November 16, 2024 • 24 mins
Journalist and Editor Elizabeth Mehren, is the author of I Lived to Tell the World, the compelling and inspiring profiles of men and women who have endured unthinkable cruelty. Their experiences not only humanize the atrocities often seen in headlines, but also convey a universal message of courage, hope and gratitude.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is What's at Risk with Mike Christian on WBZ
Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hi, Mike Christian, here of What's at Risk. First up
on tonight's show, we have an encore performance of What's
at Risk with journalist and editor Elizabeth Marin. She is
the author of I Live to Tell the World, the
compelling and inspiring profiles of men and women who have
endured unthinkable cruelty. Their experiences not only humanize the atrocities
(00:32):
often seen in headlines, but also convey a universal message
of courage, hope, and gratitude. And in our second segment,
we welcome Reverend Liz Walker, founder of the Can We
Talk Network, and Joy Allen, chair of Berkeley School of
Music Therapy Department. Liz and Joy discuss music and the
(00:55):
arts in the context of violence and trauma, How it heals,
how it connect communities, how it can unlock inner resilience
and help people find joy in the wake of tragedy,
All informed by the latest science on how the arts
impacts mental health. Elizabeth Maron is a writer, editor, and
(01:16):
educator based in Portland, Oregon. After working at The Washington Post,
she became a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times
and later spent a decade on the faculty at Boston University.
Miron earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at UC Berkeley and
has written for national magazines, appeared on television and radio,
(01:38):
and received awards for teaching and journalism. I Live to
Tell the World is her fifth book. Okay, we're here
with journalists. Elizabeth Marin, author of I Live to Tell
(01:58):
the World. Stories from survivor of Holocaust, genocide, and the
atrocities of war. Thanks for being with us, Elizabeth.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Well, maybe a good place to start would be for
you to tell our listeners a little bit about your background.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
As you said, I'm a journalist. I kind of thought
when I was a little girl, I thought I would
be a writer, meaning Jane Austen, but instead I became
Lois Lane. So I've spent most of my life as
a newspaper reporter, and then I my longest tenure was
at the Los Angeles Times as a national correspondent, and
then I worked as a professor of journalism at Boston University.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
And then I saw that with your EU experience, you
were part of the global health storytelling program that intrigued
me a little bit. What was that?
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah, well, actually it was poor women. Me and three others,
two professors from the School of Public Health and two
us from the College of Communication. We started literally, we
started with a meeting at Starbucks because we realized that
the public health students had this wealth of material, but
they didn't know how to tell stories, and the journalism
(03:05):
students were scared to death of numbers and data and
didn't really know how to process data. So we thought
we would launch a program where we could integrate the
two colleges and get them together. What we did we
got a grant from the Bill and melindig then Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation, and we took a group of
(03:26):
students to western Kenya where we worked with students from
a university there in Bondo Town, very close to the
Uganda border on Lake Victoria, and we set out at
that time our first project was to do reporting on
foreign aid from the point of view of the recipients
(03:47):
as opposed to those who distributed in the bureaucrats. So
we had a very very successful outing on that mission.
On that and from that we developed a curriculum and
that became the Global Health Storytelling program there and it's continuing.
It's a vibrant and I just was their last spring
and taught a glass there. It's terrific.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, that's great meaningful. To get the grant from the
Gates Foundation.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Too, it was pretty important. Yeah, we were pretty proud
of that.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
So what inspired you to pursue these stories, which I'm
sure difficult to tell, and to put this book together
with these stories of Holocaust, genocide and atrocities of war.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Well, soon after I arrived in Portland, Oregon a little
less than ten years ago, I began working with a
nonprofit here called The Immigrant Story. It's the Immigrant Story
dot org. And the purpose was to sort of detoxify
the national conversation around immigration by presenting profiles of immigrants
in daily life, kind of normalizing things and because at
(04:52):
that point it was pretty strident and pretty angry and
difficult to listen to. And I was very happy because
I got to work with students from a lot of
the universities in the Northwest, and so it brought out
the professor Liz and Man. I was very happy about that.
You know, we came to this country speaking only Tamil
and of course that two master's degrees, one in physics
and one in some kind of engineering that I don't understand,
(05:14):
and PhD and Materials science engineering whatever that is from Purdue.
And so you know, he knew about this stuff firsthand.
And he's very charismatic. He has a sort of raising
our hand saying, of course, I'll work for you for free.
And one day he said, you know, I need you
to go out and do some stories. So we were
(05:36):
working in a partnership with the Oregon Jewish Museum and
Center for Holocaust Education on an exhibit which ultimately ran
for about a year there on survivors. So my first
interview that I went out to do was with a
couple who had survived the Holocaust in Hungary, and I
was kind of mesmerized. I went to their house in
(06:00):
a suburb of Portland. She bade these incredible pastries, and
we sat and talked for hours and hours and hours,
and it was very immersive, and I found myself feeling
very involved in their story. I was struck from the
beginning about their complete absence of anger or bitterness. They
(06:22):
really just wanted to tell the story the important thing,
and by that time she was in her eighties, he
was about close, he was about ninety, and they had
really not told the stories for a long time because
they'd been living their lives. This is a rich piece
of information, and I began to feel these were very
worthy stories. And as we sort of accumulated more and
(06:47):
more of them at the Immigrant Story, we realized it
was a body of material of great value because they
humanized some of the kind of grand global events since
World War Two, starting with World War two and onto
the present indeed into events that are taking place, conflicts
(07:08):
that are occurring right now.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
I can look at the dialogue today in our country
about immigrants and understand the fear and the focus on
immigrants and the negative reaction to them. But how did
you take that link from immigrants to telling these stories.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Well, all of the survivors that we've profiled and now
at the Immigrant Story, we've profiled about sixty different survivors
from nineteen different conflicts in sixteen different countries, and they're
all on the website. So they are all immigrants to
begin with. They're living in this country, and I think
that's one of the points is that they're living among us,
(07:42):
that these are our neighbors. These are people who shop
at Costco with us, and we just felt they were
stories that needed to be told. At the time that
I was doing them, I recognized that they were pretty timeless.
But they've turned out to be very, very timely.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah, and so that makes sense the fact that they
are amongst us here in our country. How did you
find all these people? Did it just one lead to
another or is it a purposeful seeking out of different
people that you had researched.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
It was a little of both. We worked with a
lot of the refugee agencies in Oregon, so we had
to put bookends on this somehow. So we just we
decided that everyone needed to be within living in Oregon.
Although truth business is completely replicable, it could be told anywhere.
And we also wanted to make sure all the stories
(08:31):
could be validated. And we want a diversity of gender
and age and also geopolitical diversity. We wanted a lot
of big range of stories. So we worked with refugee
agencies and then there was a lot of word of mouth.
You know, we'd be talking to someone and they'd say, well,
you should talk to so and so, and then you
should talk to so and so I mean, for example,
(08:53):
that was how we have two Cambodian genocide survivors profiled
in a book. And the first one, he was a
really extraordinary woman who spent the better part of five
years trying to escape from Cambodia under Paul Pot and
I spent Mother's Day with her. One day, we spent
about six hours together. It was pretty stunning. And then
(09:14):
followed that up with more and she connected us with
someone much younger than she who had been a child survivor,
and his story is quite stunning. He was nine years
old when he arrived in this country, five when his
father was taken by the Khmune Rouge. His father was
a teacher, so he was right off the bat as
(09:36):
an intellectual. He was subject to be taken means killed.
He was, he wore glasses, and he was an entertainer.
He was everything Paul Pod didn't want in his country.
So this child, at age five became the man in
his family. Anyway, that's sort of what happened. One story
would lead to another, and each one would become more
(09:56):
fascinating than its predecessor.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
You mentioned with the couple from Hungary that they just
wanted to tell the story. Did you find that was
the common theme with everyone? And was it somewhat cathartic
for these people to tell you their story.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
I don't know if it was cathartic. Well, what I
do know is that no one was coerced, and on
the contrary, every single participant in this book was eager
to tell their story surround Coot, the young man I
just mentioned, who's well, he's not so young now, but
he was young when he arrived here said to me,
I was dying to tell my story. And in fact,
(10:32):
two of the people profiled in the book are now
doing parts of Speakers Bureaus, and actually more than that,
because the two or three of the Holocaust survivors are
part of the Oregon Jewish Museums Speakers Bureau here. So
it was I think there was almost a sense of
urgency to get to get these stories out because people
(10:55):
realize these stories a they realize that they're continuing, that
these conflicts continue around the world. Less Egnor the Holocaust
and the Hungarian Holocaust survivor I mentioned, who was in
four different concentration camps. He was fifteen when he arrived
in Auschwitz, and he thought that the smoke snacks that
(11:15):
were billowing white smoke, or the bakeries from the camp,
not the crematoriums. So he basically said, why does this
go on and on and on? We need to tell
the stories so people will understand the depth of these stories.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Genocide is a recurring theme throughout human history. We often
ask ourselves why are humans so cruel to each other?
You know, from the Holocaust, became the phrase never again,
and yet never again, as never happens, it always happens, it.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Seems never again continues.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Never again continues.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
All the time, continuing even as you and I speak,
and it's yeah, it's pretty disturbing.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Did these did these people that told the story, did
they have any ideas about why this continues to happen
or did would they just focus on telling their own story?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Well, I think they recognize that although you're right that
the phenomenon continues, the particular circumstances are different in so
many of them. And so for example, I mean in Rwanda,
it was planned. That was not a surprise to anyone. Well,
it was a surprise probably to the actual victims. But
I meant was it was planned, it was going to happen,
(12:28):
and it was actually, numerically per capita, the highest death
rate of any genocide in terms of the period of
time that it took place. The estimates as you know,
or eight hundred thousand, but it's way who were killed,
but it's probably way more than that. People who killers
don't always keep very good numbers, as we know. So
(12:49):
I think there was a sense that telling the stories
and educating people informing them will it may not stop it,
but it may make people still and think. It may
made people do some research, It may make people have
more of an awareness of what these events actually entail.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, and I think even if you go back to Rwanda,
that was something that could have been stopped by many
any countries that were involved in Rwanda in a lot
of different ways, but wasn't. And you know, for us
it was not.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
The world watched it happen, and you know, sadly to say,
including the United States. I mean, even Bill Clinton has
who isn't prone to you know, humble statements, said later
that he thinks he regrets and he thinks maybe there
was something we could have done to intervene. But you know,
Rwanda's a landlocked country in the middle of Africa. It's
(13:42):
very small, as Emmanuel Torturanie, who's profiled in the book
likes to say, twenty Rwanda's would fit inside one Oregon
so and it has no minerals, it didn't have any
kind of there was nothing that the United States had
at stake in it.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
And you're right, each of these situations are maybe the
essence of the deeply rooted the cause at some point.
But Rwanda was really a tribal sort of situation that
had been just brewing and going on for years that erupted.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Fortunately exactly exactly. And you know, Emmanuel, who's the man
who's profiled in our book, he's a remarkable guy, just stunning.
His father was the pastor in their village, an Anglican pastor,
and as he said, everyone worshiped together. He didn't know
the difference between who choosing tutsis when he was growing up,
(14:35):
and people worshiped alongside one another. And then suddenly the
people who worshiped alongside him were killing his family. I mean,
the story of his escape. He scooped up his baby's
sister and ran like a madman. But the story of
his escape is just it kind of makes you believe
in miracles, which is an ongoing theme among some of
(14:55):
these survivors that sometimes you just can't explain things any
other way.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Nineteen ninety four, time photographer James Natchway witnessed the devastating
effects of the Rwandan genocide. On the seventeen year anniversary,
the photographer looked back on the tragedy. Humans make war
and we make peace. We make love, and we make hatred,
hatred and fear. Those two are the killers. Orchestrate hatred
(15:25):
and fear, and humans make genocide. European colonialists used fear
and hatred to cut an incision deep into Rwanda to
divide and conquer. It was never allowed to heal and
became the subtext for society long after the white rulers
made their exit. In nineteen ninety four, tribal enmity between
(15:47):
Hutus and Tutsis was politically manipulated to a state of
critical mass. Between five hundred thousand and one million people
were slaughtered in the span of three months using farm
implements as weapons. The killing by the Hutu was committed
face to face, neighbor against neighbor, and sometimes even brother
(16:07):
against brother. The number most often heard is eight hundred thousand.
Trying to imagine eight hundred thousand people killed in just
three months stuns the mind, as they had in Bosnia.
Instead of sending more troops to prevent bloodshed, the United
Nations peacekeeping Force stepped aside. Our own political leaders made
(16:31):
a conscious decision not to use the one word that
could even begin to have meaning, genocide, understanding the obligation
to intervene implicit in the language. As the world turned
its back, the genocide happened in front of its eyes. Later,
public apologies were made, something rare for politicians, but the
(16:52):
gesture did not bring back the life of one single Rwandan.
All this happened in the same timeframe in which Nelson
Mandela became President of South Africa, as if by some
infernal metaphysics, the best humanity had to offer would be
offset by the worst imaginable. It was our world then
(17:13):
and it's our world now. We have examples from both
ends of the spectrum of human aspirations. Will we take
heed from the lessons taught by our own history? If
we don't, who will now? As you've pointed out, humor
and resilience are also recurring themes in a lot of
these stories. How did these people persevere and where did
(17:34):
they find the strength to keep going? You just mentioned
that a little bit with Emmanuel. Is there a commonality?
Speaker 1 (17:39):
There is a There were a lot of common themes
in fact, and I was sort of surprised when I
went back and reread the manuscript for the nine hundredth time,
which is what you do when you write a book,
you know it's I was very struck by the common
elements within them. And certainly resilience is the obvious one,
the first one. I mean, how on earth do you
(18:01):
get through some of this stuff without that? But incredible fortitude,
just determination and perseverance, like just continuing no matter what.
And there was a lot of sort of kind of
humble philosophy or quiet philosophy. Like seng Ung, who was
one of the Cambodian survivors in the book, said her
(18:22):
father had always said to her be a blade of grass,
not a tall tree, which is how she survived during
the how she was able to survive during the regime
of a pot and the Khmer rouge because she just
kept herself low on the ground, as a low profile.
She didn't stand out, she didn't make trouble. She just
kept kind of going along and doing what thing whatever
(18:46):
needed to be done in order to survive. So there
was a lot of quiet philosophy among them as well.
The sense of humor, I mean, how can you have
I mean black humor is kind of I think something
that often comes out of disasters and crazies. Sometimes that's
the only way you can make sense of it is
is to kind of laugh madly at it. And so
(19:08):
we heard that a lot, and some of some of
the things are really I mean, spain Ung laughs at
herself because when she and her mother in law were
evacuated from their home in Nompen the day that Don
Penn was taken by Allpot's troops, her mother was. Her
mother in law was very status conscious and so here
(19:29):
they are marching and you know, with a million people
through out to Nope, they didn't know where they were going.
And she insisted on carrying her television set with her
to prove that they were a middle class family that
could afford a television set. Yeah, Spanghun got a good
laugh out of that one. And then there was another
very funny story where one of our Bosnian survivors, her
name is Diana Ihas and She is a professor of
(19:52):
music education here in Oregon. She's a viola player, and
she played with a group there called the Sarajevo String Quartet,
which played in outdoor public spaces well more than two
hundred concerts throughout the three year siege of Sarajevo, which
was the longest siege of a capital city in the
history of modern warfare. Dianna was the only woman in
(20:14):
the group. She was the youngest, and she was very,
very very pregnant when they were asked to perform a
concert for the leaders of the government officials of Bosnia,
and it apparently it was very vigorous Bosnian music, and she,
of course was having labor pains while this was going on.
And at the end of the concert, the concert master said, well,
(20:37):
you need to stay for the press conference, and she
turned and said, I am leaving right now to have
this baby. He sat down in horror as if he
were the one about to have the baby. Forty five
minutes later, her son was born.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Do you get a sense that these people sounds like
they were so resilient and so positive and are able
to move forward, but they're obviously scarred by these experiences.
Do you get a sense of trauma from them, and
do you think that trauma goes into the next generation.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
You know, I think it's different with each person and
each from each crisis, in each situation. Yes, of course
there's there's trauma and scarring. Emmanuel Emmanuel Tourituranie from Rwanda
talked a lot about the kind of government organized therapy
that he went through in Kigali after the you know,
after the massacre stopped, and he talked about sort of
(21:30):
the reconciliation efforts within the government, the government and how
that had helped him. But other people talked about how
they really were just determined to move on with their lives,
that they all realized it wasn't going to do them
any good to dwell on what had happened. What had happened, happened,
(21:50):
and they moved forward. And no, they didn't want to
pass it on to their children. Some of their children
barely even knew what was going on or what had
gone on.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
And how did this doing this book impact you. You're
listening to very difficult stories and continuing to, you know,
talk to people, and I'm sure you've talked to many
many people, probably not every story is chronicled in your book,
But how did you come out of it?
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Well, you know, I'm a journalist, and we have this
funny sort of extra layer of skin. Sometimes it doesn't
mean you don't feel a great sense of empathy and
a great sense of compassion. I do, and I have.
But I really was approaching these partly because as a
storyteller that I really wanted as a conduit. Essentially, you know,
(22:38):
I wanted these stories out there. But there was a
personal element to this, which is that I found myself.
I had a major medical event about a year ago
which came out of nowhere, as they tend to, and
left me realyzed from the clavigal down and I found
(22:59):
myself drawing on the lessons I had learned from all
of these survivors, as funny as that sounds, figuring if
they could do it, I could do it. And Emmanuel
came to see me in the hospital and offered me
a prayer. And I'm pretty sure that's why I'm upright.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Well, that's that's very inspiring. Thank you for sharing that.
It's going to be hard to share what's next for you.
This book just came out, so you're obviously promoting it
and talking about it a lot. But what are you
thinking about next?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Well, I was actually starting. I was. I was kind
of immersed in another project when this one kind of
dumped into my lap, and I felt that this one
was I felt a sense of timeliness with this one,
and I really wanted to get it out there also,
to be honest with you, because we're dealing with some
of these people are not young. We've already lost Les Agner,
who was one of the Hungarian Holocaust survivors. Kind of heartbreaking,
(23:54):
and I wanted the stories to be told, So that
was I felt. So I put this other project to
and maybe I'll go back to that. It's a completely
different topic, but maybe I'll go back to that. And
the meantime, what I'm trying to do is Oregon is
one of about twenty two states that mandate the teaching
of Holocaust and genocide education in public schools K through twelve,
(24:16):
so I'm really trying to incorporate some of these stories
into school curriculum as well.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Well. The name of the book is I Live to
Tell the World. Stories from survivors of Holocaust, genocide, and
the atrocities of war. Elizabeth Thank you so much. I
really appreciate your insights and your comments.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Thank you, Mike. Lovely to talk to you. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
We'll be right back after the news at the bottom
of the hour.
This is What's at Risk with Mike Christian on WBZ
Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hi, Mike Christian, here of What's at Risk. First up
on tonight's show, we have an encore performance of What's
at Risk with journalist and editor Elizabeth Marin. She is
the author of I Live to Tell the World, the
compelling and inspiring profiles of men and women who have
endured unthinkable cruelty. Their experiences not only humanize the atrocities
(00:32):
often seen in headlines, but also convey a universal message
of courage, hope, and gratitude. And in our second segment,
we welcome Reverend Liz Walker, founder of the Can We
Talk Network, and Joy Allen, chair of Berkeley School of
Music Therapy Department. Liz and Joy discuss music and the
(00:55):
arts in the context of violence and trauma, How it heals,
how it connect communities, how it can unlock inner resilience
and help people find joy in the wake of tragedy,
All informed by the latest science on how the arts
impacts mental health. Elizabeth Maron is a writer, editor, and
(01:16):
educator based in Portland, Oregon. After working at The Washington Post,
she became a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times
and later spent a decade on the faculty at Boston University.
Miron earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at UC Berkeley and
has written for national magazines, appeared on television and radio,
(01:38):
and received awards for teaching and journalism. I Live to
Tell the World is her fifth book. Okay, we're here
with journalists. Elizabeth Marin, author of I Live to Tell
(01:58):
the World. Stories from survivor of Holocaust, genocide, and the
atrocities of war. Thanks for being with us, Elizabeth.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Well, maybe a good place to start would be for
you to tell our listeners a little bit about your background.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
As you said, I'm a journalist. I kind of thought
when I was a little girl, I thought I would
be a writer, meaning Jane Austen, but instead I became
Lois Lane. So I've spent most of my life as
a newspaper reporter, and then I my longest tenure was
at the Los Angeles Times as a national correspondent, and
then I worked as a professor of journalism at Boston University.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
And then I saw that with your EU experience, you
were part of the global health storytelling program that intrigued
me a little bit. What was that?
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah, well, actually it was poor women. Me and three others,
two professors from the School of Public Health and two
us from the College of Communication. We started literally, we
started with a meeting at Starbucks because we realized that
the public health students had this wealth of material, but
they didn't know how to tell stories, and the journalism
(03:05):
students were scared to death of numbers and data and
didn't really know how to process data. So we thought
we would launch a program where we could integrate the
two colleges and get them together. What we did we
got a grant from the Bill and melindig then Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation, and we took a group of
(03:26):
students to western Kenya where we worked with students from
a university there in Bondo Town, very close to the
Uganda border on Lake Victoria, and we set out at
that time our first project was to do reporting on
foreign aid from the point of view of the recipients
(03:47):
as opposed to those who distributed in the bureaucrats. So
we had a very very successful outing on that mission.
On that and from that we developed a curriculum and
that became the Global Health Storytelling program there and it's continuing.
It's a vibrant and I just was their last spring
and taught a glass there. It's terrific.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, that's great meaningful. To get the grant from the
Gates Foundation.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Too, it was pretty important. Yeah, we were pretty proud
of that.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
So what inspired you to pursue these stories, which I'm
sure difficult to tell, and to put this book together
with these stories of Holocaust, genocide and atrocities of war.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Well, soon after I arrived in Portland, Oregon a little
less than ten years ago, I began working with a
nonprofit here called The Immigrant Story. It's the Immigrant Story
dot org. And the purpose was to sort of detoxify
the national conversation around immigration by presenting profiles of immigrants
in daily life, kind of normalizing things and because at
(04:52):
that point it was pretty strident and pretty angry and
difficult to listen to. And I was very happy because
I got to work with students from a lot of
the universities in the Northwest, and so it brought out
the professor Liz and Man. I was very happy about that.
You know, we came to this country speaking only Tamil
and of course that two master's degrees, one in physics
and one in some kind of engineering that I don't understand,
(05:14):
and PhD and Materials science engineering whatever that is from Purdue.
And so you know, he knew about this stuff firsthand.
And he's very charismatic. He has a sort of raising
our hand saying, of course, I'll work for you for free.
And one day he said, you know, I need you
to go out and do some stories. So we were
(05:36):
working in a partnership with the Oregon Jewish Museum and
Center for Holocaust Education on an exhibit which ultimately ran
for about a year there on survivors. So my first
interview that I went out to do was with a
couple who had survived the Holocaust in Hungary, and I
was kind of mesmerized. I went to their house in
(06:00):
a suburb of Portland. She bade these incredible pastries, and
we sat and talked for hours and hours and hours,
and it was very immersive, and I found myself feeling
very involved in their story. I was struck from the
beginning about their complete absence of anger or bitterness. They
(06:22):
really just wanted to tell the story the important thing,
and by that time she was in her eighties, he
was about close, he was about ninety, and they had
really not told the stories for a long time because
they'd been living their lives. This is a rich piece
of information, and I began to feel these were very
worthy stories. And as we sort of accumulated more and
(06:47):
more of them at the Immigrant Story, we realized it
was a body of material of great value because they
humanized some of the kind of grand global events since
World War Two, starting with World War two and onto
the present indeed into events that are taking place, conflicts
(07:08):
that are occurring right now.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
I can look at the dialogue today in our country
about immigrants and understand the fear and the focus on
immigrants and the negative reaction to them. But how did
you take that link from immigrants to telling these stories.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Well, all of the survivors that we've profiled and now
at the Immigrant Story, we've profiled about sixty different survivors
from nineteen different conflicts in sixteen different countries, and they're
all on the website. So they are all immigrants to
begin with. They're living in this country, and I think
that's one of the points is that they're living among us,
(07:42):
that these are our neighbors. These are people who shop
at Costco with us, and we just felt they were
stories that needed to be told. At the time that
I was doing them, I recognized that they were pretty timeless.
But they've turned out to be very, very timely.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah, and so that makes sense the fact that they
are amongst us here in our country. How did you
find all these people? Did it just one lead to
another or is it a purposeful seeking out of different
people that you had researched.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
It was a little of both. We worked with a
lot of the refugee agencies in Oregon, so we had
to put bookends on this somehow. So we just we
decided that everyone needed to be within living in Oregon.
Although truth business is completely replicable, it could be told anywhere.
And we also wanted to make sure all the stories
(08:31):
could be validated. And we want a diversity of gender
and age and also geopolitical diversity. We wanted a lot
of big range of stories. So we worked with refugee
agencies and then there was a lot of word of mouth.
You know, we'd be talking to someone and they'd say, well,
you should talk to so and so, and then you
should talk to so and so I mean, for example,
(08:53):
that was how we have two Cambodian genocide survivors profiled
in a book. And the first one, he was a
really extraordinary woman who spent the better part of five
years trying to escape from Cambodia under Paul Pot and
I spent Mother's Day with her. One day, we spent
about six hours together. It was pretty stunning. And then
(09:14):
followed that up with more and she connected us with
someone much younger than she who had been a child survivor,
and his story is quite stunning. He was nine years
old when he arrived in this country, five when his
father was taken by the Khmune Rouge. His father was
a teacher, so he was right off the bat as
(09:36):
an intellectual. He was subject to be taken means killed.
He was, he wore glasses, and he was an entertainer.
He was everything Paul Pod didn't want in his country.
So this child, at age five became the man in
his family. Anyway, that's sort of what happened. One story
would lead to another, and each one would become more
(09:56):
fascinating than its predecessor.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
You mentioned with the couple from Hungary that they just
wanted to tell the story. Did you find that was
the common theme with everyone? And was it somewhat cathartic
for these people to tell you their story.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
I don't know if it was cathartic. Well, what I
do know is that no one was coerced, and on
the contrary, every single participant in this book was eager
to tell their story surround Coot, the young man I
just mentioned, who's well, he's not so young now, but
he was young when he arrived here said to me,
I was dying to tell my story. And in fact,
(10:32):
two of the people profiled in the book are now
doing parts of Speakers Bureaus, and actually more than that,
because the two or three of the Holocaust survivors are
part of the Oregon Jewish Museums Speakers Bureau here. So
it was I think there was almost a sense of
urgency to get to get these stories out because people
(10:55):
realize these stories a they realize that they're continuing, that
these conflicts continue around the world. Less Egnor the Holocaust
and the Hungarian Holocaust survivor I mentioned, who was in
four different concentration camps. He was fifteen when he arrived
in Auschwitz, and he thought that the smoke snacks that
(11:15):
were billowing white smoke, or the bakeries from the camp,
not the crematoriums. So he basically said, why does this
go on and on and on? We need to tell
the stories so people will understand the depth of these stories.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Genocide is a recurring theme throughout human history. We often
ask ourselves why are humans so cruel to each other?
You know, from the Holocaust, became the phrase never again,
and yet never again, as never happens, it always happens, it.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Seems never again continues.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Never again continues.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
All the time, continuing even as you and I speak,
and it's yeah, it's pretty disturbing.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Did these did these people that told the story, did
they have any ideas about why this continues to happen
or did would they just focus on telling their own story?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Well, I think they recognize that although you're right that
the phenomenon continues, the particular circumstances are different in so
many of them. And so for example, I mean in Rwanda,
it was planned. That was not a surprise to anyone. Well,
it was a surprise probably to the actual victims. But
I meant was it was planned, it was going to happen,
(12:28):
and it was actually, numerically per capita, the highest death
rate of any genocide in terms of the period of
time that it took place. The estimates as you know,
or eight hundred thousand, but it's way who were killed,
but it's probably way more than that. People who killers
don't always keep very good numbers, as we know. So
(12:49):
I think there was a sense that telling the stories
and educating people informing them will it may not stop it,
but it may make people still and think. It may
made people do some research, It may make people have
more of an awareness of what these events actually entail.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, and I think even if you go back to Rwanda,
that was something that could have been stopped by many
any countries that were involved in Rwanda in a lot
of different ways, but wasn't. And you know, for us
it was not.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
The world watched it happen, and you know, sadly to say,
including the United States. I mean, even Bill Clinton has
who isn't prone to you know, humble statements, said later
that he thinks he regrets and he thinks maybe there
was something we could have done to intervene. But you know,
Rwanda's a landlocked country in the middle of Africa. It's
(13:42):
very small, as Emmanuel Torturanie, who's profiled in the book
likes to say, twenty Rwanda's would fit inside one Oregon
so and it has no minerals, it didn't have any
kind of there was nothing that the United States had
at stake in it.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
And you're right, each of these situations are maybe the
essence of the deeply rooted the cause at some point.
But Rwanda was really a tribal sort of situation that
had been just brewing and going on for years that erupted.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Fortunately exactly exactly. And you know, Emmanuel, who's the man
who's profiled in our book, he's a remarkable guy, just stunning.
His father was the pastor in their village, an Anglican pastor,
and as he said, everyone worshiped together. He didn't know
the difference between who choosing tutsis when he was growing up,
(14:35):
and people worshiped alongside one another. And then suddenly the
people who worshiped alongside him were killing his family. I mean,
the story of his escape. He scooped up his baby's
sister and ran like a madman. But the story of
his escape is just it kind of makes you believe
in miracles, which is an ongoing theme among some of
(14:55):
these survivors that sometimes you just can't explain things any
other way.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Nineteen ninety four, time photographer James Natchway witnessed the devastating
effects of the Rwandan genocide. On the seventeen year anniversary,
the photographer looked back on the tragedy. Humans make war
and we make peace. We make love, and we make hatred,
hatred and fear. Those two are the killers. Orchestrate hatred
(15:25):
and fear, and humans make genocide. European colonialists used fear
and hatred to cut an incision deep into Rwanda to
divide and conquer. It was never allowed to heal and
became the subtext for society long after the white rulers
made their exit. In nineteen ninety four, tribal enmity between
(15:47):
Hutus and Tutsis was politically manipulated to a state of
critical mass. Between five hundred thousand and one million people
were slaughtered in the span of three months using farm
implements as weapons. The killing by the Hutu was committed
face to face, neighbor against neighbor, and sometimes even brother
(16:07):
against brother. The number most often heard is eight hundred thousand.
Trying to imagine eight hundred thousand people killed in just
three months stuns the mind, as they had in Bosnia.
Instead of sending more troops to prevent bloodshed, the United
Nations peacekeeping Force stepped aside. Our own political leaders made
(16:31):
a conscious decision not to use the one word that
could even begin to have meaning, genocide, understanding the obligation
to intervene implicit in the language. As the world turned
its back, the genocide happened in front of its eyes. Later,
public apologies were made, something rare for politicians, but the
(16:52):
gesture did not bring back the life of one single Rwandan.
All this happened in the same timeframe in which Nelson
Mandela became President of South Africa, as if by some
infernal metaphysics, the best humanity had to offer would be
offset by the worst imaginable. It was our world then
(17:13):
and it's our world now. We have examples from both
ends of the spectrum of human aspirations. Will we take
heed from the lessons taught by our own history? If
we don't, who will now? As you've pointed out, humor
and resilience are also recurring themes in a lot of
these stories. How did these people persevere and where did
(17:34):
they find the strength to keep going? You just mentioned
that a little bit with Emmanuel. Is there a commonality?
Speaker 1 (17:39):
There is a There were a lot of common themes
in fact, and I was sort of surprised when I
went back and reread the manuscript for the nine hundredth time,
which is what you do when you write a book,
you know it's I was very struck by the common
elements within them. And certainly resilience is the obvious one,
the first one. I mean, how on earth do you
(18:01):
get through some of this stuff without that? But incredible fortitude,
just determination and perseverance, like just continuing no matter what.
And there was a lot of sort of kind of
humble philosophy or quiet philosophy. Like seng Ung, who was
one of the Cambodian survivors in the book, said her
(18:22):
father had always said to her be a blade of grass,
not a tall tree, which is how she survived during
the how she was able to survive during the regime
of a pot and the Khmer rouge because she just
kept herself low on the ground, as a low profile.
She didn't stand out, she didn't make trouble. She just
kept kind of going along and doing what thing whatever
(18:46):
needed to be done in order to survive. So there
was a lot of quiet philosophy among them as well.
The sense of humor, I mean, how can you have
I mean black humor is kind of I think something
that often comes out of disasters and crazies. Sometimes that's
the only way you can make sense of it is
is to kind of laugh madly at it. And so
(19:08):
we heard that a lot, and some of some of
the things are really I mean, spain Ung laughs at
herself because when she and her mother in law were
evacuated from their home in Nompen the day that Don
Penn was taken by Allpot's troops, her mother was. Her
mother in law was very status conscious and so here
(19:29):
they are marching and you know, with a million people
through out to Nope, they didn't know where they were going.
And she insisted on carrying her television set with her
to prove that they were a middle class family that
could afford a television set. Yeah, Spanghun got a good
laugh out of that one. And then there was another
very funny story where one of our Bosnian survivors, her
name is Diana Ihas and She is a professor of
(19:52):
music education here in Oregon. She's a viola player, and
she played with a group there called the Sarajevo String Quartet,
which played in outdoor public spaces well more than two
hundred concerts throughout the three year siege of Sarajevo, which
was the longest siege of a capital city in the
history of modern warfare. Dianna was the only woman in
(20:14):
the group. She was the youngest, and she was very,
very very pregnant when they were asked to perform a
concert for the leaders of the government officials of Bosnia,
and it apparently it was very vigorous Bosnian music, and she,
of course was having labor pains while this was going on.
And at the end of the concert, the concert master said, well,
(20:37):
you need to stay for the press conference, and she
turned and said, I am leaving right now to have
this baby. He sat down in horror as if he
were the one about to have the baby. Forty five
minutes later, her son was born.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Do you get a sense that these people sounds like
they were so resilient and so positive and are able
to move forward, but they're obviously scarred by these experiences.
Do you get a sense of trauma from them, and
do you think that trauma goes into the next generation.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
You know, I think it's different with each person and
each from each crisis, in each situation. Yes, of course
there's there's trauma and scarring. Emmanuel Emmanuel Tourituranie from Rwanda
talked a lot about the kind of government organized therapy
that he went through in Kigali after the you know,
after the massacre stopped, and he talked about sort of
(21:30):
the reconciliation efforts within the government, the government and how
that had helped him. But other people talked about how
they really were just determined to move on with their lives,
that they all realized it wasn't going to do them
any good to dwell on what had happened. What had happened, happened,
(21:50):
and they moved forward. And no, they didn't want to
pass it on to their children. Some of their children
barely even knew what was going on or what had
gone on.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
And how did this doing this book impact you. You're
listening to very difficult stories and continuing to, you know,
talk to people, and I'm sure you've talked to many
many people, probably not every story is chronicled in your book,
But how did you come out of it?
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Well, you know, I'm a journalist, and we have this
funny sort of extra layer of skin. Sometimes it doesn't
mean you don't feel a great sense of empathy and
a great sense of compassion. I do, and I have.
But I really was approaching these partly because as a
storyteller that I really wanted as a conduit. Essentially, you know,
(22:38):
I wanted these stories out there. But there was a
personal element to this, which is that I found myself.
I had a major medical event about a year ago
which came out of nowhere, as they tend to, and
left me realyzed from the clavigal down and I found
(22:59):
myself drawing on the lessons I had learned from all
of these survivors, as funny as that sounds, figuring if
they could do it, I could do it. And Emmanuel
came to see me in the hospital and offered me
a prayer. And I'm pretty sure that's why I'm upright.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Well, that's that's very inspiring. Thank you for sharing that.
It's going to be hard to share what's next for you.
This book just came out, so you're obviously promoting it
and talking about it a lot. But what are you
thinking about next?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Well, I was actually starting. I was. I was kind
of immersed in another project when this one kind of
dumped into my lap, and I felt that this one
was I felt a sense of timeliness with this one,
and I really wanted to get it out there also,
to be honest with you, because we're dealing with some
of these people are not young. We've already lost Les Agner,
who was one of the Hungarian Holocaust survivors. Kind of heartbreaking,
(23:54):
and I wanted the stories to be told, So that
was I felt. So I put this other project to
and maybe I'll go back to that. It's a completely
different topic, but maybe I'll go back to that. And
the meantime, what I'm trying to do is Oregon is
one of about twenty two states that mandate the teaching
of Holocaust and genocide education in public schools K through twelve,
(24:16):
so I'm really trying to incorporate some of these stories
into school curriculum as well.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Well. The name of the book is I Live to
Tell the World. Stories from survivors of Holocaust, genocide, and
the atrocities of war. Elizabeth Thank you so much. I
really appreciate your insights and your comments.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Thank you, Mike. Lovely to talk to you. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
We'll be right back after the news at the bottom
of the hour.
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