 I am Paul Johnson. I am the Deputy Director here at the Brooklyn Museum and it gives me great pleasure to welcome such a large crowd this afternoon to this very prestigious panel that we're about to hear. Unfortunately, the Director of the Museum, Arnold Lehman, could not be here. He is in New Orleans talking about community-based museums. So he asked me actually to read the following comments to you before we get going. He says, four years ago, with an enormous amount of pride and excitement, Elizabeth Sackler and I had the honor of representing the entire Brooklyn Museum community in the unveiling of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Years of hard work and planning led up to that important day, and I remember so clearly how excited we both were to get started on the public aspect of this great adventure. And these four years have indeed been a great adventure, an adventure and a learning experience and an awakening for me and I hope for all of us who have intersected in some way with the Sackler Center. One of the most remarkable things for me from our perspective four years on is the degree to which the center has become such an integral part of the museum, allowing us to incorporate a new and unique voice within our institution and in the process expand our dialogue with our visitors and beyond. About the social, political, cultural and artistic voices which may not have been perceived prior to four years ago. The Sackler Center focuses on the voices and contributions of women. The concerns of women, which by extension are of course the concerns of humanity, is a fact which I am particularly proud. Today's panel is a wonderful example of this and I want to thank Gloria Steinem for making possible this important public presentation and discussion about the sexual violence against women in the Holocaust. My thanks to Elizabeth Sackler are, as you might imagine, difficult to quantify. Examples illustrating her commitment to this institution and her vision for the center are all around us and her legacy continues to grow as we celebrate yet another year of our continuing work together. For me it is impossible to talk about the anniversary without inevitably also talking about the future. And I want to close by taking this opportunity to invite you all here today to continue to play an increasingly active role in the future of the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Thank you for being here today. That from Arnold Lehman. I just want to add on a personal note, I have been at the museum for about a year and one of the first people that I met a year ago was Elizabeth Sackler. She got me early on as she likes to say. And together we have been talking a lot about the future of the Sackler Center, not only for the fifth anniversary next year, but for years beyond. And I can promise you that with Elizabeth's tremendous leadership at this institution, the future of the Sackler Center is quite bright. So without further ado, I want to introduce Dr. Sackler and get on with our panel. And can I just remind you all please to silence your cell phones. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good afternoon. And I'm going to ask you to say good afternoon back to me because this is quite a day. Thank you. Thank you for being here. I do this. Can we lower the mic a little bit because I have a cold. And so I have had Sudafed. And you know what that can do to you. So I'm very, very excited. I do a lot of speaking and this particular day is sort of a tricky wick of a day. And it is so because there's so much going on. So I've been trying to figure out how I would start my remarks for this day. And I'm going to start by announcing or reminding, depending on whether or not you were there to hear her say that Gloria self describes as a stand up comic wantonby. Now this is really important because I am a self described revolutionary wantonby. And I think of that as being seriously aggressive if you don't have a stand up comic wantonby side, which of course Gloria does. And she is also the only stand up comic wantonby that I think is funny. In fact, she is. Wonderful. So even though I consider that I have a really great sense of humor and I do today is tough. And it's tough because about we're about a lot of things today. And we're about really serious issues and we are also about celebrating. As Paul said, the fourth anniversary of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for the feminist art. And not only do we, all of us have a center for feminist art, but it is a center for feminist everything. And that is deeply about making our world a better place. And of course, so making the world a better place is what makes me smile. And I couldn't have done the center without thanking the director Arnold Lehman and deputy directors and Paul and Sally and Matthew and and the education and public programming departments, David, Ken, all the wonderful docents in the museum. And also the wonderful security guards who work in the center and who adore the center so. And thank you to our curator, Catherine Morris and the team at the Sackler Center. Sarah Givinelli, who has been with us since we opened. Thank you. And program director and woman by my side every day, Rebecca Taffel. I thank you so much. And we have fabulous men and women who are in the council for feminist art. And if you are interested in becoming a council member of the council to be more involved with the center in the various ways. It's possible. There are brochures at the entrance for you to pick up on your way out. So the biggest thanks really go to all of you. And to all of the visitors who come to the center to see the home of the dinner party to participate or witness. We've had scores, hundreds of wonderful, provocative, really progressive panels since the beginning, since our opening. And of course, all of our exhibitions in the feminist gallery, which now has Lordna Simpson exhibition in it. And our very own herstory gallery, which is the only one in the only center for feminist art in the world. Our museum numbers, according to the museum, as a result of all of your participation and coming here. Hello, Lola. It's 25%. We bring in 25%. The center does of visitorship or putting it another way. 25% of the people who walk into the Brooklyn Museum walk into the Brooklyn Museum to come to the center for feminist art. And this is, of course, a very, very great thing. And so I continue on about my ruminations. Thinking about how to approach a moment like this of celebration when the world is coming apart at the seams. And we have the good fortune, actually, of today's panel. Gloria Stein on moderating sexual violence during the Holocaust and other genocides with a stellar panel. Indeed, Sonja Hedgepeth and Rochelle Siddell are co-authors of sexual violence against Jewish women during the Holocaust. An absolute groundbreaking book. And I'm delighted they're here. Mama John is here for founder of the Shalopy, Shalopy? Shalopy. Sorry, foundation. And Naval author, Naval Simel. And co-founder of Equality Now, Jessica Newworth. So how do I concurrently celebrate and discuss the horrors of the world past and present? So I was doing about it. And my friend and feminist historian, Deborah Schultz, who is here today, said to me that she has been immersed for decades in horrors. And her life preserver is that women resist, resistance, resilience, survival, she said. And I love that. Resistance, resilience, survival. So I invite you at 4.30 to a book signing for our wonderful new book and the celebration of our fourth anniversary. And to toast resistance, resilience, and survival as we mend our world. And speaking of mending our world with the same tenacity as Gloria, Gloria had admitted to me. I'm telling her all her secrets, but I'm sorry, Gloria, I can't help it. That she also has a mix, miss, fix it mentality. Of course, if you have a miss, fix it mentality, but you also fix it, then it's a very great things. And on multiple occasions, I have had the pleasure, and it is a pleasure and it is an honor to introduce Gloria. And actually, it doesn't get any easier. In fact, I'm finding today that it's getting harder. The second anniversary Gloria moderated sex trafficking and new abolitionists. And at the Georgia O'Keeffe Awards, I had the privilege and the honor of going with her to New Mexico to introduce Gloria in front of an audience of 2,000 people in a town that has many, both as many New Age therapists in their yellow book, as we have lawyers in our yellow book. So that when I said, when I come back in my next life, I want to be Gloria Steinem. Everybody in that audience really, really got it. But we are here today, and I want to tell you about how I met Gloria. I met Gloria because she was invited and accepted to do a keynote address at the art table luncheon where I was being honored a year before the center opened, but for the founding of the Center for Feminist Art. And I must say that next to having two children and three grandchildren and four great friends and one great lover and birthing the Center for Feminist Art, Gloria Steinem is the best thing that's happened to me. So I won't tell you about, therefore, how tongue-tied I was when I first met Gloria. She being the first icon that I ever met. And I won't tell you about my first phone call to Gloria when I apologized for bothering her. I'm really sorry to bother you in this little voice, and Gloria said to me, get over it. And I won't tell you about how my son Michael, who was at McGill University at the time of the opening of the center. I won the time of the awards that Gloria was keynote speaker. You can tell the Sudafeds kicked in. So he told his friends at McGill College that he was coming down and his mother was getting really this great prestigious award, and he was going to meet Gloria Steinem. They did not want to hear about my award. They didn't care that his mother was getting award. They wanted to hear all about Gloria Steinem. And when he returned, he had to report all about Gloria Steinem. So it's one of the best things that's happened to my son, too. I also won't tell you about how at the very opening of the center, she was then 33-year-old warrior for Planned Parenthood, Nice, came up to Gloria Steinem and said to her, I have to thank you. I just have to hug you. I need to hug you, and I need to thank you. Can I do that? I will tell you that introducing Gloria with her accomplishments is like counting stars in the sky on a clear night. And I have little parentheses in my notes saying, could I dare say that counting stars on a gorgeous night is the most awesome thing, but it could get a little bit boring. So I started to think about the essence of Gloria, and then came the comparisons. Gloria Steinem is like the Pied Piper. Look how many people are here. Gloria Steinem is like the New York Post Office. Neither wind nor rain nor sleep nor hail keeps Gloria from her appointed rounds. And now I say move aside to James Joyce, because next comes Marilyn Monroe. And I decided that Gloria Steinem is a girl's best friend and to hell with diamonds. Then I realized that being Gloria Steinem is probably like being the Dalai Lama, to be compassionate, brilliant, erudite, spiritual, effective, beloved around the world. And I know at this moment, well actually before I say that, I have to say that it's probably better than that because I think everybody in China also loves Gloria Steinem. I know Gloria is now thinking this day is not about me. Get on with it Liz, enough, stop, cut. So I will. But thank you for being in my life, Gloria, and thank you for being here today. You know you are alive when some things really get to you and things get you really riled up. And if you are here, you are probably very alive and you are probably really riled up. If you hadn't noticed, and I'm sure you have noticed, there is and has been an ongoing war against women. That this country is at war against Planned Parenthood, against women's health, against women. There are women who are at war against other women in this country and in the world. A woman would have to have her head in the sand not to recognize the war on women and all around the world, ranging from the yucky and the horrific to everything in between, I say none of it is acceptable. A few weeks ago, my honey and I went down to the rally for Planned Parenthood and it was a great rally. And there is nothing like getting your blood circulating. And on that day, there was a few days into the revolution in Egypt. It was only a few days old. It was before the earthquake and it was before the aka no fly zones. So I start thinking about comfort zones and its relativity. Comfort zone. Most of the women in the world have been at one time or another way outside of anyone's level of comfort zone. I am told that it was phrased by Charlotte Bunch and it's now attributed of course to Hillary Clinton in Beijing when she said women's rights are human rights, human rights are women's rights. And I say sexual violence is not acceptable. I say women rights are human rights. Spousal abuse is not acceptable and I say women's rights are human rights and genital mutilation is not acceptable. And I say women's rights are human rights. And I don't want to be the only one standing up here and saying that. So I'm going to ask all of you to stand up. I'm not kidding. Please join me. I don't want to be alone in this. I say sex trafficking is not acceptable and we say women's rights are human rights. Sex slavery is not acceptable and we say women's rights are human rights. Rape camps are not acceptable and we say women's rights are human rights. Systematic rape of women during war is not acceptable and we say women's rights are human rights. And I really don't want to be the only one to say three times in a row, please join me. Women's rights are human rights. Women's rights are human rights. Women's rights are human rights. And join me in welcoming Gloria Steinem and her outstanding panel. And thank you for being here today. Thank you very much. I think there's any other museum director in the world after whom an organizer is an anticlimax. The Dalai Lama, I've never been compared to Dalai Lama. Although I have to say he looks better in a skirt than I do. Really hard to proceed after that. I was thinking while Elizabeth was talking that the bridge between being a stand-up comic and being an organizer or whatever it is we all hope to be to change the future is laughter. Because I figured out not so long ago that the reason it matters so much to us is because it's the only free emotion. Fear can be compelled, as we know. Even love can be compelled if we're isolated and dependent for long enough we think we're in love. But laughter is free. It comes from realizing a truth when two unexpected things coincide. I understand that Einstein had to be very careful when he shaved in the morning because when he thought of something quickly he laughed and he cut himself. So we have something very precious in this room today, which is a chance to hear the truth about the past so we can change the future so we can have more laughter. We owe this gift to Elizabeth Sackler. She not only started the Center for Feminist Art, the first one, the only one in the world, but she has always made sure that art and life were never separate. Four years ago when the center opened she brought art by women from every continent but she brought the artists so they could meet each other. And the center has always had a place for meetings as well as for art. And of course she gave a home to the great women in history of the dinner party and I hope you'll come to the reception and the book signing afterwards because I think the women at that table would be very happy that we're here today. Every event like this has a story and my part of this one began this summer when I read a manuscript of sexual violence against Jewish women during the Holocaust, the landmark anthology by Sonia and Rochelle whom you'll be hearing from, the first book in English after some 60 years to reveal the truth of the sexual abuse of Jewish women. I was stunned. Where had these facts been at Nuremberg? Where had they been in my textbooks? Why had they been suppressed? And most painful of all, if we had known those facts, might we have been better able to prevent Bosnia, Rwanda, the Congo, the Sudan, and so much more? After all, I am not a historian but I had 30 years ago belatedly discovered Robbinsbrook, the largest all-female concentration camp and that also wasn't in my textbooks. I learned about the horrific medical experiments there but not about the sexualized violence there. Later when I was researching an essay called, If Hitler were alive today, whose side would he be on? Which I was enraged enough to write because anti-abortion groups here were comparing pro-choice activists with Nazis. Such facts still weren't present. I mean, I could learn that Hitler closed down family planning clinics, declared abortion a crime against the state as one of his first acts, and banned feminists from employment in the same law that banned Jews from employment. I could learn that he forced so-called Aryan women to have children, even founded as we know Laban's born or baby farms, while doing away, of course, with Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Africans, and other non-Aryans. Yet I didn't learn the facts that you will read in this historic anthology. Fortunately, I work with a lot of smart and dedicated women at the Women's Media Center and we decided to do whatever we could to get the message of this book out and to connect it to examples in the recent past and present. With the help of Barbara Becker, an expert on both women's rights and human rights, who's in the front row here and is going to keep time for us, and communications, we've organized this as our first event, our first visceral event. Thanks to the Holocaust Museum in Washington and its office in New York, we have had an event in which we were able to connect these things intellectually. But this is the first time that we've done so in person, and the first time that some of us have met each other. I mean, this is maybe the most important panel in my long life of panels that I have ever taken part in. So we hope to publicize these past facts, learn from their links to the present, and help prevent this pattern in the future. I'm worried about time, so I'm going to introduce the panel all at once, and each will speak for 10 minutes, and then after everybody's finished, perhaps add a brief point if one comes up that needs clarifying. So really looking forward to a half an hour of your participating. I know there are people here with enormous amounts of experience. There are mics there and there, and we want very much to get rid of this old fashioned structure with you looking at each other's backs and me and us looking at this. This is a hierarchical structure. Hierarchy is based on patriarchy. Patriarchy doesn't work anywhere anymore, including in this room. So I hope that we can at least pretend we are sitting in a circle. Sonya Hedgepath teaches about the Holocaust, women's issues, and world literature, and is currently a full professor at Middle Tennessee State University. Hold up your hand, Sonya. We're in order here. She will give us an overview of this anthology that she co-edited. Nava Semmel wrote a novel and The Rat Left, which is the subject of a chapter in this anthology. She's an Israeli writer of 17 books, not to mention plays, opera, libretti, TV scripts, and poetry. She's been translated into 10 languages. Her novel Hat of Glass is based on her own mother's testimony of sexual abuse in a concentration camp. Mama Jean Casango works to help survivors of genocidal rape from African countries and is now in Boston where she founded, as you heard, the Shalupe Foundation a decade ago to aid refugees and immigrants, including child soldiers as well as rape survivors. She will tell us about her work in ways we too can support survivors. Jessica Newworth is a lawyer and organizer who co-founded Equality Now, a human rights organization working to end violence and discrimination against females globally. She was a consultant to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Her work included landmark decisions on rape as a form of genocide and on the culpability of media that instruct rape and genocide. She will tell us about current United Nations and legal efforts and a report that she has just completed on the Congo. Anne Rochelle Seidel, a political scientist who is the co-editor of this anthology, she directs Remember the Women Institute here in New York and is also a senior researcher at the Center for Women and Gender at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. She will talk about the links between sexual abuse during the Holocaust and later genocides. So, Sonia, will you begin? Okay, thank you. We would all like to thank, first of all, Elizabeth Sackler for convening this panel, for hosting this. Our deepest gratitude goes out to you. And to Gloria, thank you for believing in the book, for believing in the women sitting here, for believing in all of the people we have in the audience today. Thank you so much. I want to tell you just a little bit about when we began this book. Rochelle Seidel at the other end of the table and I are the co-editors and we had 16 chapter authors. When we began to work on the book Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women during the Holocaust, we did so after an important Holocaust scholar claimed that Jewish women were not raped during the Holocaust. This was in 2006, when Rochelle and I had conducted a workshop on women and the Holocaust at an Educators Conference in Israel. This particular preeminent scholar on the Holocaust came to our workshop and there he asserted that Jewish women were not raped during the Holocaust for where is the proof? He said, there are no documents. Both Rochelle and I knew that this could not be true. For over time, we had met scholars at conferences on the Holocaust who were attending and they were working on aspects of sexual violence against women during the Holocaust and thus we were able to gather their work into this particular book. The scholarship you will find in the book Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust gives various views from different perspectives from the perspective of history, politics, literature, cinema, psychology and the chapter authors are from many countries. They include Austria, Israel, Ukraine, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. I would like to recognize one of our chapter authors who is in the audience with us in the first row, Eva Vogelman. Eva has written a chapter on the psychology of women who were sexually abused during the Holocaust. A very important piece of information is her contribution in the first row. Thank you Eva. And we will hear next from Nava Semmel, an acclaimed author whose work is the subject of Rochelle and my chapter in the book. We studied an important work by Nava called And the Rat Laughed and also she will probably allude to another work, Hat of Glass. And I want to say as a segue that often literary works because there is an acceptability to talking from a historical viewpoint to a political viewpoint, but when one talks about literary works or fiction as a way of accessing the Holocaust then a big debate starts. And I would like to offer that it is fiction often that makes the topics of the Holocaust accessible to a readership. Reading something, thank you. Reading something like that makes the reader, it allows the reader to engage on the level of one to one to participate. It's a relationship of engagement with something that sometimes is not quite as easy to do with other types of texts. So I want to say that Nava Semmel has provided this kind of avenue for readers and I hope that you do explore her work because the literary text indeed is also a testimony. So Nava if you would please share some of the insights that you have about writing as a fiction author if you will. Thank you so much. First of all let me thank you all for having me. I came from Israel. I'm a daughter of survivors. My mother survived Auschwitz and she is one of those survivors who never spoke about her experience and this was a taboo subject for many of my generation in Israel and maybe elsewhere as well. Survivors especially mothers didn't want to share the experience because they thought about the well-being of their children. They wanted to protect their children from the horrific past. In a way they wanted to protect themselves but they wanted to establish a whole new page where life could begin and as an author I always write about life after death because the shadow of death was always there but it's a choice of the survivor which I followed my mother's footsteps in choosing to look at the half full of the cup half full or whatever it's called but to use an optimistic point of view on life and see and salute the incredible resources inner resources of survivors in order to rehabilitate themselves without any network of any therapeutic network nothing was available at that point so they had to depend upon their own resources. My mother only related to one story which was about her couple in not in Auschwitz but in another small camp and this woman was formerly a front whore something which was denied for many years the Jewish women were not front whores my mother testified that her couple was and this woman was the guardian angel of the entire block of women in where my mother was one of them and she vowed to bring the inmates under her care to the end of the world everyone will be alive and she made a real sacrifice in order to do that she started a sexual relationship, a lesbian relationship with the Nazi officer, a woman who was in charge of the camp but through that relationship she saved 300 women and this story, the real testimony of my mom became the basis for my writing because that's the first story that I published in 1985 in a collection called Head of Glass and that's the title story I even since I was very very young and unaware of the way literature works but by instinct I knew that I had to put in the story the real, the true details of what camp it was which year it was the only thing that I concealed was the true name of the couple because I thought that I had the gut feeling that she will never share this experience with anyone and this is one of the reasons I think in my honest opinion why the whole subject of sexual abuse during the Holocaust was a taboo because none of the survivors shared it because as I said before because survivors was looking into the future and especially taking care of their children where family was the platform for rehabilitation these stories of abuse were grenades they were threatening to destroy the achievement the life achievement of these survivors so they never shared it with anyone for me literature is always the way in order for me to testify although it sounds like a contradiction in term because literature as Sonia said and rightly so is fiction nevertheless I think that fiction can carry truth the seed of truth and art is always and it is for me a mandate for being a carrier of emotions by saying that I don't minimize neither the importance of historical texts of testimonies of video testimonies which exists now and I hope that everything was available now to Rochelle, to researchers like Rochelle and Sonia who could almost 70 years later find the documents or the testimonies nevertheless art has a different role and the different role is to carry on and especially into the future something which history can be has a very different role and an important one but it cannot carry, cannot be an emotional carrier and that's our true mandate in the right left which is fiction I took it a step further and I explored the journey and the quest the inner quest of a girl, a little girl who was sexually abused and raped by her keepers but later was saved by a Roman Catholic priest in Poland in 1943 it is a fictional tale but when I was asked did you base your story upon a real testimony I said no I did not but I assume and I expect that this happened to someone following the publication the book was published in Israel in 2001 10 people approached me two-thirds were women one-third were men who told me that they had a similar life experience and they said I never shared it with anyone and I never will and they thanked me for I felt blessed that I could be their corridors or their to voice their untold story I just finished before I came here I spoke with my mom who is 89 years old she will celebrate her 90th birthday in October she's alert, she's smart and she gave me something which is among the Jewish people it's called the blessing of the way I'm going to carry this blessing of the way I said I'm going to carry it here not only to the participants of this panel but to the entire audience because I am blessed with the mom who showed me the way and who showed me how what are the incredible resources emotional, spiritual and also physical but that's the third on the line what are the inner resources of a survivor who can create a whole-dimensional life spectrum for herself and create a family and have a fourth generation and this is my salute and her salute to life thank you before Mama Jean begins especially someone named Mama Jean I noticed that a woman with a baby left because the baby was crying could someone tell her to come back in? I mean we pulled up with jet planes and all kinds of sounds that are much less important and moving than the cry of a baby tell her to come back okay thank you I want to thank you for being me here I prefer to be called Mama Jean my name is Jean Casongo Ungondo and Casongo is my father's name my name is Ungondo that's in Africa we called by our grandma name okay with Africa we are named by our grandma name and that's why but my name is Jean Casongo Ungondo I become Mama Jean from 1990 when I started to have those children called street children it was in our near board some children who don't like I would call them and disciplinary children and they don't want to go to school and they play home and I bring them to my home and talk to them and they start calling me Mama Jean some of them go back home and go to school that too it was easy and we start like this until 1999 we start to have those who are displaced that is in Congo in Kinshasa who are displaced some former charge soldiers some raped women who are displaced and it become kind of not easy for us because those ones seeing all of those atrocities it was very very hard for me to still have them at home and talk to them you know sometimes in the night they wake up and they start to cry it was very scary for me and I start the Sharpe Foundation who have one shelter to take care of them we find some social worker and some doctors to help us to take care of all of them and when I came here and my children say you are here now it's good for you to start the same organization you are going to be well-equipped to help all of those who are you left behind in Congo Sharope means life boat I think those who speak French we know that the big boat is sinking there is the small boat they call them Sharope it's C-H-A-L-O-U-P A-L-O-U-P-E Sharope but for me it's S-H-A-L-U-P-E U-P-E it's come from my father's and mother's name my father's name is Jean Cassongo Shamibanga Shamibanga is father of ivory because it was an artist is doing ivory and my mother's name is Lupetu it's Trezo okay and I took Shar and I did Sharope it's the same we are there to help those who are sinking it's why we have Sharope Foundation in Congo we have Shorter in Kinshasa and in Bukavu working for the women I call them the social worker because it's those one who go to the field to take care of those women who fear to come out and to talk about the situation as she taught here I forget your name sir the rape is not a good thing to say especially in Africa to go to say I am a raped woman you are automatically rejected and if you have children that become very hard for you to be accepted even by your family members I have my board there I call this board the Congolese women face you can see all those face women their lips cut because they go to justice and bring all of their those perpetrators to justice and they cut the one who come back and cut their lips for them not to talk you see there is a girl she was nine years old she was raped by the UN people her baby is white and many many of those things you can see there are some gorillas there we have a big park there is many many gorillas we have to take care of them when five of them were killed in 2006 and they give five million to the conservator of this park to take care and to for the gorilla be safe but they are in the same time they killed five men too and they do the same thing to those men nobody talking about it the rape in Congo I think it's for humiliated people it's for extension of the stress all of us know that in Congo we know that Congo is the richest country in the world but the country where the people are the poorest in the world for a child go to school it's for three dollars only the rape in Congo and the war in Congo everybody talk about it but there is no action everywhere I go I said it's good to talk about the rape of Congolese women of the rape in Africa it's good to give some medication and five dollars ten dollars to those who is raped that's good but the good things is to stop the cause of this rape we can go over and over help them but if the cause still those rape still there they still going and do it they are not bring injustice the rape is going to steal the good things is to stop the cause of the rape because the rape is a consequence for people to have all we have because they want to they want to to have it illegally it's the good thing to bring war in Africa and give it to people to kill each other and to let them have whatever they want Congo it's a good country it's an open country I think if each one of you want to do to have those natural resources and coming by the big door of Congo I think you can have it why to kill, why to rape why to destroy life in Congo please come by the door Congo and take whatever you want to Congolese don't go by our noble country and go and kill and destroy and I don't know how to say it that's I just say it briefly we have many women was there working until day for $5 for her to go over the field to help those who can't go out it's very hard for us to do by ourselves Congolese people need world to turn their eyes to Congo I think some of you are seeing the greatest silence and every all of those movies documentary in Congo why it's not stopped why I think you know that the first holocaust or homicide or genocide in the world was in Congo with the King Lurpo II in 1892 1912 he killed 10 million of Congolese got the end and everything for the rubber and again for those natural resources they kill again the rape and they destroy life in Congo which as Congolese say all of those natural resources is it a cost for Congo or why because all of those kill and rape and those criminality in Congo is about those natural resources okay I think my time is time sign up please there if you want to say and to know more about us sign up please there thank you start by thanking Elizabeth Sackler and Gloria and saying what an honor it is to be on this panel and thank the authors of this book because I someone who's for 25 years been in the women's movement studying these issues of sexual violence and war each time we have armed conflict we have sexual violence I think we always knew that the sexual violence was there but we could never find it and about 10 years ago actually tried to look around to see if we could get some information on what had happened during the Holocaust and I talked to a few Holocaust scholars and a few women who were in the academic movement of the Holocaust and they basically said we can't talk about this it's a taboo subject so I'm just so pleased now that this book has opened up this issue and what I want to talk about today is truth, outrage and institutional response and use that as a framework to talk a little bit about what the UN is doing and it seems a good time because we just heard a lot of truth about what's happening in Congo and you just feel a sense of outrage and then the question is what is the institutional response is it effective and outrage over the rapes in Bosnia Herzegovina in the early 90s certainly led the way to the creation of the international criminal tribunal for Yugoslavia which was really a first since Nuremberg and the Tokyo tribunals of World War II Equality now and I think it was 1993 had done a kind of most wanted poster campaign for Radovan Karatsich who was the mastermind of the systematic rape of Muslim women and at that time even just a year or two before I don't think we had any idea that there would be an international criminal tribunal and that he would actually end up being arrested and currently facing trial before it so a lot has happened and when you step back it really looks like tremendous progress but up close it's actually been very problematic and many of the women in particular survivors trying to seek justice I think have often suffered a secondary wave of victimization and not been able to secure the justice that they sought and the outcry in Rwanda similarly moved the international community to create the international criminal tribunal for Rwanda after 1994 and certainly so much rape was documented at that time I think the estimates that half of the women in Kigali had been raped so it was very well known but then once the tribunal was established in the early cases there were no charges of rape in any of the indictments and that's where I think we saw the institution breaking down because I was in the tribunal for a short time working on the first case I just thought as a little example how that came up because the Akiyesu case was the first case of the tribunal of a mayor in a small town in Rwanda and he was charged with genocide and other crimes but there was no mention of rape in the indictment and during the trial itself one of the witnesses testified about hiding in a tree and looking down and seeing her daughter raped by the defendant on trial and that moment came and went in the courtroom no prosecutor didn't say anything about it the defense lawyers didn't say anything about it so at the end which is when the judges have a chance to ask questions one of the judges whom I worked for, Navi Pillay the one woman on the tribunal at that time asked about it and got more information from the witness on the record about that rape and the other judges also jumped in and asked about that rape so once that incident took place in the court then there was a campaign launch to amend the indictment but it's so much more difficult I don't want to be a boring lawyer but when you don't charge something the first time and then you have to go back and put it in all kinds of questions come up like why didn't the witnesses talk about it the first time and aren't they just making it up because you're asking for that information so it was really much more difficult and there were many reasons that it hadn't come up many of most of the investigators men who didn't even ask about it some of the women who when they were interviewed the second time, I mean this is what I was told informally by those who did the interviews that they had mentioned it but that the prosecutors and investigators had said they weren't really interested in that part of the story so that's how it never got into the indictment but because all of that did happen it really led to a very historic judgment I think that recognized that rape can be a form of genocide that it just destroys not only women but communities and societies as a whole so we've come a long way now we have since those two ad hoc tribunals a number of other tribunals for different countries and also the International Criminal Court which was established which is a more permanent court that really has a tremendous potential but of course the same issues are coming up with regard to sexual violence and even some of the indictments in the Congolese cases rape charge and the same problems with investigators and prosecutors one good advance that I would point out is an advocacy achievement of the women's movement was a provision in the statute of the International Criminal Court on gender representation because the UN always has regional representation and that's no problem but they had never had gender representation so now there's a minimum number of women required to be judges on the International Criminal Court so it's a big difference it was a big battle as you can imagine but international tribunals and those types of prosecutions are really only one avenue of accountability in the UN not the only one and in some ways maybe not the best one because each case costs millions of dollars it takes years and years and it's a very cumbersome process and there are other political processes in the UN specifically relating to the Security Council that I think can also play a very important role in the campaign to end armed conflict and rape and armed conflict you may be familiar with Security Council Resolution 1325 which was adopted in 2000 and recognizes the important role of women in the maintenance of peace and security and that was 10 years ago we just had the 10th year anniversary of that resolution and I think a lot of question about are women really being given that it was recognized they should have not just for the sake of having women but for the contribution that they could bring to maintaining peace and security but I think often we don't see women at the table or very few so more recently there's been a kind of I would say an acceleration in energy around this issue at the UN and a resolution was passed in 2008 introduced by the United States in the Security Council which is Resolution 1820 that focused more specifically on sexual violence and really recognized that sexual violence threatens peace and security which is very, very significant because it brings it into the jurisdiction of the Security Council and means there are many possibilities for action at the international level but all the resolution did in 2008 was called for a report so a year later there was a report and there was more and more momentum growing and the next resolution passed when that report was introduced and the Security Council was Resolution 1888 in 2009 which created a special representative of the Secretary General on sexual violence and conflict at a very high level of an Under Secretary General so it called on the Secretary General to really appoint someone to look at this all the time not just once a year and to continue doing the report and a number of other measures to try to address this issue so a special representative was appointed just about a year ago Margaret Waldstrom from Sweden and I have to say she's done a tremendous amount traveling around the world going to conflict zones she's been to the Congo a number of times when there were reports of mass rape and Wally Kali not so long ago she went there and has I think internally as well as externally really tried to make this issue a much higher priority and she in turn when the next report came out in the past 1960 Security Council Resolution 1960 which is a further step forward because it calls for in this annual report a listing at the end of the report of suspected perpetrators which is a process that's been used very effectively by the UN mechanism that deals with children and armed conflict so when you actually can name people in the Security Council it gives you a tremendous amount of political leverage on those people they do not like to be named in those reports and it has created for children an armed conflict a way of forcing a dialogue so now there's the same possibility for sexual violence and I know that the special representative recently was able to meet with President Kabila in the Congo which was something she had not been able to do before so I think the pressure is building and as you may know also this is a very important year for the UN in terms of the launch of UN Women which is the culmination of many years of effort to consolidate and enhance the institutional framework within the UN bringing together many different agencies that were not working were not connected to work on women and higher levels of representation in a bigger budget I think the idea being that we want a UNICEF type of thing for women and the budget of UNICEF is I don't know about a billion dollars and I think that's the kind of scale that I think they're looking at in the UN which could create a real presence on the ground for women not only to help survivors but to prevent further atrocities through the empowerment of women which is the very broad mandate of UN women now the project that Gloria mentioned that I just finished was with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and that is currently Navi Pillay who was the judge in the Akiyesu case and has a long history of interest and concern over violence against women so her focus is very much on survivors and the victim perspective of justice and she last year appointed a high level panel that was chaired by her deputy that traveled across the Congo for several weeks conducting hearings directly with victims and survivors of sexual violence ranging in age from three years old to 61 years old and all different kinds of situations focusing not just on what happened to them the stories of women in Congo are very well known we hear them again and again and the question of this panel was what happened since then what assistance have you gotten has it been effective what's your sense of justice what do you need now and not surprisingly one of the findings of the panel is that the biggest problem for many women maybe in some cases even greater than the consequences of the rape itself is the stigma that they faced they were thrown out of their house they lost their source of income their children are homeless many of them have contracted HIV AIDS and their number one concern is not even for their own health but just what will happen to my children when I die and where will they be and again even though so many of these women have tremendous physical problems and psychological needs the two things they most wanted were peace in the country and education for their children and as Mama Jean mentioned it's $3 a month to send a child to school but you see that they just don't get this kind of support and yet billions of dollars are going into the country to help victims of sexual violence so that's the kind of I think truth and information that we need to start looking at that the more I learn about it certainly and I'm sure the more you learn about it you just generate an outrage that we have to channel back into the responses because I think there's so many ways in which these efforts to help women end up becoming more disempowering than empowering and in terms of justice I'll just end by giving you one story from a small village called Songong Boyo where we visited there had been a mass rape in 2005 and there was actually unusually a legal case following that in 2006 where soldiers were tried and convicted 29 women got judgments of $5,000 each as a compensation for what they had suffered but then the perpetrators escaped and the damages were never paid by the state so these women are so frustrated they went through all the ordeal of the trial they spoke about what happened to them but now they're the laughing stock of the village and very recently there was a similar type of mass rape in a small town called Fizi and just a few weeks ago a similar very successful conviction that I'm concerned is the same thing will happen so the women that we talked to I think really all felt they're not getting the support they need that's one of the main findings of the report and a recommendation that the UN set up a reparations fund where funds will go directly to women which is not going to be an easy thing for anyone who knows the UN but I think truth is the start and the end of the cycle of accountability and I just want to say one last word Holocaust because as you may know just a few years ago maybe five or ten years ago the comfort women in Korea started to speak out and one woman went on TV in her very late I think seventies and within a few years there was a whole movement of these women and I think they've made such a contribution not only to history but to an immediate sense of accountability in their efforts to get apologies and hold the Japanese government accountable so I'm so encouraged by this book that you know it's not too late and that it's some way we can really try to also make that a movement for accountability thank you thank you to Elizabeth Sackler to Gloria Steinem to all of the panelists and it's my job to try and tie together the story of sexual violation and genocide during the Holocaust and later genocides it seems to me obvious that throughout history you can read it in the Bible you can read it anywhere there's always been rape and sexual violence when there has been war and conflict it's a little bit surprising and we can discuss it in the questions perhaps and not that we have definitive answers how anybody could possibly think that despite all these thousands of years of history including now that couldn't have happened during the Holocaust it doesn't make a lot of sense to me but this was some of the resistance that we received from some people that we think should have known better now there are some differences and there are some similarities between what is going on now in Africa and other places and what went on during the Holocaust and we need to consider them because the question is can we use the lessons of the Holocaust to understand better what's going on today and perhaps if possible prevent other terrible sexual violence and rape in any other genocides we can discuss this again I don't have a definitive answer but I think it certainly helps to have exposed earlier history to make it better to understand now this this particular when Mama Jean said something it reminded me of something I really forgot and I think it blocked it out of my mind but I think you said that sometimes the women were like physically made unable to talk after they were raped and I remember a survivor telling me when I did my research on Ravensburg for that book that she was a teenage girl her job to bring coffee to morning not real coffee but something somewhat like coffee to a particular building in Ravensburg where it was a special kind of lockdown place and she was caring from one side and someone was caring from another side and she walked into this place she asked me if I ever found or heard this from anyone else I never did but I have no reason not to believe her she said that all of the young women girls in that building had had their tongues cut out and they were trying to talk I thought of this while you were talking because I really haven't thought about it for years and that they were just gesturing to show where they had been abused and they couldn't talk and they were trying to tell her this story and I don't believe this woman is any longer living but every time I saw her she kept saying to me did you ever find evidence and I checked with people at the memorial there is no other evidence but her own testimony but I believe this happened and it so much reminded me of exactly what you just said there are always similarities the shame is a similarity the not wanting to talk the perhaps being shunned by the community or worrying you would be shunned by the community after the holocaust we know that Eva Fogelman who was sitting in the front row who did a chapter on psychology she said that many of the children of survivors if their mothers were beautiful women they would always kind of wonder and have some kind of fantasy did their mother have to provide some sexual favors in order to survive or how did she survive in Israel I know a personal friend the family were Israeli and then the survivor came and the young man wanted to marry the survivor and his parents were concerned that she was quote unquote damaged goods so the shame is always related there's a difference during the holocaust rape was not used as a quote unquote tool of war the way it has been used in later later genocides because there was a Nazi law called the Rasen Shander law which was against sexual relations between Nazis and Jews or other unworthy to be with the master race so that it was against the law so it was not a tool of war it was nevertheless a tool of power a tool of humiliation which is what rape is and we know that women were raped in campus we know they were used as sexual slaves they were not in official bordellos such as in Auschwitz because exactly of this law but they were on the front they were taken into a Nazi's home in use and I have testimony of that of a woman that had to be a Jewish woman who had to be naked in the home of a Nazi in eastern Poland so there beside this difference there are certainly similarities we've we've learned a lot because we were working on women during the holocaust in our introduction we have a little bit about later genocides I mean it's obvious to us that we know that there's got to be a relationship or it's almost beside the historical relevance when I talk about it if we can't tie it together so we did that there but after the book came out you always learn things the way Nava said after her book came out 10 people came forward so after the book came out we began a lot of it thanks to Gloria tying it together and also we went to the Salisbury Global seminars last summer where they had a special week-long conference on genocide and they hadn't bothered including the gender question and then we were invited and we were able to integrate that and we met there many people talking about later genocides from Bosnia from Africa and it was really important to our understanding and to our work and one last thing and I'm going to finish and that was Jessica talked a lot about the United Nations and finally unlike Nuremberg where there was not rape or any sexual violation considered a crime against humanity now at least the UN has this on the books that it is so I think that's very helpful this so women's rights were not human rights for Nuremberg as Dr. Sackler said that they are and now at least they are on paper and we think that's very important but the United Nations on Holocaust Remembrance Day this year which was January 27th had as their theme because they've had a Holocaust Remembrance Day for the last four years and every year they have a theme and this year it was women something like profiles of courage that wasn't quite the name and even though if Sonya and I wrote and tried and talked and wrote an op-ed piece which was outside which was in one of the papers we why aren't you including if you're having women as the theme for Holocaust Remembrance Day why aren't you recognizing sexual violence against women and it was absolutely off the agenda so we have a lot of work to do and I think I'm going to end right there thank you thank you thank you thank you and while people are lining up at the mics which are here and here I just want to see the discussion I know it's hard to hear all of this and we want to know what we can do so I will say one thing that we're thinking about which is trying to network in the way that women to women international does rape survivors in countries that are relatively well off economically with rape survivors in other countries so that there is a personal connection on the grounds that this connection of experience is very important and that as in women to women one might be able to supply school fees or small monthly checks or you know something that we can do from the bottom up while we also struggle from the top down and I just want to say that there's another important book called at the dark end of the street by Danielle McGuire which is an entire retelling of the civil rights movement as rooted in the massive sexual abuse of black women and that the reason Rosa Parks was activated was specifically on a rape case and this story also has not been told for many of the same reasons for instance in that book I learned that Fannie Lou Hamer who I knew and worked with and had been sterilized in fact in a Mississippi hospital without her knowledge in an operation so common it was known as the Mississippi appendectomy of her grandmother who bore 23 children 20 from rape and the difference what was the difference between her grandmother and her they did in Fannie Lou's era they had mechanized field labor in her grandmother's era they needed more field labor so I think we need to look at the deep reproductive politics of this it's because women's bodies are the means of reproduction that were in this jam and to some extent if you do genocide you have to put you have to put the right sperm in the wrong wombs if you see what I mean in order to accomplish genocide so I think you know they're as Rachele says they're all kinds of reasons here but the reasons end up with gender even when they are raping boys and men because making them into women is the most shameful thing that can possibly happen to them so I think if we look at this politics and we understand that traditionally what happens to men is called politics what happens to women is called culture but it's all politics it's all about power and reproduction so can we start with this side we all thank you so much this is a panel discussion that we all wanted to be at and we got here by accident we just happened to be here some of us got here because we wanted to be here but we're all here and we owe a debt of obligation to ourselves to pay attention to our neighbors and I'll just tell a brief story I go to the health club and we all get naked and then I get to see the numbers on the arms and then I look for people around me and I wonder who has a survivor or are you sitting in the pool and you don't even know who you're in the pool with and I did find a Holocaust survivor who told stories about to the show of commission and I wanted a story because I'm collecting for myself to write down and to be alive because if you're not interested in what's going on maybe they say we're gossiping yes, we're gossiping I think you said that many years ago we talk to each other try to stop us so keep talking to each other keep buying each other's books keep writing those books and encouraging us not to shut up do you want to say if you're collecting stories you don't have to but do you want to say your name in case there are people in this audience it's up to you I'm going to say after and I'll write them down she'll be in the back of the room afterwards this is an organizing session here I'm Jocelyn Kelly I work for the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and I wanted to ask a question about the fact that even though rape is often a feature of war it's not an inevitable feature of war it doesn't have to happen and I think a lot of the traditional viewpoints have been it's just a byproduct that you can do about it and I think panels like this really illuminate the fact that it can be a tool of war it's not just a byproduct but it doesn't have to be inevitable and I was wondering if I could ask the panel to reflect on that question thank you does anybody want to reflect on the fact that it's not inevitable not natural yeah Jessica I mean I think historically there has to be accountability for rape so I don't think we really know I mean obviously I don't think at all that rape is inevitable but I think that there has to be accountability and what you have is the exact opposite you have commanders ordering people to rape that's what we saw in Bosnia even in this fizzy case just a few weeks ago that I mentioned what happened was there was an incident in a village where there was no rape and loot so I think there's absolutely no reason that it should be inevitable but in order to move towards that state we have to have more accountability I think what we know is that the more equal men and women are in a society the less the rape so I think we've absorbed that rape is about violence in this country and what has fascinated me is reading the accounts of Europeans who arrived here and among the things they were most shocked by was that there was no rape they say Benjamin Franklin all kinds of people remarked they said even these savages don't rape even prisoners because they were societies in which the paradigm was the circle not a hierarchy there was relatively equal power they were also shocked that people didn't beat their children this is against religion you have to beat the devil out of your children so it gave me faith because I think one of the most difficult things is the idea that it is inevitable it is natural and somehow reading about original cultures that were more about balance where perhaps it wasn't totally unknown because in the Iroquois Confederacy one of the requirements for leadership is that you have not they have a word for it doesn't say rape but that you have not insulted a woman I guess I thought there goes Congress you know but there's no reason to believe looking at original cultures that it is inevitable or part of human nature and this is actually ancillary to that but in one of our chapters the chapter author Robert Sommer writes about brothels and he talks about the brothel in Auschwitz and why Himmler originally had the brothels established and one of the reasons was that men have their needs so that's also worth investigating and it was also a reward the brothels were a reward for doing work so that the men if they produced in their slave labor a reward so that a male concentration camp prisoner could be rewarded by having a forced woman prostitute it's quite a situation so the woman is forced to be a prostitute so that the men could have his needs met as Sonia said and also as a reward for his doing good work to increase productivity work product complicity is part of the reason the story didn't get told hi my name is Faith Steinberg I had a grandmother and aunt and two baby cousins in the Holocaust I find that that a lot of the younger people don't know anything about the Holocaust and even the use of the word Holocaust is looked upon a scant they resent it many of the people that I have spoken to and I looked up the origins of the word Holocaust and it has to do with sacrifice by fire and I think that's what distinguishes what happened in the Holocaust between they were all horrible but it distinguishes it from your ordinary everyday genocide which we have been witnessing talk about humans in humanity towards humans to paraphrase what I wonder is why we haven't why we haven't had African Americans why we haven't had why we haven't had what the African Americans have a program on the Holocaust because this seems to be a forgetting and even I find that people even resent the use of the word Holocaust somebody said to me which Holocaust so I would like to see that people like yourselves and I have to thank you for this wonderful lecture with connections I would love to see a program so that we don't forget it's important for us to remember these and hopefully one day humans will wake up and really be human so we should remember these things for that reason thank you do either of you want to address that well I mean I don't know what kind of program that you mean I mean we have a US Holocaust Memorial Museum on the mall in Washington every major city in the United States has a Holocaust museum now and there are programs in schools so I do want to say two sentences I really appreciate you saying that you like that we're making connections in 1993 Judy Chicago as you know with her husband Donald Woodman did an exhibit called the Holocaust Holocaust project from darkness into light and some of the criticism that received was that it made connections to other genocides perhaps at that time and we know the visionary Judy Chicago is that the time wasn't right a lot of people couldn't get behind that and I think that it's time to look at her project again and look at it from our eyes today I think that would be really useful because it helps us to make the connections so thank you thank you thank you so much for this panel my name is Richard Oberstein I'm a physical therapist but my interest in this subject goes back many years in listening to your panel I have a couple of things I wanted to state first of all there's not that many men here obviously so there's a dire need for this subject not just a Holocaust but sexual violence has to be taught to people I mean to men obviously no I'm saying no but I mean the point is that it's good that all of you are here but there's another part that needs to be here another section so I mean this has to be part of the curriculum internationally my second question is for Eva Fogelman I don't know who she is but she's here okay this is my question when Mama Jean was speaking I was struck by the fact that the stigma attached to women who are raped is so counterproductive that it seems insane that any society whether it be after the Holocaust or in the Congo maybe for Eva Fogelman how does human nature occur that you have a rape which is caused not by the woman the stigma I do not understand the psychology of that Eva do you want to go to that Mike there is this well-known phenomenon called blaming the victim and I think that we see that in rape cases in the American court system and we see that everywhere certainly even in the tributals even during the Holocaust if anyone would say you know I had to you know give myself over so that I can feed my child right away it was the woman's fault whether she was raped because she was doing it because she was trying to save a life or whether she was just raped you know as a circumstance she is still blamed you know what did you do and it's a very unfortunate thing that is a very natural instinct and if you take if you understand even Hannah Aaron's work all the early work on you know the Holocaust it was blaming the victims so whether they were rape victims or whether they were killed it was their fault and that unfortunately continues to this very day but does this go back to any hundreds of years this is a human instinct it's a human instinct that's what it is and one has to be aware of it you know it even is as basic as you know if somebody had an accident and they fell right away you say oh why did they trip if it was a woman was she wearing her heels she tripped because she was wearing her heels never mind that you know the streets in New York are full of potholes it's something that we have when we hear these testimonies we have to be aware ourselves of that very instinct and stop it and we have to make others aware of that instinct and that is I think part of our job in making people aware that women who got raped did not want to get raped that's what I say it should be there should be training internationally on education on this whole subject because it's really lacking but thank you for the panel I think it's a fantasy of control because you see someone who something bad has happened to them and you think well if I just don't do it then I'll be safe but I do think added to that in the case of women is are the politics of reproduction the cult of virginity the idea that the means of production can only belong to one one male that that's the only way they'll be able to own their children you know it goes I think much deeper in this case now this yes hi thank you thanks for the panel I think this is connected to what was just said my name is Susan Stein and I've been working for the last few years with the diaries and letters of Eddie Hillesum the Dutch diarist who really I think speaks to resistance, resilience and survival in my research I've she really kind of just looks at things head on I mean that's her power is looking at the truth which we're celebrating today in in researching her I read the diaries of Philip Mechanicus who was also at the Westerbork transit camp and he really takes on the Jewish council in his diary and writes quite a bit about kind of one of those leaders Schlesinger who made use of many Jewish women to get their families off the lists so I just wondered I'm looking forward although that's an odd way of saying it to reading your book but I mean in this talk about power and I understand the Nazis had these laws I mean what Eddie Hillesum does which is kind of remarkable she refuses to demonize her perpetrators because she is looking at kind of the complexity of all of it and that genocide in her mind is inevitable and that the idea is about human nature and power and the Nazis were kind of brilliant in kind of getting many people to do their work for them and we see in people that this is what happens and then in that transit camp we see it a money so I don't know if that comes up in your book or not but thank you unfortunately in our book as well and in history as well the Nazis were not the only people men who raped women there were also other some of their allies who were guards and concentration camps there were people who were supposed to be protecting women or children in hiding which is the basis of Navas book and the rat laugh and there were unfortunately Jewish men in power in some places that use their power and also either raped women or we know of cases in the book that they gave some of the pretty girls in the town to the Nazis for the promise that the town wouldn't be deported to a death camp which lasted about two days and then the town was deported to the death camp so unfortunately you're right I add something I think we sometimes have to also maybe because I'm an artist into the very core of human nature and I think it goes down to the point to the bottom line where someone has to choose between right and wrong and yes rape and sexual abuse could be a political power and it's part of genocide or maybe part of history but it comes to a point where a man stands in front of his own conscience and I think that there is an instinct between choosing between right and wrong and we shouldn't forget that sometimes by even explaining we give a sort of I'll be very and I apologize for my lack of English because it's not my native tongue I wouldn't like to give any excuse for anybody because when it goes down to the bottom line is a man has to make a choice a human being has to make a choice Thank you, thank you Hello, my name is Marcy Chilowitz and I'm here thank you very much for all of your knowledge this is the first type of meeting on the subject that I've attended I'm here in a personal nature I myself have been a victim here in the United States rape on a vulnerable side I was coerced many times by those in the United States both corporate and in power it's due to discrimination by the way I am a Jewish female who is also a Christian and I faced a lot of discrimination over a 11 year period for my beliefs so sexual violence is really one issue here that I have to deal with here is my question I tried reaching out to Amnesty International to no avail I really this is my first time reaching out at all or even speaking I would like to know is confidentiality and trust I don't have that because it's within the United States and I fear that I will not be allowed to speak out because in the past I have not been what I would like to do is I'd like to find out how I can handle it who I can go to and then how I can get involved I don't believe that I'm I don't know if the involvement comes with handling it together or do I need to handle it first and then get involved now you have all been through your situations and you are professionals having survived and known survivors so my goal is that I would like to get involved the issue here is and most importantly it involves my perpetrators men and women I'd like to find out who I can reach out to and right now at this particular time I have ended male relationships because it's been really horrific for me also female relationships because the discrimination has gotten really really bad and I'm really on a very untrusting level now where can I get help Jessica do you want to address that because Jessica really founded 20 years ago Equality Now because the Human Rights Community did not address women's rights they were essentially saying well that's cultural that's inevitable we're addressing political injustices which caused the founding of Equality Now but do you want to address this I can try I think one part of what you were asking is I guess kind of healing yourself and also taking on advocacy I think that's really very different for different people some people the advocacy becomes part of their healing and for other people it just reopens a lot of issues and it just is very painful and that's not my expertise I would turn to the people who have more expertise on that but I can see that there are lots of it's just an individualized thing of what works for you and it sounds like you're looking for I would guess some kind of support system and I think there are quite a lot of things that I'm interested in advocacy simultaneously I do have a strong personality and by the way I don't fear anyone there's no fear what I want to do is I want to stop it and what I want to do is I want to champion it and I also want to make sure it doesn't continue and it's also on a level of a women's issue rights as well as discrimination so I don't know how to draw the line I mean it's women it's discrimination I think one interim step I can suggest a book and then maybe later on in the reception we can find a specific group depending on where you live okay but there's a book called trauma and recovery by Judith Herman an excellent book which by connecting all forms of trauma, war, concentration camps, child abuse rapes each form of trauma illuminates the other and that includes that using what happened to you to help other people is the final stage of healing which is what I'm very interested in. Hi Gloria and Jessica and everyone there who I haven't had the privilege of meeting my name is Sarah Jones and I'm so grateful for this panel people have mentioned connections and how key they've been in sort of across each of your talks and I think that's whether we're talking about the Holocaust or the current situations that Mama Jean spoke of and I'm actually really grateful for Gloria to make the connections to Native American cultures here and then of course the story of that genocide and I remember learning the phrase rape, pillage and plunder as a kind of basic notion of what you know hundreds of years scenario and then to have it connected to King Leopold and you know 19th century genocidal you know again that's the same theme I'm I guess interested as a person of conscience like everyone else in this room what can we do and I don't mean that you should have some kind of panacea but the one thing Mama Jean mentioned in particular coltan it was a word that I just you know kind of picked out there and if I hadn't been fortunate to hear from many of you know from Gloria and others work with Equality Now and other activists I wouldn't know the connection between the coltan that's needed to run my cell phone and the economic the continuing economic instability and exploitation of the Congo so I guess what I'm asking is as people who maybe are unwittingly contributing to that economic instability what are the kinds of steps we can take in our economic choices day to day what are things that we can do besides contributing to people like Equality Now and others how can we use what we know in a practical way and kind of spread information because again without the help of activists I wouldn't know what coltan is I wouldn't know that you know it's mining and it's natural resources that are being exploited gun running and all kinds of other stuff going on around the sexual exploitation so I just wanted to ask that and for those who don't know this is Sarah Jones who is one of our great performers who illuminates the world by becoming literally inhabiting other people so if you don't know her work the next time you see her performing go Mama Jean do you want to address for coltan I don't know if you know about coltan is a scientific name is Columbine tantaline it's used for to make cell phones all of those gadgets you have iPod the new iPad everything it's why if you see my board I said for world those electronic device in Congo there is one million two thousand women two hundred thousand women who is raped and eight million dead the rape in Congo start to a three-month baby to 85 old women even men is raped in Congo for me I say it's why I said we can what we are doing is to put bandage to end the rape in Congo we must to stop the cause of rape the cause of rape is the illegal exploitation of the natural resource and all of those multinational they are not going to stop to do it in Africa there are not the weapon industry is not in Africa those industry of weapon is everywhere and they must to sell the weapon in Africa how to do it is to use another Africa country to go to kill and everything to be a way to go whatever they want to do whatever they want in Africa it's what for all of us to have a good communication sophistication laptop remember that yes we I think that addresses the question of consumer education and consumer pressure I mean when this was first raised with Apple for instance they said well we can't possibly trace where our materials are coming from but with enough consumer pressure they were suddenly able to trace where their materials are coming from so we are responsible we have consumer power and we are responsible yes okay there are four here and two here and we'll be late but not that late but no one else can stand up okay yes hi my name is Chang Jin Lee and I'm working on a project about comfort women issue 200,000 young girls in Asia known as comfort women they were sexually exploited before and during World War II from 1931 to 1945 for the last several years I was able to Asia, Korea China, Taiwan and Indonesia to mean survivors to understand this issue better one thing I noticed when I went there you know I think it's like I was surprised that there was so much shame involved with this issue you know because these are amazingly courageous outspoken women people that we should proud of but I realized when I went to Asia it wasn't only Japan they didn't want to talk about this issue but also a lot of Asians wanted to forget as well because again there's so much shame involved these are young girls as young as 12 years old and 50 soldiers a day so I have several questions how Jewish people look at these sex slavery during the Holocaust how they do they can you speed up just a little bit I'm worried about the time also another thing is like do we know how many are there sex slaves during the Holocaust Jewish is there some kind of organized movement among Jewish people because I saw in Asia organized that they're still waiting for justice and official apology and acknowledgement from the Japanese government so is there anything like that I'll answer very quickly there is no organized movement the Jewish community wishes this would go away and what was the third thing numbers we don't know numbers because in most cases as there was a law against sex between a Nazi and a Jewish woman the biggest way not to have a witness was to kill the woman yes I must say talking to one survivor that she felt that the women who were sexually used died sooner than the prisoners who were used as labor until they were too weak to work and then sent into the ovens that actually the life expectancy was was less and that's part of the reason why it came out and it was known at Nuremberg and it was consciously excluded consciously my name is Gloria Blumenthal thank you very much as with many subjects related to the Holocaust I just bought a new book by Timothy Snyder called Bloodlands which depicts what happened behind what is now Iron Curtain because there were very few survivors to tell it and people who lived behind the Iron Curtain were not encouraged to give testimonies so like this there are many areas that unfortunately are left to be explored but the thing that I wanted to say is that the reason why it came here in large part was because of Navasema I found her book by accident a couple years ago and I've read a lot of books about the Holocaust and this touched me enormously and I wanted to just the fiction the whole thing my mother was in hiding and her family so I particularly as a daughter of Holocaust survivors related after hearing a lot about my mother's experiences luckily there were no stories of sexual abuse but a lot of fear of being discovered and they were not but my question to Navasema or to anybody is what I found spectacular about the book was the last I guess third where the notion of memory how do we use memory so that these stories can be told they're not going to be told as a witness would tell it but how do you how can we use memory this occurs a hundred years later how do we do it now and especially we keep hearing about how will people learn about it we have facts and figures but we've also said that art fiction can be a way of hitting the nail on the head in a much more gut kind of way so that's my we're living in a world where first of all thank you very much this world is already seen Holocaust denial something which I wrote 12 years ago published in 2001 and people came to me and said Holocaust denial are you nuts what kind of a pessimist are you and it's becoming a reality the only tool I have against forgetting is remembering first as individual and then as a chain of rememberers I call them rememberers in my book each and every one of us has a small responsibility of being a carrier a memory carrier into the future I tell my kids one day you will have to speak to your grandchildren and tell them that your great great your grandmother was a survivor you've heard about it you've seen a survivor because this danger of denial is not going to be evaporated from the world so it's our own individual responsibility to make sure that the memory of one Holocaust survivor will go into the future each and every one of us thank you hi my name is Rachel Falkenstein I'm working on some research on rape as a weapon of war very quickly I won't give the whole story but I was wondering what the impact of the mobile courts were such as infeasy and other parts of Africa and also if there was one particular thing that we in the audience could do moving forward what would that one thing did you understand? the mobile courts are a project that was set up by the American Bar Association for people who don't know to try to assist bringing justice I mean in Congo it's a huge country and there are some places so many places where there aren't even roads to go there and if there aren't courts and there aren't local prisons there can't be justice so this idea is to bring these mobile courts the impact was clearly huge infeasy where they brought a mobile court and that's all the cases that I was talking about. Sangomboyo also was a mobile court because it's a village that has no court I think it's a very good initiative my own concern would be it's not that sustainable it's expensive every time the UN is taking all of its aircraft to fly people in and out so I think we need to look at a different form of justice that starts from the ground and is present all the time because the model is not really expandable that's a really hard question that I think we're all struggling with in terms of Congo I would hope that the report that this high level panel has done will lead to the creation of some kind of a reparations fund in the UN because literally billions of dollars are going into Congo and not reaching women who would benefit so much from $3 a month so the question is how do we mobilize public pressure to make that happen the UN is slow and sometimes not responsive at all and so for me that's an immediate target for me but I think there are many different ways I mean Sarah mentioned I don't know if there is like a boycott movement I'm a little bit behind on some of those details I know that on the cell phone front there's actually a move to try to bring cell phones and cell phone service to women in the remote areas of Congo so that they can have some kind of alert system when they're in trouble so I think there are lots of initiatives going on but public pressure just getting the word out channeling the outrage into whatever concrete actions are going to be helpful is the bottom line and you can go to the Equality Now website you can go to the women's media center website and others do you want to mention any other? I just want to add what she said she talked about the cell phone to bring in Congo it's very amazing because you know in this part all of us can have this that there is one cell phone for 1000 person in Congo those who are there victim for us to have all comfort it's a double irony I just want to thank you all the panel for all you said I'm happy to be here I'm from Rwanda I'm a survivor I lost a lot of family members I'm also a victim of rape and also contracted HIV through rape so it's really hard for me to hear all the things happening you know to the women it's to me it happened to me when I was young I was 14 years old and it affected me a lot in so many areas in my life so I feel like it's my duty myself to talk about it and also help to fight all these such things happening to the women and I feel like it's my responsibility to if I have kids you know wherever else we come we'll know what's what happened in our history so to me I feel like I have to do something myself in order to hear myself and also to help others so I'm trying to document it so hopefully I will do a book about the whole thing thank you my name is Edward Powers and pardon my apology I got here late because I had to navigate the traffic from Westchester to here I was thinking it might be easier to drive across Tripoli than getting down here but anyhow I'm a physician and a surgeon and over 40 years I've had the honor to take care of several patients who survived the Holocaust and two women in particular come to my mind one was a woman who was in her 60s she was physically used while in the camps survived that came out married another Holocaust survivor they had a candy store in the Bronx two boys and actually she held it together until she was in her 60s and when I took care of her she was schizophrenic totally psychotic her speech was a word salad and then what stirred my imagination was some comments that was made on the panel and thinking of another woman who they survived with her mother in Varshaba and she was fleeing in 1945 at the end of the war the mother ran into a dispensary shared a gurney with and this is where the woman was born and she was evacuated on a Soviet tank heading west interesting she's a trained analyst PhD a lot of introspection and insight but when she got into her 50s emotional breakdown and I don't know whether maybe because I'm not a psychologist I'm not a psychiatrist and I cut and sew for a living people opened up and told me those stories so I was thinking of what you said and I was thinking of what I believe it's Navasemmel was talking about and my question is is there a role in this process and this healing process for spirituality in terms of forgiveness in terms of letting go for your own sake and in terms of trying to develop that spirit within thank you thank you anybody want to address spirituality you know I think I think we need to go through anger before we get to forgiveness and we need to go through accountability before we get to spirituality but I do think you know since I'll just say what I think religion is politics in the sky spirituality is about the worth of every individual so if that's what we mean by spirituality I think it can get us beyond gender beyond race, beyond divisions beyond hierarchies and into the circle where we belong I just thought because we are very Christian there is 60% of Congolese are Christian and for forgiveness I think it's a good way for all of those women in Congo because it's what we tell them if you don't forgive you are not going to be healed by yourself you must go what Christ said if you forgive you will be forgiven start for that with that and you are going to by yourself to be healed and we have many people who did it and they are now healed because they said they don't know which way and still with it in the heart it's good to try to forgive and forget and let it go and move on I think we are so late now I don't think we can go to that side one more I am Deborah Schultz and I've had the privilege of working on women's human rights internationally and I just first of all want to thank you all for a great panel and I speak really as an American Jew in saying that the way I see my responsibility to remember the Holocaust is in learning about the present and I'm really glad that we are talking about the Congo as a Jew when I hear 6 million you know I grew up hearing 6 million never forget 6 million have died in the Congo 9 countries are involved in the Congo war it's called Africa's World War and you know we are starting to understand that Coltan is integrated into our lives so I just would like to first learn more before we decide what our intervention is and support the Congolese women's movement because Congo does have a women's movement and we need to ask Congolese women what they need, what they want and in what form they need it before we decide what we are giving and I also just wanted to say that there is a really excellent organization that people can support that is trying to hold international justice to promoting women's human rights and that's the women's initiatives for gender justice in The Hague and you can just google them and you know Jessica talked about pressure we need to really put pressure on all of these institutions frustrating as they are and the international criminal court although it's disappointed us a lot has the opportunity to really make a global impact for gender justice so I would really encourage us to learn more about that we are a good activist last suggestion and we must remember let's see we are not going to blame the victim we are not going to blame the victim we are going to carry the truth of others right we are going to tell our own truth really crucial and we are going to make sure we do one outrageous thing at least every day or every week and I hope you will join us to talk more about the book signing and the reception at the Sackler Center thank you so much please let's thank our panelists thank you all very much I know you are going to be tempted to come up and speak with everybody now I'm going to ask everybody please to get to the elevators go to the fourth floor there will be book signing and plenty of time for us to visit with all of our panelists and with Gloria Steinem thank you very much for coming this was an extraordinary opportunity for all of us