Remembering Genocide

When I was 12 or 13, I came across a book in my parent's very small library (actually it was no more than two or three short shelves). It was a small book, I think a paperback. It was an autobiography of someone who had survived living in one of the camps created by the Nazis for Jewish people. It told a horrendous tale of survival and of death. I was fascinated and horrified by it. It was a curious counterpart to all of the boy's books I had read by G.A. Henty. Books where a young British boy, through luck and courage survived wars or dangers - the books were always shaped around some sort of British imperialism and the theory that honesty and hard work will always prevail. This writer of this autobiography also survived, but it was not in the glorious fashion of Henty's heroes. I think reading that book may have been the start of me leaving most of my childhood fantasies behind. I talked to my father once about the story - he, if I remember rightly, just said that it was something meant for older readers.

In all of my years of public education, I don't remember any class or teacher spending any time discussing the Holocaust. If it was mention, it was only in passing. Certainly, none of my classes in university ever discussed it. And yet somehow I know about it, I have talked about it, discussed it with friends and have consistently been appalled at man's inhumanity to men. The Holocaust has always been a signpost leading to one of the lowest points in human history. But is it?

A few days ago, CBC (1) reported that one out five Canadian young people did not know about the Holocaust. The assumption was that we need to do more to ensure that Canadian children never forget. First of all - I am not sure if someone had done a survey with the students in either my grades 7, 8 or 9 classes in the early 1960s, if the results would have been that different. Secondly, as horrendous as was the Holocaust, our insistence that it is the most egregious example of genocide is incredibly Eurocentric. It might be the worst example of genocide in modern history, in Europe - but there have been other examples around the world that have been just as bad. The Ottoman Empire's acts against Armenians, the Khmer Rouge's slaughter of fellow Cambodians, the slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda, the Government of Sudan's slaughter and forced relocation of Darfuri citizens and perhaps most recently the Rohingya of Myanmar who are at significant risk are all acts of genocide. There are numerous other examples including the forced incarceration and slave labour of Africans as thousands and thousands of African were enslaved by western countries or, of course, the cultural genocide (at the very least) practiced on the First Nations people by agents of the Canadian Government.

It is not a denial of the Holocaust to argue that our schools need to spend time discussing other genocides. Our schools are not just for children whose heritage derives from Europe. Given that we are a multicultural society, we need to expand the conversation about humanity's capacity to be inhumane. Genocide is not just a European construct. Clearly, all cultures and faiths have the capacity to twist people's fears and insecurities, to blame others for economic problems, to encourage them to hate someone else, and to be labelled as being less than human - and therefore having no right to live.

The Holocaust was a terrible time and those of the Jewish faith are right to remind us of it, but we need to make sure that we allow others sufficient space in that dialogue so that we can acknowledge their histories, the stories of their culture's destruction and genocide.


(1) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-holocaust-survey-remembrance-1.4994602