Dan Snow's History Hit - Survivors of Genocide

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

For Holocaust Memorial Day Dan talks to people who have experienced and survived genocide. Four guests from four different parts of the world. Sophie Masereka, Ruth Barnett, Kemal Pervanic, Sokphal Din all share their traumatic experiences. All of them lost their loved ones. All of them are brave enough to speak out, driven by the belief that memorialisation and education may stop the next genocide. 

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. This episode is being broadcast on the 27th of January 2021. That is 76

years to the day since Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp, the largest death camp, was liberated by the Red Army. It was decided by a special session of the United Nations General Assembly that this day would henceforth be remembered as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, remembering the tragedy of the Holocaust that occurred during the Second World War in which six million Jews at least and around 11 million other people were killed by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. You'll be hearing later in the week a podcast which remembers some of the other groups that were targeted by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. You'll be hearing later in the week a podcast which remembers some of the other groups that were targeted by the Nazis. People of colour, Romani and homosexuals, for example. But on this podcast, we're going to hear from a range of people who have themselves been caught up in genocide. Pretty disturbing podcast, this one, just want to warn

you. It's pretty difficult to listen to some of these descriptions. We've got Saqpal Din. He's a Cambodian survivor of the genocide there. We've got Sophie Mazareka. She's a survivor of Rwanda. We've got Ruth Barnett, who escaped from Germany on the Kindertransport, but his entire family were then killed in Germany. And we've got Karol Pomović, who survived a Bosnian camp. I recorded this podcast years ago, and a very enterprising teacher at a West London school called Andy Lawrence invited me to meet these survivors. He's made it a lifelong ambition of his teaching to expose the young people under his care to stories of genocide survivors, and he's achieved remarkable things. This podcast originally went out years ago,

but I always think it's worth repeating because it's so powerful. As I say, there will be another podcast this week to mark this annual event. We do have lots of Holocaust-related material. The story of Jan Pilecki, for example, the remarkable man who volunteered to go into Auschwitz, that's all available at historyhit.tv. If you head over there, it's still January. Use the code JANUARY and you get a massive discount. So please head over there, it's still January, use the code January and you get a

massive discount. So please head over and check that out. In the meantime, here are four remarkable genocide survivors. So we're sitting here in the theatre at Hampton School. I'm joined by four very remarkable people. Why don't you introduce yourselves? Let's start with you, Sokpal. Could you say who you are and very briefly, the reason you're here? I am Sokpal Dinh, the survivor of the genocide killing field in Cambodia. And I've been here to share my story with the students about the atrocity, the killing field, with my experience in the killing field, and with my experience in the killing field. And we'll be hearing more about that if you can bear to talk about it in a

second, but let's introduce Sophie. Hello, my name is Sophie Masereka. I'm here for the third time to make awareness of Rwanda genocide, where I survived from 1994. Ruth. I'm Ruth Barnett. I came to England on the Kindertransport in 1939 at the age of four with my seven-year-old brother. And although I was repatriated to Germany, I couldn't take it when I was 14 in 1949

and I've lived in England ever since. I am Kamal Pervenic. I'm a survivor of the Bosnian War and I'm here because I participate in a lot of educational projects such as this one taking place today at Hampton School. Well, it's so incredible to meet you all and it's a wonderful opportunity because you're all prepared to talk about what you've been through to get the audience out there to appreciate not just the World War II genocide that many of us think about, but of course the more recent ones.

I mean, let's start with you, Sofval. The killing fields. Briefly, what was your experience? What did you go through during that Cambodian genocide under Pol Pot? It's very hard to describe and for everyone, the audience, to imagine and to understand or to believe. At the young age of 17, as a young teenager, and living in Phnom Penh in the city and I never been working hard labor anything but over 24 hours

my life changed completely we forced out of the house at the gunpoint on the morning on the 17th of April 1975 since then I never go back and to see my house again we just forced out of the house, of the city,

and worked hard labour in the farm and the rice paddy in the forest, in the jungle. So this life experience is difficult to describe, how horrible, completely changing my life completely because it gave me a bit more experience and learned from that lesson from the killing field made me more understand what life is all about and made me a stronger person as well.

It's remarkable to hear you say that. Of your close social set, your family, extended family, friends, how many survived that genocide by the time the Vietnamese invaded and brought it to an end? Not many. Most of my relatives, some families, my uncle, the whole family wiped out. A few families all completely wiped out. The mother, father, all the children, some of them got sick children, doesn't exist anymore, all gone. But the conditions in the rural location where you were sent to work, a lot of the time people were sent there to be worked to death,

but you managed to survive? Because I'm still having hope in my mind. The one thing I would like to say is never give up your hope. At the time, yes, it was hard with disease, starvation, malaria, everything, but I still have hope in my heart to say one day someone will drop from the sky, someone somewhere come to rescue us. That's my hope. That's why I survived. It's my hope. And how many members of your family were you there with and did they survive?

No, I had my mother, two brothers, one sister and my grandma with me. We lived in one place, in one little hut in the jungle. All the rest is spread across the jungle. So one by one, we heard the news that my auntie died and then my cousin died. All the rest keep dying and all dead, except my lost one, my brother and my grandmother in the jungle with me.

They all live with me and that's it. Only four of us left. My mother, myself, my brother and sister, we came to England in 1987 by Red Cross. And all the rest, all dead, gone. Sophie, just what happened to you once Rwanda descended into total chaos in 1934? descended into total chaos in 1984?

I would say that genocide began even before 1994. It began when I was born, and I found myself discriminated. When you don't have education, that's genocide itself. I was discriminated to go for the education. My father, who was educated, he was not privileged to get a better job like the others. And when the actual genocide started in 1994, we were being killed like fries. We were not considered at all. We were killed badly. They didn't consider us like human. Women being raped prior to being killed.

Children, innocent children being killed. Old people. It wasn't easy, but seeing today that Rwanda had become a better place to live, I really thank God and also feeling sorry for those who suffered at the time. We've talked a little bit before the recording started about how you survived and you say it was a miracle. Was your family not as lucky as you were? For me, it looks like God wanted me to live

so that I'd be alive today to tell the story. I wasn't better than them. I was supposed to die like them. I was on the risk to die like them. But miracles were happening for me to be alive. Ruth, a different experience for you. I came from Berlin. My parents got me a place on the Kindertransport.

10,000 children came to England on the Kindertransport. 10,000 children came to England on the Kindertransport. So I escaped the Nazi determination to cleanse the whole of Europe of Jews and gypsies. A million and a half children did not get a chance of rescue and were murdered. Were you, I mean, are you aware of the impact on the wider family or were lots of people able to escape or were you almost unique in that being so lucky? My father, who was Jewish, escaped and survived in Shanghai in China and came back to Germany. My mother, who was Christian, German, Aryan, stayed in Germany but had the worst time of the four of us and never was able to talk about it. Other relatives I never knew because I was only four when I came to England, but I think the wider family perished in the camps.

Kamal, what's your story? Well, I was very unlucky that history knocked on my door and that I ended up in concentration camps. And, you know, my story is nothing new. If you go back in time, you hear exactly the same stories or exactly the same story from so many other survivors and I'm just very privileged and very lucky to be here today because in this kind of situation to survive you just need that small bit of luck and I was given or I received that small bit of luck. Can I ask a little bit more? What side of the ethnic, national, religious divide did you find yourself in and how badly did that rip apart your community? Was it a mixed community where you were living? Well, my community was a mixed community, even though I lived in a

Muslim village. But when I went to school, no one made any difference between ourselves. And I was taken to the first camp, the Amarska camp, only because my persecutors identified me as a Bosnian Muslim. But I used to identify myself as a Yugoslav, so no one even asked me what my identity was. and this is actually when we analyze more you know with more information like this then we realize that what happened in bosnia was genocide and how were you able to survive your months long internment in these camps well many people in the camp ask themselves, why is this going on? I didn't ask any such questions. I just wanted to survive. So my survival instinct kicked in. I was young. I wanted to live.

I wanted to see my parents and my elder brother again. I was just so hungry of life. That's interesting that all of you have mentioned that survival is about your own outlook as well, your own, well, I don't know, is optimism the right word? I don't know, but a belief that you're going to get through. Do you think, do you put that down to the reason that you were able to survive and many others weren't so far? Well, I would say myself, I keep praying every day and I have my hope. And when my grandmother died, I keep praying to her soul and spirit to come to help me and protect me. What I believe in someone up there, out there would help you.

And whatever you suffer today, maybe you just pay your time, whatever in the past as a Buddhism practice. Maybe you just pay your time, whatever, in the past as a Buddhist practice. But at the end of the day, if you feel you're still having hope and being positive and try to fight, try to survive, then that will be all right. You have to believe in yourself that one day someone will help you and your hope, never give up your hope. That's what I believe. Did you ever give up hope, Sophie?

I didn't know I would survive. I was waiting any minute any minute I was waiting I didn't know I would survive and Ruth you've you've spoken I think yeah a positive outlook um you certainly had to have luck and I had luck in the form of a place on the Kindertransport. But you also had to know how to use that luck. And I think a positive attitude to want to live was also very important. And attitude to other people, valuing other people. And attitude to other people, valuing other people.

From all the research of the Holocaust, those who found somebody to be with, to talk with, to support each other, were more able to use their lucky break than those who hadn't, those who were totally alone. It strikes me you guys are all living, breathing reasons to engage with our history and tell the stories from our past. You're all spokespeople for genocide awareness. Does it fill you with dread when you think of young people not engaging with history and not studying the kind of things that you guys have all lived through? Let's start with Kamal. When we talk about formal education, I think history is the most important subject

because it has the most influence on us. Maths, physics, geography haven't got the same influence. And I think we need to expose young people to these stories, not because I survived these things myself. Even if I didn't have these experiences, I would still believe that, you know, we need to have this awareness of what we as individuals are capable of doing.

Because I say the things that happened to me were not committed by some monsters. They were committed by the people from my own community, by my former schoolmates, former neighbors, former teachers. And it has actually taught me that, you know, I also have this capacity for evil. And history, I say history can teach us so much. But we haven't got enough history in our classrooms yeah i mean i'm i find that but about your story particularly extraordinary that so they were you you you absolutely knew your person you know in the case of sophie her persecutors had been distanced through culture and propaganda from her but in your case they were they were actually friends of yours i recognized most of the people who attacked the village and i recognized

most of the people who died who god did the camp so i went to school with one of them and we had a fight in the school playground and that was a reason for him to kill me in the camp. I was very lucky he didn't do that. But we had a number of instances where, let's say in this situation, former students killed their teachers. I was interrogated by one of my favorite teachers, but you had instances where a really bad student suddenly recognized his former teacher and it was his opportunity to exact some kind of revenge you know not some kind actually killing his former teacher come out what has to be put in place for that kind of extreme behavior to come out i mean does it have to be a breakdown that everyone has to become traumatized? That's a total breakdown when people can start dragging people out and killing them. I mean,

you know, you've studied this, you've talked about it, you've studied history, what conditions have to be in place for that kind of behavior to come out? Well, whenever we have a war situation, there's never a shortage of willing recruits to start torturing and killing people. Sometimes some ordinary people are forced to participate in this, but this is why we have to work on prevention before such events happen, and to make sure that the rule of law applies to every single person. Because once we descend into this sort of violence

then everything becomes possible unimaginable unimaginable becomes possible my teacher became an interrogator and a torture sending people to their deaths if there was no war i believe my teacher would be still alive still being equally popular at the same school where he taught me so far the Cambodian genocide, famously, the villages to which you were sent, the rural areas, there was a lot of cruelty to the urban people like you. Did you see both sides of human behaviour? Did you see cruelty? Did you see great kindness as well?

Well, I can tell you what happened in Cambodia is the people split into class. One is they really hated the capitalism and they just kind of hatred and revenge, claimed the victory to kill all the people who were educated, who are different class from them. These kind of the people who uneducated, who are different class from them. These kind of the people who uneducated, the peasant one, because you just get jealous and resentful with the view successful because you have a better life from them.

And the influence from the people behind them to support them with the weapons and everything. And those people are completely new to me because I was born in the city. But most of my family who came from the villages or province, they went back to the area where they were born, they were born in their home place and things. They were killed by their own people, the villagers' people, because they know your background.

They just killed you because they just hate you. That's one thing. And to learn about this experience, this history thing, it happened before and before and before. We have to spread the word and give all the young generation the education and tell them what happened to prevent this happen again. It could happen to anywhere in the world. We don't know. Luckily, we got all this technology, so anything happen to another country, we knew straight away.

But where it happened to myself in the killing field, four and a half years, no news from anybody. There's no one come to help us at all. We've been tortured, killed, and one one by one right in front of me some of them just hate you to kill you just just for the pleasure so what can you do and everyone have to bow down for them to kill not even fight back or to defend yourself you're just completely powerless for them just tortured you and kill you that's's it, yeah. Did you know the people, Sophie, that attacked your family, your community?

Yeah, there were our neighbors, people who worked with my brothers, my fathers. We knew them very well. Why did they do it? They were instructed to do it from the top government. They didn't have to obey instructions. This is what the Nazis all claimed. We were only obeying orders.

It's not true. It's not true. It's a choice. They used to have training. They were trained to kill. Yeah. The day they began, they had all the training to do anything. And they were told how bad we are. They were told how we are snakes.

So when you kill a snake, you hit it, you cut it. No mercy. I mean, this is a question now for everybody. Is it possible, have you guys found the ability to forgive, to perhaps understand as Sophie has done? Before we go on to forgiveness, which is a hugely important issue, can I just finish off the issue of where does this killing begin? Because I think it begins with people considering themselves superior to other people. And it is there right throughout human society,

the desire, the need, the encouragement to think of yourself as superior to chosen other people as targets, as inferior. And we need to overcome this. I think history is enormously important, but I think understanding human behavior, psychology, is even more important. And I've written a book called Love, Hate and Indifference, The Slide into Genocide. Where there isn't enough love at the beginning of experiencing love and therefore being able to give love. It just escalates. If we don't overcome it at its very roots and get people in the education system,

from the start of education in nursery and infant school, to listen to each other, to talk with each other, to understand each other, that's the only possible way forward, but we don't do it. We focus on the exam league tables in this country and all over Europe and pretty much the world. We overvalue financial and academic achievement at the cost of emotional development? When the new government took over, they gave up tribes before genocide.

There were tribes. So the president said, no, everyone was the same. That was the beginning of forgiveness. And even those who were killing, he said, come back home and go back to your properties. That was forgiveness. There's nothing much we can show that we forgive them. No revenge. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit.

I'm talking to four survivors of genocide. More after this. Land a Viking longship on island shores. scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer.

Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. history hits. There are new episodes every week. explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold.

It must be hard, this issue of revenge and forgiveness. I know in Cambodia, when I went there, there's huge bitterness. There's still members of Pol Pot's government in power now, still ministers. And yet, have you found it able to forgive? Have you found it able to move on? That question I always answer, that I never forgive them because what happened in Cambodia is from the Cambodian people who've been well-educated, the Cambodian leader of the government,

and they just changed their brain and just wanted to torture and kill everybody just for their own power because they became like got all the power and to do what they want, dictator. And even those now, they are still in the government, still running the country, but nobody dare to say anything.

Even we found the head of the prisoner, and we spent millions for the court case about the genocide, but nothing done about it. He still get away, sleep in a nice house, comfortable life. And the people still suffer, nothing they can do about it. Like myself, I lost my properties in Cambodia, many, many places that my parents owned, and without business, everything, I never could not claim back.

I live in England. I left everything behind. That's why I say to everyone, England is my home, is my life. I spend my life more than I spend in Cambodia. I spent here 29 years. I left Cambodia when I was about 17, 18, in the jungle. So those years is a well experience for me, and I learned from that. I want to tell the young generation about be aware.

Just like Ruchia said before, that this cycle, you've got everything material in the world, everything one, the same. You don't share the love and respect and care for each other. That's what genocide happened. When you saw many people, different class, different type of people, that's what happened when they start hating people

with each other. How about you, Kamal? How do you deal? You go back to Bosnia a lot. You must have forgiven. You find that you can go there and walk the streets without wanting to kill people and have your revenge?

Well, when you experience this sort of violence, it's really, for some people, it's even too hard to think about forgiveness because actually you become the center of the whole world because of your own trauma. So hopefully one day we reach the point in our lives where we realize, well, these things don't happen just to me. When we look back in history, these things have been happening ever since the men started to walk.

So when I was in the camps, I wanted to survive. And I thought, well, one day I will get out. And these things will be happening to some other people as well. Unfortunately, it's true. And I think I was able to forgive when I realized, well, I am not the only person in this world. And what happened to me was just one event in my life. It was a significant event. But there is no recipe for everyone.

I can only talk about myself and my own experiences. But I honestly believe that without forgiveness, there is no future. Because if we are not prepared to forgive, And there is no future. Because if we are not prepared to forgive, then I think, bizarrely, we who survived, you know, genocides start perpetuating violence that can, at some point in the future, lead to new genocides. Ruth, when I look at you, I think of my own four-year-old daughter

and I think of our happy life and, you know, the idea of it all being torn up and then sending her across Europe and me going to Shanghai. Have you found able to forgive the people that did that to your family when you were so young? I was never aware of the people who did that to my family. I was only aware of my family. And, of course, it was my parents who sent me away. That's all that a four-year-old can understand. I experienced being sent away as rubbish, being a bad girl, not wanted. And therefore, I had to find a way of forgiving my parents. I knew in my head, cognitively, that they had saved my life. But at the same time, I had to battle with the experience of being sent away.

And then, when I was able to get there and forgive my parents, I had to forgive myself for ever blaming them. So it was a hard road to forgive myself. And I see forgiveness as mainly a task that every individual has to do inside themselves. I do not feel responsible to forgive people who have not immediately, directly hurt me, particularly if they have not owned the crime and regretted it. Then I think they're entitled to forgiveness. But that is not what happens on the whole. And I focus my energy and my time and thinking into what an unforgiving law we have, even in this country. Punishment is, in my view, retaliation.

Punishment is, in my view, retaliation. And sending people to prison is nothing short of state vengeance. And it doesn't work. It's been proved not to work and that restorative justice has much more chance of helping people to reach a stage of owning and regretting their crime and then doing something to put it right. I think we should delete the concept of punishment from our functioning and replace it with consequences. Consequences that are not primarily punitive. consequences that are not primarily punitive. And that is what I think is behind the violence that ultimately leads to genocide. Sophie, you travel back to Rwanda. Are you able to forgive the people who did this to your family? And have you actually seen the individuals who did it? I came across to meet one when I was called to go and accuse them.

I went, but I didn't accuse them. I told the panel that I'm not going to choose to do what you want because I had committed myself not to do, to revenge, not to hurt them if I survive. So up to now, nobody has come to ask me to forgive them because they are not seen. But again, even if I see them, I can't hurt them or do bad to them.

Can I just say something very quickly? For me, it's really tragic to see so many survivors, not just from my own community, not being able to move on. We use this expression, you know, to move on. And I think it's only because we are unable to forgive because a lot of the time we think of the perpetrator when we talk about forgiveness.

So in a way, we remain shackled to our perpetrator and to our past. So when we reach the point where we can forgive genuinely, then we let go of that past and we give ourselves a new lease of life. And you've said, even though you spent, how many months were you in these camps? Well, I was detained in two camps for seven months, but time in the camps was different from this time. Because if you know that somebody may kill you in the next two minutes and it's like that's all the time, then time has a completely different significance.

And how many times a day or how often do you think about your seven months in those camps now well if i'm doing some work like today then i'm talking about it and obviously i'm thinking about that but it's really really important to me to to live my life as fully as possible to to do other things you know to appreciate art to go and watch the water flowing or you know um it's it's hard to go and watch the water flowing or, you know, it's really, really important not to feel guilty because I survived. Sophie Houghton, do you think about what you went through in Rwanda? Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History,

we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer whether you're preparing for assassin's creed shadows or fascinated by history and great stories listen to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week douglas adams the genius behind theitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit.

Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Yeah, what I went through in Rwanda during genocide,

it's a lesson for me and for others to learn from. And I was impressed with children here. After hearing my story, the feedback they gave me, they said it's good to know all this because we need to improve the future. I'm not dwelling what happened in the past, and I want to move on. As you said, there is no need to think of those who did.

Because when you think what they did, it is not them. It happened, they were like animals. So if you go back in the past, you will not move on in life. You will remain those days instead of moving on. But you said you have nightmares quite a lot. Yes, I do. Maybe I will, I'm

not prepared to forgive them because they still exist in Cambodia and they never brought to trial, you know trial what happened to do and I didn't have a chance to ask the question why did you do it but the nightmare the nightmare

is most every night the more you get older you've got plenty of time to think about the past and try to memorise what happened some memory is nice memory, some is not nice memory, it's like a nightmare. Like I've been caught,

stuck in somewhere by the pole port and I couldn't find a way out of it. And when you woke up, you just panic and sweat and you know, panic and scare all the time. No, it's sorry.

It's not for me to yeah. No, it's... Sorry. Sorry. It's not for me to judge anyone, but it's really dangerous for survivors to play the judge or the prosecutor. So we have to actually think about these issues like human beings, not to try to play politicians or experts in law. Otherwise, we never move on from, you know, well, not from our past, because this is just one part of our past. It's really unfortunate when we start identify our whole lives with just one element of our past. A while back, Kemal introduced the

A while back, Kemal introduced the idea of guilt. And I think this is as important as forgiveness because it is usually a part of trauma that the person being persecuted and traumatized feels guilty, that they must be in some way responsible and guilty for it happening. And I think this needs to be much more known about and explored. I live with a million and a half children who were murdered because they were not rescued from the Holocaust. They're always there in the back of my mind, and I always think that we have lost some great scientists, musicians, people who would have made much better use of the chance to be rescued than I ever can, And that drives me. But it drives me in a direction of getting people to think and talk, hopefully usefully.

But I think we need to pay more attention to guilt that gets to be part of the victim's experience rather than the people who are doing the bad things, the atrocities? What I'm saying is that I can't forgive them because I have so many reasons, and I'm not taking this as my personal matter, but what I cannot forgive, the person who took my father away, lied to us that he could be retrained, brainwashed and come back again. We never see him coming back.

I'm wondering what happened to my father. Would they kill him somewhere, execute him somewhere? At least I want to know. And those murderers who are responsible for that crime should exist in Cambodia. None of them say sorry or apologise or nothing. They're still stood there in power. That's why I said I'd never forgive them.

I want the world to take them to court and find justice and want him to confess why he did it. I want to know why he did it. When you guys look, 2016 has been a difficult year in many ways. We've got Trump in America. We've had a rising nationalism, I think it's fair to say, in Europe. We've seen communities demonized. The rhetoric is being ratcheted up, I think, even in Europe.

And Marine Le Pen is doing well in France. And we see people doing well in Holland and Austria and Poland. As survivors who've been through the things you've been in, do things make you nervous at the moment, Ruth? Well, certainly it raises anxiety, the issues you've just talked about. But I challenge people to look at it from a different standpoint. Before the Holocaust, it was simply victor's justice. The Holocaust led to the Nuremberg trials,, which was a milestone where some perpetrators were tried so that the world could know. That was the beginning and it led to two new crimes that are indictable to bring people to justice.

that are indictable to bring people to justice, the crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide. We're not able to use it at the moment because of sovereign immunity allows genocidal leaders of countries to sit in comfort, untouchable because of sovereign immunity. But this has the crimes which are there on the statute book in international criminal law are now being supported by R2P, Responsibility to Protect, which I find very few people know anything about yet, though there's masses of information on the internet about it.

I see this as a really hopeful sign, the question who is responsible for protecting each and every person alive on this planet. Ruth, I campaigned for responsibility to protect in 2005. There is no mechanism to enforce the government of this country to intervene in Syria on behalf of Syrians. Why do we think in terms of force? The whole ambience of R2P is to find ways that are not violent and forceful. And I think they will,

if enough people are determined to think and protest without violence, I think we have a chance of getting there. Well, going back to your question, I think we live in frightening times. We are not seeing the rise of nationalism. We are seeing the rise of fascism. And it's happening in European Union. It's happening in France. It's happening in Hungary.

It's happening in Bulgaria, where we have unregulated militias chasing and persecuting migrants from the Middle East, I say we live in a glass house right now. And I also want to believe that there is a solution to the current situation. I just can't see it right now because our leaders are not willing to even think of some alternatives to the current situation. We have to get different leaders. When you see Trump speaking out on the news,

you see some of these events in Europe, and we hear that there's been a rise in hate crime here in the UK since the summer. Does that make you feel nervous, Sophie? Yeah, it does. But I have hope that there will be less crime in the future. I don't know. But the way I see how children are into learning all this and wanting to improve the future.

I don't see them ordering to organize genocides the way I see them responding. I don't know whether in the past such education has been. such education has been. Yes, the world is becoming worse and worse, but the way I see people like you making awareness and educating children, I can see the future is going to be better. Well, thank you very much, everyone, for sharing your stories and your thoughts. And Kamal, I thought you put it beautifully earlier. I can see the future is going to be better. Well, thank you very much, everyone,

for sharing your stories and your thoughts. And Kamal, I thought you put it beautifully earlier. History came knocking on your door. And I think too often people listening to this podcast and me and all of us, we think history is the Spanish Armada and we think it's the Palace of Versailles and we think it's Julius Caesar. But history is the things that have happened to all you four.

History thinks it happened to all of us, everyone listening to this every single day. History is what we're living right now. All of us. So thank you for giving us the most powerful reminder of that. Thank you. Thank you for giving us all the opportunity to talk about it today and hope

our voice will be broadcast and everyone will be listening to it. It's not a nice story to listen but it's an experience. Share of the people like yourself and all the survivors to the world. This is the hope for the future. Five of us sitting together and talking and listening to each other. Thank you very much, Cass. Thank you. Hi everyone, just a quick message at the end of this podcast.

I'm currently sheltering in a small windswept building on a piece of rock in the Bristol Channel called Lundy. I'm here to make a podcast. I'm here enduring weather that frankly is apocalyptic because I want to get some great podcast material for you guys. In return, I've got a little tiny favour to ask. If you could go to wherever you get your podcasts, if you could give it a five-star rating,

if you could share it, if you could give it a review, I'd really appreciate that. Then from the comfort of your own homes, you'll be doing me a massive favour. Then more people will listen to the podcast, we can do more and more ambitious things, and I can spend more of my time getting pummeled. Thank you. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit.

Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm

slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. you