North Shore students witness Human Rights Awareness Program in Peabody

PEABODY-Hundreds of high school students from across the North Shore sat in silence Monday morning as three genocide survivors spoke of their different, yet profoundly similar personal struggles for survival.The lecture was brought to Peabody Veterans Memorial High School by The Holocaust Center Boston North as part of its 18th Annual Human Rights Awareness Program. This year?s event featured keynote speakers Sayon Soeun, Claude Kaitare and Sonia Weitz of the Cambodian Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide and the Holocaust, respectively.When Soeun was six years old, he and his childhood friend often played in rice fields not too far from his home in Cambodia. On one particular day, he noticed a military truck full of kids that appeared to be enjoying themselves. Curiosity got the best of Soeun and his friend, and they, too jumped on board for what they thought would be an adventurous day trip. What he didn?t know is that it would be the last day he saw his friends or family.Soeun found himself forced into military action. By the age of 10, he was a full-blown child soldier and an expert on firearms, such as AK-47s, M-16s, grenade launchers, and even Uzis.?I was trained to kill,” he said, although noting that he was fortunate enough to have never been selected to execute someone. “I became immune. ?I thought it was normal.”It wasn?t until 1979 when the current regime fell apart and Soeun was transported to a refugee camp. In 1983, at the age of 15, he was adopted by a Connecticut family and brought to the United States.?It?s difficult to talk about,” he explained because of the vivid flashbacks. “But, the more I talk, the more I heal myself.”Kaitare?s story began on April 6, 1994 when the president of Rwanda was assassinated. His family?s lives were immediately put at risk because they were Tutsis, the ethnic group believed to be behind the death of the country?s Hutu leader. The two groups were already politically at odds with one another, but the president?s death quickly turned friends into enemies.Nearly 8 million people were murdered by the militia over a 100-day period. Kaitare witnessed one Tutsi man get beaten at a road block, then dragged for miles along a cobblestone road to the nearest market, where he was later shot to death.Kaitare and his immediate family were kept safe by hiding indoors for more than three weeks. They were then taken to a refugee camp, where they remained until it was safe for them to travel back home. About a year later, an aunt living in the United States adopted him and his siblings. His father stayed in Rwanda.Weitz took to the stage last, and perhaps drew the most silence and even a few tears from those in the audience. Her personal poems pulled at heart strings as she described sneaking out of her concentration camp barracks to where he father was located and slow dancing with him in the night as a fellow prisoner quietly played the harmonica. It would be one of the last times she saw him.Weitz declares September 1939 – when the Germans invaded her homeland of Poland – as “the beginning of the end.”?Not all the victims were Jews,” she explained. “But all Jews were victims.”Out of a family of 84, Weitz, who was 11 years old at the time, and her older sister were the only survivors. Most were killed by gunfire in the center of their small towns. Her mother and father, however, were killed in camp after the Nazis determined they were no longer useful alive.Weitz and her sister remained in camps for three years after the war was over because, like many other Jews, they simply had nowhere to go. Eventually, they found an uncle in Peabody who offered up his home.?We survived with a sense of humor,” she quipped. “My sister once said the Germans finally lost the war because we were the ones building their planes.”Those in the audience were encouraged to be vigilant and speak up when they see such injustices.?Demand an end to man?s inhumanity to man,” said Mayor Michael Bonfanti.?Every person can make a d