Why is it Important to Learn
about the Holocaust and the Genocides of ALL Peoples?

Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu
 
Courtesy: Foreword to Encyclopedia of Genocide
ABL-CLIO, Oxford, England (1999), pp. lvii-lviii


In December 1995, fifty years after the .end of World War II, I sat in the very courtroom where the Nuremberg trial was held. I was part of a BBC TV panel discussion on the legacy of Nuremberg. Afterward I visited the site of the former Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. The Germans seemed determined to ensure that their nation would never forget the atrocities that had been committed for the sake of Hitler's obsession with Aryanism. In Dachau there was a museum above whose entrance the haunting words by George Santayana were inscribed: "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it."

The compelling reason why we should learn about the Holocaust, and the genocides committed against other peoples as well, is so that we might be filled with a revulsion at what took place and thus be inspired, indeed galvanized, to commit ourselves to ensure that such atrocities should never happen again. It is sadly true what a cynic has said, that we learn from history that we do not learn from history. And yet it is possible that if the world had been conscious of the genocide that was committed by the Ottoman Turks against the Armenians, the first genocide of the twentieth century, then perhaps humanity might have been more alert to the warning signs that were being given before Hitler's madness was unleashed on an unbelieving world. For there are telltale signs, which those with eyes to see can discern, that should make us more vigilant. When tyrants feel insecure and under threat and personal liberties are eroded, then our antennae should be particularly sensitive. In times of rapid change and flux or when there is turmoil and social and economic upheaval and political unrest, then those in power will usually be on the lookout for scapegoats to take the blame for why things are going awry. The world might have been a little more vigilant when such symptoms began appearing in the Germany of the 1930s.

We want to learn about the Holocaust and other instances of genocide because we have so frequently been dazzled by the remarkable technological strides that humankind has made-space travel, landing on the moon, lightning-quick communication-that these achievements have made us not just properly proud but overweaning in a presumptuous arrogance that has believed in automatic progress. The sobering fact is that our technological achievements have not been matched by an equal moral advance. We are wonderfully intelligent but dwarfish in moral stature. We spend obscene amounts on budgets of death and destruction when a minute fraction of these huge defense budgets would ensure that God's children everywhere would have enough to eat, access to clean water, adequate health care, and a good education in a safe environment.

We have the capacity to feed the entire world population many times over, but children die of starvation and easily preventable deficiency diseases whilst we dump excess food to maintain food prices. The instances of genocide and the occurrence of the Holocaust are stark reminders that we have an  extraordinary capacity for evil. Particularly devastating is the realization that some of the most awful instances were committed not by illiterate, barbaric savages but by some of the most sophisticated, the most learned, those who claimed to be Christian. It would give us reason to pause as -we thought to preen ourselves-that these things were done by what appeared to be normal, ordinary human beings, the ultimate proof of the banality of evil.

But we have had wonderful accounts too in nearly all these instances of evil of the capacity of people for good-extraordinary examples of bravery, magnanimity, goodness. We learn too that we do have remarkable capacity for good, which we should harness to make this a better world.

It should all awaken in us the desire to value human life as precious, all human life, so that we would refuse to demonize even adversaries. What makes genocide possible is that the victims are seen as less than human. In Africa we have something called ubuntu, the essence of being human, when we recognize that our humanity is bound up in that of others. We say a person is a person through other persons. We are created for dependence, togetherness, and complementarity. Genocide happens people are intolerant of difference. Ubuntu celebrates diversity. Our differences should make us realize our need of one another. The completely self-sufficient person is subhuman. Ubuntu speaks about hospitality, generosity, caring, and compassion.

It is important to note a very important lesson-that ultimately those who are responsible for such atrocities come a cropper. This is, in fact, a moral universe; right and wrong matter; and evil, however rampant and apparently unstoppable, does not have the last word. In the end, good does prevail. Where are Hitler, Amin, Bokassa, Pinochet, Pol Pot, et al.? The world deprecates them. Those whom the world honors are in the end good people. Good matters; right matters. They have the last word. We learn about the Holocaust and other genocides so that we can be more human, more gentle, more caring, more compassionate, valuing every person as being of infinite worth, so precious that we know that such atrocities will never happen again, and that the world will be a more humane place that is hostile to such horrendous occurrences.

We will remember them so that we are not doomed to repeat them.

This Encyclopedia of Genocide is an invaluable tool toward that end.

[Webmaster's note: In this paper there are references to Armenian genocide. Anyone familiar with the discourse about genocides would know that Armenian genocide and the Ottoman/Turkish role is most disputed. Those who want to have the story from both sides should also refer to Link #1, Link #2.]


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