Before going abroad, I saw a pirated version of Schindler’s List at a friend’s house; the picture was not clear and only had Chinese subtitles, so I was not that impressed. After I arrived in the U.S., I watched the English version of Schindler’s List again a few years ago, and my eyes were blurred with tears. I lamented the national holocaust that the Jews suffered, and I was puzzled by the madness and evil of the seemingly excellent German nation that followed Hitler in World War II.
Probably because I also have a daughter, the footage of the little girl in red in the movie Schindler’s List, who was alone and unsupported, hobbling through the streets of the bloody massacre, made me unable to let go of it for a long Time.
Since the end of 2016, after the concentration camps appeared in my homeland, Xinjiang, when I saw and heard the cries of those Uyghur Parents who lost their sons and daughters; saw those Uyghur mothers who held up the photos of their missing sons and daughters and cried and fainted in front of the Chinese Embassy, the footage of that girl in red became a lingering The shadow.
Until the concentration camps appeared, I honestly never thought that my people, the Uyghurs, would follow in the footsteps of the Jewish tragedy and become victims of the Nazi replica, the Chinese government’s Crimes Against Humanity and genocide.
As one of the victims, living in the free world, what do I need to do? Therefore, in order to find a way to save my people and to explore the source of human evil, I began to collect a lot of books and videos on genocide and the Jewish Holocaust, reading and watching videos night and day, trying to find a way out and find answers.
Recently, after reading Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on Banal Evil” and searching for related videos, I found another story of a girl in red who appeared in the Jewish Holocaust. Listening to it kept me awake and unable to let go.
The story of the girl in red was told by the Israeli prosecutor who indicted Eichmann. During the witness testimony phase of Eichmann’s trial, the prosecutor said that a concentration camp survivor told what happened to her Family. After Jews from all over the world were brought to the camps, the Nazis screened the people they brought in, keeping those they deemed useful as forced labor slave labor; those they deemed useless were sent to gas chambers and incinerators.
When the witness’ family entered the camp, he was left behind by the Nazis because he was an engineer and asked to stand to the right and wait; the witness’ wife was asked by the Nazis to stand to the left and follow the crowd; the witness had a 2.5-year-old daughter, and the Nazis asked the little girl to follow her mother; then the witness’ 11-year-old son was also asked by the Nazis to catch up with his mother.
The witness said in court, “I watched my wife and son, slowly disappearing into the stream of ragged people; but my little daughter, who happened to be wearing her red coat, was conspicuous. I watched as her red grew smaller and smaller and smaller, becoming a dot, and finally disappearing as well ……. My family, just like that, disappeared before my eyes.”
The Israeli prosecutor recalled that at that time, he also happened to have a 2 1/2 year old daughter, and exactly half a month ago, he also bought a red jacket for his daughter. Thus, after hearing the testimony of the concentration camp survivors, the prosecutor felt as if his throat had been slit, unable to speak, and the entire courtroom was silent.
The prosecutor, who is over 90 years old, told the interviewer that since then, to this day, when he walks down the street or in restaurants and other occasions, his heartbeat increases when he sees little girls and boys in red: the testimonies of concentration camp survivors’ accusations, the girls in red, come to his eyes and plunge him into sorrow beyond his control.
I am also the father of a little girl, and I also like to buy red clothes for my daughter.
Now, as a father, every time I see my daughter wearing her red dress, as a victim of the Chinese genocide, what comes to my eyes is no longer just the little girl in red on Schindler’s List, or the little 2.5-year-old girl in red told by the prosecutor in the Eichmann trial, but countless little Uyghur girls and boys in red!
More than six months ago, a European Uyghur father called me after he tumbled into my phone number. On the phone, he cried about the sadness and joy of not being able to bring his two daughters out and asked if I could help transfer some money to his daughters. He guessed that I had one or two trusted friends because of my dealings with Han Chinese. I immediately mobilized my trustworthy Han Chinese friends to find someone, and in the end, I was able to find a Han Chinese who was willing to help, and the money was transferred to his daughter safely.
But the Uyghur father was the lucky one, as his two daughters were being looked after by their elderly parents. Although both parents and children are suffering from the pain of separation, at least they are still close to their relatives and can still move around to ask for news and send money.
However, there are many Uyghur parents who do not know where their children are. Are they still alive?
A Uyghur father in Turkey, whose wife took his children Home to visit relatives in 2017, disappeared without a trace, as if he had evaporated. The father searched hard for his missing wife and children, and in 2019 China Central Television broadcast ‘Happy Uyghur Children’s Orphanage’ Life, the father found his youngest son in that ‘Angel Orphanage’, while his wife has not been heard of so far.
The Australian father, Mamutijiang, after more than four years of forced separation from his wife and son, had the good fortune to hear his little 10-year-old daughter’s cries through a CNN reporter; to hear her thoughts about her father, who was far away in Australia, and her mother, who had disappeared into a concentration camp in China. But unfortunately, Mamutijiang, who was still in a state of longing and grief for his wife and children, saw the condemnation of his father, who had been forced to flee by the Chinese journalists, a week later on the Chinese global television network.
The same group of CNN reporters also found another family of four Uighur children in exile in Italy, who had been placed in a Chinese government “orphanage”. In one picture, the four children in the orphanage are holding signs that say “We miss you, parents”, showing how much the children miss their parents!
These Uyghurs are relatively lucky to at least know the whereabouts of their children and that they are still alive. But there are countless other Uyghur parents who do not know the whereabouts of their children and do not know if their children are still alive. Some of their children boarded the plane to their hometowns to visit their relatives before their eyes and have not been heard from since, never to return, not to be seen alive, not to be seen dead.
The disappearance of Uyghur children has not actually started since the emergence of the concentration camps; a large number of Uyghurs, most of them children, disappeared after the July 5 Incident in 2009. Uyghur mother Patiguligulam searched for her son, who was taken from his home by Urumqi police in 2009, until her own secret trial in 2014. Since then, the child has not been seen and the mother has disappeared into the darkness of China’s prisons.
I can’t forget Uyghur mother Pati Guligulam’s cry to reporters: “I envy Palestinian and Syrian mothers, who can at least bury their children with their own hands. I just want to know the whereabouts of my child, and if my son is dead, return my body. I just want to see my son one last time and bury him with my own hands!”
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