Contact: Darren Johnson, Director of Communications
(631) 421-2244, ext. 383, djohnson@tourolaw.edu

March 10, 2005

Genocide Talk With Holocaust and Rwandan Survivors

Huntington, N.Y. – Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center will present a riveting seminar, “Surviving Genocide,” featuring two survivors separated by 55 years, though offering similar tales of heartbreak and hope. Long Islanders David Gewirtzman and Jacqueline Murekatete escaped the Holocaust and Rwandan genocide respectively.

The event is free and open to the public, starting at 12 noon on Wednesday, March 16, in the campus’s Faculty Conference Room. For further details, call 631-421-2244, ext. 307.

Gewirtzman, 76, a resident of Great Neck, survived the Holocaust by spending almost two years burrowed with other members of his family under a pigsty on a Polish farm. Only 16 of the over 8000 Jews from his hometown of Losice survived because of the Nazi genocide that killed an estimated six million Jews overall.

Murekatete, 20, a SUNY-Stony Brook student, narrowly escaped being hacked to death by a rival tribe during the brutal civil war in Rwanda 11 years ago. Her family – both parents and all six siblings – did not.  In just three months, an estimated 800,000 people were massacred in the Rwandan genocide.

Gewirtzman and Murekatete have formed a strong friendship and bring experience and relevance to the harsh subject of hate, ethnic violence and genocide.

The two survivors have been featured in the New York Times, Newsday and People Magazine and profiled on national news programs such as “The Today Show.” Murekatete addressed the General Assembly of the U.N. during its commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda on April 7, 2004. Both she and Gewirtzman were chosen to be honored by the Anti-Defamation League at its Kristallnacht commemoration in Washington, D.C. in November 2004.

The event is sponsored by Touro’s Jewish Programs Committee, Jewish Law Students Association, Latin Law Students Association, Student Bar Association, Diversity Committee, Phi Alpha Delta, Black Law Students Association and Women’s Bar Association.

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