists even today of the past.

Even God's own ministers were not safe in South Africa in a country that claimed to be Christian. I believe God looked down on South Africa with much sadness, and chose to finally put an end of the suffering that took place.

Warning there are some shocking pictures.
[written by Robert "robtuk31"AUg 27, 2006)

Never Again clip

2008-07-30T16:29:00.001-07:00

A short movie made for a report on Jewish Ghettos. Almost all of the photos are from the ghettos, although some of the pictures are about the Holocaust in general.

Music - "Goodbye Blue Sky" by Pink Floyd

Yom HaZikaron laShoah Ve'laGvura or Yom HaShoah (יום השואה , יום הזיכרון לשואה ולגבורה) - "Holocaust (and Heroism) Remembrance Day" - is held in the early spring, on the 27th day of Nisan according to the Hebrew calendar. In Israel, however, observance is moved back a day if 27 Nisan falls on a Friday or forward a day if 27 Nisan falls on a Sunday (to avoid adjacency with the Jewish Sabbath). In the Diaspora, Yom HaShoah is generally observed on 27 Nisan regardless.
Yom Hashoa is a day set aside for remembering the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. In Israel, it is a national memorial day.
Yom HaShoah was inaugurated in 1959, anchored in a law signed by the Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion and the President of Israel Yitzhak Ben-Zvi.
The original proposal was to hold Yom Hashoah on the 15th of Nisan, the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising (April 19, 1943), but this was problematic because the 15th of Nissan is the first day of Pesach (Passover). The date was moved to the 27th of Nisan, which is eight days before Yom Ha'atzma'ut, or Israeli Independence Day.
While many Orthodox Jews commemorate the Holocaust on Yom Hashoah, some in the Orthodox community remember the victims of the Holocaust on days of mourning declared by the rabbis before the Holocaust, such as Tisha b'Av in the summer, and the Tenth of Tevet, in the winter. It is interesting to note that Ismar Schorsch, former Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary (of the Conservative movement) held that Holocaust commemoration should take place on Tisha b'Av.
Most Jewish communities hold a solemn ceremony on this day, but there is no institutionalized ritual. Lighting memorial candles and reciting the Kaddish - the prayer for the departed - are common.
On the eve of Yom HaShoah in Israel, there is a state ceremony at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes Authority. At 10:00am on Yom HaShoah, throughout Israel, air-raid sirens are sounded for two minutes. During this time, people stop what they are doing and stand at attention; cars stop, even on the highways; and the whole country comes to a standstill as people pay silent tribute to the dead. On the eve of Yom HaShoah and the day itself, places of public entertainment are closed by law. Israeli television airs Holocaust documentaries and Holocaust-related talk shows, and low-key Hebrew and Yiddish songs are played on the radio. Flags on public buildings are flown at half mast.
Those Jews in the Diaspora who observe Yom HaShoah may observe it within the synagogue, as well as in the broader Jewish community. Commemorations range from synagogue services to communal vigils and educational programs. Many Yom HaShoah programs feature a talk by a Holocaust survivor, recitation of appropriate psalms, songs and readings, or viewing of a Holocaust-themed film. Some communities choose to emphasize the depth of loss that Jews experienced in the Holocaust by reading the names of Holocaust victims one after another -- dramatizing the unfathomable notion of six million deaths. Many Jewish schools also hold Holocaust-related educational programs on, or around, Yom HaShoah.
Also during this day, tens of thousands of Israeli high-school students, and thousands of Jews from around the world, hold a memorial service in Auschwitz, in what has become known as "The March of the Living," in defiance of the Holocaust Death Marches. This event is endorsed and subsidized by the Israeli Ministry of Education and the Holocaust Claims Conference, and is considered an important part of the school curriculum -- a culmination of several months of studies on World War II and the Holocaust.

Article and video by Shmaya
March 29, 2008

Never Again clip II

2008-07-30T16:28:00.000-07:00

Approximately 11 million people were killed because of Nazi genocidal policy. It was the explicit aim of Hitler's regime to create a European world both dominated and populated by the "Aryan" race. The Nazi machinery was dedicated to eradicating millions of people it deemed undesirable. Some people were undesirable by Nazi standards because of who they were,their genetic or cultural origins, or health conditions. These included Jews, Gypsies, Poles and other Slavs, and people with physical or mental disabilities. Others were Nazi victims because of what they did. These victims of the Nazi regime included Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, the dissenting clergy, Communists, Socialists, asocials, and other political enemies.

Those believed by Hitler and the Nazis to be enemies of the state were banished to camps. Inside the concentration camps, prisoners were forced to wear various colored triangles, each color denoting a different group. The letters on the triangular badges below designate the prisoners' countries of origin.

Thanks to http://fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/sitemap/sitemap.htm for the information of Holocaust victims

Indigenous Worldviews on T&R (Public Forum Vancouver)

2008-07-30T16:27:00.000-07:00

Nancy Morrison Residential School Survivor 1Nancy Morrison Residential School Survivor 1

2008-07-30T16:26:00.000-07:00

Relatives of disappeared children Canada 1

2008-07-30T16:23:00.001-07:00

Rwanda: Nadege and Caritas remember

2008-07-29T15:59:00.000-07:00

More than 800,000 people were murdered in 1994 during the Rwanda Genocide. Now two women who survived it tell their stories.

Gacaca Rwanda woman's testimony

2008-07-29T15:53:00.000-07:00

Clip from the documentary film "In the Tall Grass" which explore the work of gacaca is trying those accused of genocide.

Gacaca Rwanda "Growing Roses on a Bed of Skeletons"

2008-07-29T15:48:00.000-07:00

When the genocide breaks out in Rwanda in 1994, Gilbert's family, father, mother and young sister are killed. Along with 200 neighbours, they are attacked with hoes and then burned alive in a pit in his parent's back garden. This coming film follows what happens next...