In the 2007-08 bloody post-election violence, neighbours turned against each other, sometimes leading ethnic gang members to where others of different ethnic groups lived.
The violence sparked after years of stereotyping, scapegoating and othering members of other tribes, sowing and watering seeds of hate and exclusion.
An account by a survivor of the campaign to exterminate the Jews in 1940s in Europe bears a perfect semblance to the tales of Kenyans who survived the deadly ethnic clashes that broke in the aftermath of the 2007 presidential election.
From being viewed as outsiders to stereotyping and generalisation, the societies in Europe at the time gradually scapegoated the Jews and it only took one bold leader to speak out what was in the minds of many to spark the genocide.
Ninety-year-old Lyonell Fliss was six years old in 1941 and was living with his parents in Iasi, Romania.
At the height of the Second World War, Romania joined forces with Adolf Hitler-led Nazi regime in Germany as part of the Axis power.
Like Nazi Germany, Romania started the campaign of identifying and rounding up Jews.
Fliss was the only child of his father, Lupo, and mother, Adela.
His father owned a fabric shop, The Golden Pomegranate, in the centre of the city and his mother assisted in the shop.
Up to the time of the war, the family lived amiably with the neighbours. In the Kenyan context, they lived together with other Romanian communities, “borrowing salt from each other”.
But when the turmoil blew up, it is the very neighbours who directed the soldiers to where the Jews lived.
Fliss recounted his experience during the war and how he survived the holocaust during a presentation at the Nairobi UN offices on Tuesday to mark the 80th international day of the holocaust.
The civil engineer based in South Africa, later sat down with the Star for an interview.
His presentation at the UN meeting is also preserved at the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre that preserves the stories of the ordeal’s survivors. Lasi was a cultural city with many theatres, museums and universities.
Half of the population was Jewish, and they were involved in all facets of cultural and economic life.
Romania already had a history of antisemitism, but it worsened when it joined Nazi Germany as part of the Axis Powers in 1941, Fliss remembered.
The Sunday of June 28, 1941 is freshly printed in Fliss’ mind.
The happenings of the day are forever part of him as they shaped him.
On the day, the caretaker of their apartment threatened to target his family.
His mother insisted they hide under their beds when they heard banging on the door, he remembers.
But the caretaker, true to his word, came to their house and broke open the door and luckily did not see them.
The caretaker carted away a few of the precious household items the family had.
Later, German soldiers were on a hunting spree for Jews, knocking every door as the neighbours guided them.
Unlucky for the Fliss family, they were found in their crammed safe space under the bed.
“They were forcibly removed from the apartment and Lyonell’s mother broke her leg when a soldier pushed her down the stairs,” the material by Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre says.
“The Fliss family were then or dered to join a line of Jews outside the central police station. The queue moved forward very slowly and while they waited, they heard gunshots and saw piles of dead bodies.”
The selflessly protective instinct of a parent kicked in on the mother, and saw a kind looking Romanian soldier and begged him to adopt the boy.
The soldier took Fliss and his parents to the back of the line, by which time the shooting had stopped and they were released.
They could not go back to their own apartment, as they were scared of the caretaker, so they joined other family members who had gathered at Lyonell’s grandmother’s home.
More than 13,000 Jews were massacred in the Iasi pogrom that day. Lyonell’s relatives were among the thousands of Jews rounded up and packed into freight cars and vans.
Those death trains were sealed and moved back and forth between railway stations and 2,650 people died of suffocation or thirst, while others lost their sanity, Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre says.
The family moved to Bucharest, the capital of Romania and Fliss later moved across the Iron Curtain and finally made it to Israel in the 1950s. He lived in Israel for six years before moving to South Africa for work.
“Having experienced the holocaust first-hand, I have learnt that hate should not be given any safe harbour in human hearts. And violence never solves anything,” he said.
“If your brother takes your eye, do not go for his because that trend will make both of you blind, and lose at the end of the day.”
Fliss says that any form of hate and prejudice is poisonous and should not be tolerated.
On whether he has forgiven the people who mistreated them decades later, Fliss says he “has no capacity to forgive or not because there is no way I can blame the children of the perpetrators of the violence. They are not responsible for it”.
And it is the experience that has made him live this long, he says.
“Trauma breaks some people but it also strengthens some. It strengthened me psychologically and made me a fighter life.”
