AMUDE, northeast Syria — Mohammed Rashid Fateh was 12 years old when he went to the movies for the first time on Nov. 13, 1960.

“I was so excited I cannot tell you. I wore my clothes the night before and couldn’t wait for it to be tomorrow,” Fateh recalled on a recent afternoon in the predominantly Kurdish town of Amude in northeastern Syria. His joy was short lived. Halfway through the screening of the Egyptian horror film “The Ghost of Midnight,” “there was a loud explosion and the screen went white.” Smoke filled the theater hall amid cries of “Fire!”

Fateh jumped off the balcony where he had been sitting and survived the blaze that tore through the wood and clay structure built to accommodate no more than 200 people. Around 500 children were packed into it that day in keeping with the government’s orders, raising money for Algeria’s struggle for independence from France. Pan-Arab solidarity was one of the tenets of Syria’s brief marriage with Egypt at the time. The union, called the United Arab Republic, was forged in 1958 and ended with Syria’s withdrawal in 1961.

Estimates vary but at least 200 children, mostly under the age of 14 and mostly Kurds, perished in the fire, likely caused by an overheated projector. A frenzied stampede ensued as children headed to a pair of narrow exit doors that opened inward. The children piled up against them, forming a human bonfire.