Scholars Document Genocide Aftermath
USC Newsroom
03/14/06
http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/12175.html
By Eddie North-Hager
Lorna Touryan Miller, Napthal Ahishakiye, a survivor of the Rwandan
genocide and USC professor Donald Miller share a ride in Rwanda.Photo/Jerry Berndt
Most people would rather forget the 100 days of the Rwandan genocide that claimed the lives of 800,000 people in 1994.
Instead Donald Miller, professor of religion in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, has helped the survivors document the tragedy.
Returning for his eighth time to examine how they are coping, Miller has taken along three USC colleagues: Rabbi Susan Laemmle, dean of Religious Life; the Rev. Cecil Murray, holder of the John R. Tansey Chair in Christian Ethics; and Beth Meyerowitz, professor of psychology in USC College.
“I’m moved by what’s happened there and the parallel to other genocides, including the Holocaust,” Laemmle said. “This is not just a personal trip. I know for sure it will influence and affect the things I do in the Office of Religious Life.”
The journey will help Murray provide content for an August exhibition at the California African American Museum of Jerry Berndt photos he shot while in Rwanda recently.
“I felt I could do it better if I personally witnessed the aftermath,” said Murray, a former pastor of Los Angeles’ First African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Meyerowitz believes she will see similarities between the cancer survivors she has studied for 30 years and the emotional toll levied on genocide survivors.
“How does a psychologically normal person adjust” to such abnormal conditions revolving around death, asked Meyerowitz, who is on sabbatical until August. “In a very different way, the same questions might apply.”
But Meyerowitz is not making the trip with a specific thesis to test.
“I am going to try to understand a situation that on the surface is incomprehensible,” she said.
Miller saw the results of killing so many fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters during his seven trips to the impoverished African nation.
Young orphans had no house, no income and no one to care for them. Often the only thing these children were left with were their siblings, whom they now had to raise.
Miller, along with his wife, Lorna Touryan Miller, director of the nonprofit New Vision Partners, first saw the despair, and the hope, when he spoke at an international conference on genocide in Rwanda about three years ago. He was there to talk about his 1993 book “Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide.”
During his stay, he learned about the AOCM, which loosely translated, stands for the Association of Orphan Heads of Households, a group started by an orphan for orphans.
Miller secured funding to create an oral history to document their experiences. The survivors, many of whom are now young adults, took part in 100 interviews, which Miller had transcribed and translated into English. He bundled the essays, along with photos by Berndt, into a publication he sent out to government officials, social activists and scholars.
“We just felt there was something we must do,” recalled Miller, who also is the director USC’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture.
That led to his current study of how nongovernmental organizations are assisting genocide survivors in Rwanda.
“It’s a fantastic string of events,” Miller said.
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Posted Tuesday, March 14, 2006