A struggle of memory

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by Julia Sallo (letters@boulderweekly.com)

Over spring break, I took a family trip to Washington D.C. Although traveling with four small children entails viewing the Hope Diamond four times, eating ice cream from every street vendor and taking multiple cabs to relieve the strain of sore feet from endless walking, I was able to sneak off with my step-dad to visit the Holocaust Museum.

As we entered the museum and made our way up to the permanent exhibit, I was filled with a sense of foreboding and fear. We were cramped into a metal elevator, and a TV screen showed the worst of the images from the United States' liberation of the concentration camps after the war. My much-too-brief hour and a half spent there felt unreal. I slowly walked through the chronological exhibits, viewing a model of the gas chambers, a cattle car in which hundreds of people were crammed and a tree stump that once marked a mass grave.

This coming Monday, April 24, is Yom Ha Shoah—Holocaust Remembrance Day. Yom translates as "day," and Ha Shoah signifies "hell" and "evil," two words practically synonymous with the Holocaust. Across the world, Jews and non-Jews will gather together to remember the horrible atrocities committed against their people.

"We must forge an unshakable oath with all civilized people that never again will the world stand silent, never again will the world fail to act in time to prevent this terrible crime of genocide," said President Jimmy Carter in 1979.

Jews everywhere repeat the words "never again" in commemoration of the Holocaust. And not since have so many people been murdered in a mass genocide. But using the Webster's International definition of genocide, "The use of deliberate systematic measures calculated to bring about the extermination of a racial, political, or cultural group," this "terrible crime" has continued to occur.

Samantha Power, in her New York Times bestseller A Problem From Hell, reviews major cases of world genocide from 1915 to today. She points to examples of genocide, including the Bosnian Serbs' eradication of non-Serbs, the Ottoman Turk genocide of the Armenians, the Nazi Holocaust, the killing fields of Cambodia, Saddam Hussein's actions against the Kurds in Iraq, and the Rwandan Hutus' slaughter of the 1 million Tutsi. These are six definite cases of genocide.

Today, genocide in Darfur, Sudan, is a hot political topic. More than a million people, driven from their homes, now face death from starvation and disease as the government and militias attempt to prevent humanitarian aid from reaching them. The same forces have destroyed villages and crops and poisoned people's water supplies. They continue to murder, rape and terrorize (darfurgenocide.com).

According to reports by the World Food Program, the United Nations and the Coalition for International Justice, 3.5 million people face starvation, 2.5 million have been displaced and 400,000 have been killed in Darfur thus far (savedarfur.org). Organizations such as Save Darfur are promoting awareness by selling green rubber bracelets and updating their website, but the international community is failing to protect civilians or influence the Sudanese government to do so.

With an organization at Fairview High School called Volunteer Mafia, Fairview students promoted awareness about genocide in Darfur by displaying posters and videos in the school's student center a couple months ago. They also sold shirts to raise money for Darfur. At least a few times a week, you can spot Fairview students displaying "Stop Genocide in Darfur" across their chests.

The leading Fairview students are Lulu Feingold and Amy Lemessurier, who are leaders in Fairview clubs Amnesty International and Educate. Feingold says she has "always been really interested in the developing world and what has been going on internationally."

Taking things up a notch from raising awareness at school, Feingold and Lemessurier are planning a Darfur rally on April 30, the same day as the national Darfur rally in Washington D.C. They have planned the rally with CU students in an organization called "Let Your Voice Be Heard." The rally will be held on Pearl Street at 12 p.m.

"We keep saying 'never again,' and it is important for us to raise awareness about the issue because the government and especially the mass media are doing a horrible job, and it is up to us," Feingold says.

Without acceptance, understanding and education about past genocide, the killing will continue. The failure of the public to condemn the Turkish slaughter of Armenians during World War I inspired Hitler to commit his own atrocities.

"Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness—for the present only in the East—with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women and children of Polish derivation and language," he said. "Only thus shall we gain the living space which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

Today, Turkey still refuses to recognize its genocide of the Armenians, lobbying aggressively against efforts by scholars and public officials to acknowledge the grim truth of this unconscionable crime against humanity.

The Hebrew word "Zachor" means "remember." This is a worldwide watchword of the Holocaust. Only by remembering the past can we move forward and prevent future slaughter. With upcoming opportunities for raising awareness such as Yom Ha Shoah on April 24, and the youth-led rally on April 30, people everywhere should unite in a campaign to end genocide for good. Only with international support can countries such as Sudan remain stable enough to prevent the atrocities they are experiencing.

As Jews pray for the memory of the 6 million lost in the Holocaust, I hope they will be able to pray for the lives of the 2.5 million starving and displaced Sudanese. As the Czech writer Milan Kundera wrote, "The struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

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