Survivors of Genocide

For The Writers is seeking testimonies from survivors, descendants, and witnesses of genocide whose accounts safeguard truth against denial, distortion, and erasure. Across histories—including the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, Bosnia, the genocide of Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas, and the Herero and Nama genocide—these stories reveal the human cost behind numbers and political rhetoric. We invite nonfiction, memoir, and reflective essays that confront inherited grief, displacement, scars of war, and the complex weight of intergenerational trauma. These accounts ensure that lived memory remains part of the historical record.

We are seeking nonfiction submissions from survivors, descendants, and witnesses of genocide who are ready to share stories of loss, endurance, memory, and resistance. Today, fewer than 220,000 Holocaust survivors remain worldwide, most in their late eighties, and nearly 70 percent are projected to be gone by 2035. We invite work from those affected by the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide, the Cambodian Genocide, the Bosnian Genocide, the genocide of Indigenous peoples across the Americas, and the Herero and Nama genocide in present-day Namibia, where up to 80 percent of the Herero population and half of the Nama population were killed under German colonial rule.

This call is not confined to these histories. We welcome testimonies from any community that has endured genocide—whether state-recognized or denied, documented or silenced. These accounts are essential in challenging denial, countering distortion, and preserving the reality of mass violence with accuracy and care.

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The Importance of Sustained Reporting

Genocide is not only the taking of lives but the deliberate destruction of peoples, cultures, and futures. Between 1941 and 1945, six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. In 1915, more than one million Armenians were killed in mass deportations and death marches. In 1994, nearly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in Rwanda in one hundred days. The Cambodian Genocide under the Khmer Rouge claimed an estimated two million lives. The Bosnian Genocide took more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995. Across the Americas, millions of Indigenous people were killed through centuries of colonization, enslavement, and forced removal. These are not abstract figures. They represent families erased, languages extinguished, and futures taken before they could unfold.

History does not repeat itself by accident; it repeats when memory is weakened, when truth is erased, and when the world chooses to look away. In January 2025, the U.S. State Department determined that the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces are committing genocide in Darfur—mass killings, targeted starvation, and the deliberate erasure of ethnic communities. More than twelve million people have been displaced in the current conflict, with entire villages burned and aid blocked. When truth is silenced, the violence continues.

Survivors remain. Descendants remain. Memory remains. Yet too often these histories are reduced to a few lines in textbooks or folded into political narratives that strip them of human cost. This call exists to resist that shrinking—to place lived testimony at the center of the storyline.

If you carry inherited grief, the imprint of displacement, or the echoes of intergenerational trauma, your story is needed. Your words restore scale, specificity, and truth to histories that power has repeatedly attempted to narrow. Your testimony strengthens collective memory in ways that make erasure harder and recurrence less possible.

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What We’re Looking For (Among Other Things)

We invite personal essays, letters, oral histories, documentary accounts, or other forms of narrative nonfiction that explore:

• First-person accounts of surviving genocide or growing up in its shadow;

  
  

• Stories passed down from parents, grandparents, or community elders;

  
  

• The struggle to preserve language, culture, or memory after mass violence;

  
  

• Ongoing trauma, displacement, or identity loss tied to genocidal history;

  
  

• Acts of survival, rebuilding, or resistance that defied extermination;

  
  

• Reflections on justice, memory, denial, or silence.

We are especially interested in stories tied to:

• The Holocaust and the legacy of European antisemitism;

  
  

• The Armenian Genocide and its generational transmission;

  
  

• Rwanda and the haunting speed and intimacy of its 100 days;

  
  

• Cambodia, where intellect and identity were both targeted;

  
  

• Bosnia, and the lingering wounds of Srebrenica and ethnic cleansing;

  
  

• Indigenous communities across the Americas, who still fight for recognition and justice;

  
  

• Namibia, where Germany’s early colonial genocide left scars still seeking redress.

Submissions may be published anonymously or under your name. We welcome contributors from all backgrounds, faiths, and identities, especially those from historically silenced or marginalized communities.

Typos? Not on our watch. This article has been fact-checked and finessed by our eagle-eyed editors. Have more to contribute or see something worth calling out? Let us know.