Do We Really Remember?

Do We Really Remember?

"Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other." These are the words of Eliezar (Elie) Wiesel during his Nobel Lecture on December 11, 1986. Eliezar was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighet, a border town between Hungary and Romania. Wiesel grew up in the town's Jewish section, where his father, Shlomo, was a shopkeeper and a well-respected leader in the Jewish community. In the spring of 1944, when Elie was only fifteen years old, the Germans deported 15,000 Jews from Sighet to the notorious concentration camp, Auschwitz. Until his father's death in Buchenwald, Wiesel and his father were together throughout their internment. Elie was a witness to the genocide of Jews. He writes about his experiences in his novel, Night.

Genocide is defined as the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group. We live in a time of unparalleled instances of genocide and ethnocide. Mass violence, torture, violations of fundamental human rights, and the mistreatment of human beings is not a new aspect of humanity; documentation of such events spans the historical record. However, technology has taken these cruelties to new levels.

More than two generations ago, the worst slaughter of human beings occurred during the control of Nazi Germany. Millions of Jews where put to death; others starved or were tortured. Forgetting those horrific times would be a tragic mistake. Yet it seems very possible to me. Even in the twenty-first century, Darfur, Sudan is home to what the United Nations has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Since February 2003, over 400,000 men, women and children have died while another 2.5 million innocent civilians have been forced to flee their homes.

Adolf Hitler was a young German soldier during World War I. The press in Germany, as the press in all other western countries, reported on the genocide in Turkey. The Kaiser's government allowed stories about the gross crimes of their ally to pass censorship, so that Germany would not be blamed for the Armenian genocide after the war. Hitler was evil but not stupid. He watched while the Young Turks as they carried out the final solution to their minority problem during World War I, and he saw them get away with it. He drew the proper conclusion; the world has a short memory.

At the southern edge of the Sahara, the Sudanese government is pursuing a campaign of ethnic cleansing against non-Arabs. In Darfur, in the western region of Sudan, is being openly exercised. The low-level clashes came to a head in February 2003 when two non-Arab rebel militias - the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) - attacked and captured several towns in Darfur. The rebels demanded that the government share power and disarm the Janjaweed. When the government refused the militias began to attack. The genocide has been occurring since, and the United Nations has yet to officially make a statement about the genocide of non-Arabs.

Almost three years have passed, and the western Sudanese of Darfur is recognized to be a humanitarian and human rights tragedy. People are still dying in large numbers of malnutrition and disease, and a new famine is feared. According to the World Food Program, the United Nations and the Coalition for International Justice, 3.5 million people are starving, 2.5 million have been victim to violence, and 400,000 people have died in Darfur thus far. The international society is neglecting to protect civilians or to influence