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8 | FEBRUARY 20 • 2020 

1942 - 2020

Covering and Connecting 
Jewish Detroit Every Week
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How to reach us see page 12

F

ew of us know what we 
would do in the face of 
genocide.
Since my early adolescence, 
I’
ve had fantasies about what I 
would have done if I had been 
alive during the Shoah. In 
these daydreams, 
I imagine myself 
attacking Nazis. 
I see myself as a 
freedom fighter 
living in the 
forests of France 
or Ukraine. “I’
d 
fight,” I tell myself. “I wouldn’
t 
be a victim.” 
And as much as I believe 
this — as much as many of us 
believe this about ourselves — 
the truth is: We have no idea 
what we would do.
It was with these fantasies 
that I boarded a plane to 
Guatemala on the last week 
of January as a Global Justice 
Fellow with American Jewish 
World Service (AJWS). We 
were going there to meet 

with organizations that AJWS 
supports to promote human 
rights and fight corruption in 
their country.
As we were landing, I saw 
lush green mountains with 
shanty homes sprawling down 
their sides and immense 
volcanoes rising to the 
heavens. Though I didn’
t know 
it then, the contrast would 

perfectly foreshadow the 
beauty and pain I was about to 
encounter.
The entire week, we were 
surrounded by a beautiful land 
and people — a country full of 
life, its people greeting us with 
smiles and openness. But the 
individuals we met also invited 
us into their stories of pain.
A forensic anthropologist 

remembered crying when she 
uncovered her first mass grave: 
a remnant from the 36-year 
internal armed conflict and 
ensuing genocide lasting from 
1960 to 1996, in which the 
military regime systematically 
murdered more than 200,000 
indigenous Mayan people. 
She told us the first victim 
she uncovered was an 
expectant mother, that tears 
came streaming down her face 
as she brushed away dirt from 
the bones of that unborn child, 
encircled by the bones of its 
mother. The anthropologist 
was so upset, she had to leave 
the excavation … but upon 
returning, she could hear 
joyous laughter coming from 
the site. It was the family 
of the victim laughing — 
celebrating that after decades 
of searching, they had finally 
found their loved one and 
could lay her bones to rest.
Our tour guide, tasked with 
getting us from place to place, 

guest column

Resilience in the Face of Genocide

CHRISTOPHER DILTS/AJWS

In Guatemala City, candles and flowers used for Mayan invocation ceremonies 
welcome Global Justice Fellows to a meeting with Autoridades Ancestrales, a 
coalition representing many indigenous and ethnic groups in Guatemala working 
to stop the injustices affecting their communities.

Rabbi Josh 
Whinston

continued on page 10

