31 Mar 06 –
Holocaust survivors last week praised ‘Shooting Dogs’, the new BBC feature film set in the Rwandan genocide, after joining the stars to view it at the UK Premiere. (Pictured, left to right: Beatha Uwazaninka, Rwandan genocide survivor; Trude Levi, Auschwitz survivor; Actor John Hurt, star of ‘Shooting Dogs’.)
“It was incredibly moving, very powerful, and beautifully done,” commented Auschwitz survivor Trude Levi. “I was so impressed by it.”
“I empathised and was greatly moved,” said fellow Auschwitz survivor Roman Halter, whose son, Ardyn, created the stained-glass windows that today adorn the genocide memorial centre in Kigali, created by the Aegis Trust and modelled on the UK Holocaust Centre. “I sat there, remembering the atrocities which were committed against the Jewish people, and felt saddened that such murder and killing can go on so many years after the Holocaust. It is a film that ought to be seen by everybody, because this is a lesson that humanity has to learn in order to progress.”
“Shooting Dogs’ was made by talented people who approached the subject with humility, and it captures the reality of what happened,” says Rwandan genocide survivor Beatha Uwazaninka. “I wanted this film to be made and I willingly took part as an extra, despite the memories. When I talk to groups in the UK to explain what happened it is hard to describe, but this film give pictures to what I am trying to say.”
Holocaust film to receive first screening in Rwanda
Sidney Bernstein’s documentary on the liberation of Belsen, ‘A Painful Reminder’, will screen in Rwanda for the first time later this week during events to commemorate the start of the 1994 genocide, which began on 7 April. It will be shown at the Kigali Memorial Centre by Jane Wells, Bernstein’s daughter. Herself a film producer, she is now working on a documentary about the genocidal crisis in Darfur, western Sudan, where since 2003, 250,000 Africans have been killed by Arab Militia and Government forces, simply because they are black.
“I’m thrilled that Bernstein’s film will be shown in Kigali,” says Beatha. “When I first came to the Holocaust Centre and saw the film, I was moved to tears, and I hoped that one day audiences in Rwanda would have the chance to see it. All I knew of the Holocaust before then was from school in 1990, when some of our classmates wore the Nazi symbol, saying they would do to us what Hitler did to the Jews.”
Aegis has arranged for Belsen survivor John Fransman to speak at the film’s screening in Kigali and take part in the commemorations, along with a survivor from Darfur.
