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Joan Salter MBE is a child survivor of the Holocaust. Born Fanny Zimetbaum in Brussels on 15 February 1940 to Polish Jewish parents, she was three months old when Belgium was invaded by the Nazis.

The only known voluntary inmate of Auschwitz, who spent two and a half years gathering intelligence from within the camp.

During the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Chantal witnessed the worst of human nature as people turned against each other. She also saw the best of humanity in the neighbours who hid her and helped her survive, despite the risk to themselves and their families.

Waldemar Nods was a black grandson of a slave from Suriname, who moved to the Netherlands in 1927, aged 19. He had a son – Waldy – with his Dutch wife – Rika – and together they hid Jews from the Nazis during the German occupation. They were caught and deported to concentration camps in Germany.

More than half a century has passed since the events I am going to describe took place, but for me not a single day has gone by without me reliving at some point the pain and the trauma.

Henriette Mutegwaraba was born in 1972 in the Butare province of Rwanda. Her parents were farmers and owned land. She was the firstborn of the family and had two brothers and three sisters. She says that life was ‘not too bad’ before the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Henriette’s parents sent her to Burundi before the genocide, where she lived when the genocide took place in 1994.

Forced out of his home by the Khmer Rouge on 17 April 1975, Sokphal endured hard labour in the Killing Fields and eventually survived the Genocide in Cambodia by escaping to Thai refugee camps where he lived for seven years.

This blog was written for HMDT by Charlotte Lee, who was an HMDT Youth Champion and member of the HMDT Youth Champion Board.

In a blog for Holocaust Memorial Day 2017, HMDT's Education Officer Andy Fearn reflects on some of the resources available to help educators explore the theme: How can life go on?

During this year’s Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month, historian Rainer Schulze reminds us of the systematic persecution the Roma and Sinti suffered during the period of Nazi rule in Germany and in Nazi-occupied Europe.