Survivors of Genocide

3 Generations presented Roger Cohen, Paris Bureau Chief & former Op-Ed columnist, The New York Times, with the first annual Sidney Bernstein Award on December 4th, 2024.

The award was inspired by the man who was responsible for documenting the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, the Sidney Bernstein Award celebrates a storyteller in any medium with the courage and integrity to chronicle our history as evidence for future generations.

Our 2024 lunch, was co-presented by Dr. Stephen D. Smith MBE, former Executive Director of USC Shoah Foundation and Genocide expert and Jane Wells, 3G founder and creative director.

We are grateful to all those who supported and attended the event. Here is a video of Roger’s speech, and you can read the transcript here.

We have included an excerpt from the speech: "My title contains the word combustible. It's a long word, four syllables. Truth is a short word, a single syllable. So is blood. Buffeted people, and there are many, crave simplicity. In some ways the state of the world today is a story of truth vs. blood. When truth dies, when people are ready to believe anything, the foundation of a decent society collapses, and Yeats' "blood-dimmed tide" may be loosed upon the world. Here we are, to put it monosyllabicly, a long way from the hope of the Cold War's end. History, far from ending, has proved vigorous. In the Holy Land, the forever war of the state of Israel's creation rages on. As I.F. Stone put it almost six decades ago "Nowhere has religion been so zestful an excuse for fratricidal strife" and "nowhere else can one find a parallel" for such "ethnocentric fury." For most of my life, I believed in and argued for a two-state outcome that would bring peace and dignity for Israelis and Palestinians alike. My conviction, I regret to say, is tested to breaking point. In Ukraine, young men die for a square mile of soil gained one day, lost the next, in some grotesque drone-supplemented reenactment of the trenches of the Great War. I covered another European war, in Bosnia. There, 30 years ago, 100,000 people were killed; the bloodshed was only stopped by an ugly compromise that rewarded the perpetrators. But that was before Steve Jobs changed the world. Today, in the short-focus societies technology has forged, where a bombardment of weaponized information produces a plague of simplistic certainties, compromise is too a pale word. Better to beat the manly drums than meet in the anemic middle. Better to shriek vengeance than save lives. Blood is more compelling than truth, just ask the Russians. The dead die over and over, invoked to justify the next war of deification of the leader."

For more than 15 years, 3 Generations has been dedicated to documenting the harrowing stories of genocide survivors, preserving crucial historical evidence, and ensuring that the world never forgets these unspeakable atrocities. 

3 Generations continues to keep memories of those who suffered through genocide alive with our works of film. HERE LIVED, our latest feature film, is the story of hidden children, murdered parents, generational trauma, and one artist’s singular vision for healing. Centered in this documentary is artist Gunter Denmig, and the largest decentralized memorial he created for victims of the Holocaust, named Stolpersteine (literal translation: stumbling stones). HERE LIVED charts the conceptualization, development, and lasting emotional significance of the Stolpersteine project. The filmmakers delve into the relatively unknown history of the hidden children in the Netherlands who evaded Nazi capture by hiding in occupied territory. They focus on the role of everyday citizens like Henriëtte Pimentel, a Dutch teacher who risked her life to secretly transport Jewish children to sympathetic host families, as well as survivors of the Nazi reign, like Reini Elkerbout, who lived through the occupation and returned to a post-war society that refused to fully accept the horrors of the Holocaust. The film retraces the construction, journey, and impact of the stones through the stories of Dutch victims and their families. 

We are pleased to share upcoming national and international live screenings of the film. We hope you can join us: 

– Astor Film Lounge Hafen City, Hamberg, Germany, September 8 2024 (THIS Sunday!)

– Ocean County Jewish Film Festival, Lakewood, NJ, September 22 2024

– Milwaukee Jewish Film Festival, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 4-10 2024

– Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival, Hong Kong, November 9-20 2024

– Calgary Jewish Film Festival, Calgary, Alberta November 2024

– Boulder Jewish Film Festival, Boulder, Colorado, November 2024

To organize a North American screening, please contact our distributor, Menemsha Films, at alisonm@menemshafilms.com. For European screenings, please contact us at info@3generations.org. For information about the issues we support and to watch our films, please visit our website, 3generations.org, follow us on social media, and connect with us via email by subscribing to our mailing list. 

We thank you for your support; we could not continue hearing their stories and demanding change without YOU.