Editor,

RE: "Helios Theater: Telling the Rwandan and German genocide story” (The New Times, December 20).

It was very interesting to read that Barbara Kolling, co-founder of Helios Theater of Germany, together with Anna-Sophia Zimniak, Steffen Moor and Erpho Bell, have visited this beautiful land of a thousand hills to explore the subject of the histories of the genocides that took place in Rwanda and Germany, with a view to creating a joint stage production on the subject.

While history can repeat itself, with genocide it must always be ‘Never Again’.

Partnerships are always the best way forward. But a partnership between two great nations, Rwanda and Germany, who have both suffered severe genocides in the past, would convey a firm resolve, not just to these two countries, but to the world at large that genocide can never serve any useful purpose and should never be allowed to occur anywhere.

In Germany it is already a whole new generation since the genocide (the Holocaust that claimed the lives of six million Jews in Europe) there that took place between 1941 and 1945.

In Rwanda, we still have among us both elderly people and youths who were directly affected by the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and, therefore, the pain is much greater and the memories of those dark days and the atrocities committed are still fresh in the minds of the people.

Clarence Fernandes