Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

(JNS.org) The International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem and Israel's Foreign Ministry held a seminar on the 1994 Rwanda genocide, whose anniversary took place earlier this week. Several Rwandan genocide survivors were part of delegations attending the seminar.

In 1994 members of Rwanda's majority ethnic Hutu government killed an estimated 500,000–1,000,000 ethnic Tutsi Rwandans over a period of three months. The seminar at Yad Vashem continues a partnership founded in 2005, when the museum first hosted survivors of the Rwandan genocide who were making efforts to commemorate the genocide.

This delegation to this year's seminar met with Israeli Holocaust survivors and learned about the work of the Holocaust Archive and Conservationists, and the Yad Vashem Museum. They also learned how they can use techniques developed at Yad Vashem to build their own memorial to the Rwandan genocide.

"Yad Vashem is exactly what we are trying to create," said the head of the Rwandan delegation Gerta Honorah and head of the Kigali Genocide Memorial, Yedioth Achronoth reported.