This week I visited Beth Shalom, the Holocaust Centre. It seems fitting that, in having visited such a peaceful and reflective memorial to the victims of the Shoah, something should be shared.
An Education In Genocide
First it’s important to put visiting the Holocaust Centre into some context. I was visiting as part of the enrichment activities that form part of my continuing professional development as a teacher. This was a place to which I was being sent, rather than a place I chose to visit. The objectives for my own learning were a mixed bag of observing a different educational context, shadowing the staff working there, observing children from Year 6 (10-11 yrs) and Year 9 (13-14 yrs) interacting with the learning programmes, and developing my own learning about teaching and the Holocaust itself. In actuality, although I learned about all of those things, the greatest learning was in questioning my own response to genocide.
Now, I know that you are fully expecting the usual bland recital of words such as ‘horror’ and ‘tragedy’. Let’s skip all of that. I want to talk about what I started to learn… and the keyword there is ‘started’.
Genocide. We all hope that by educating people, especially the young, about the Holocaust that we will be acting to prevent genocide. The truth is, however, that knowledge about genocide has not proven enough to stop it from ever happening again. If we think for one moment we will know this to be true, although it is generally tempting to ignore it.
My learning began at the end of the second day when I discovered a startling fact: experts believe that there have been at least 55 genocides since 1945, and (depending on how you define genocide) possibly as many as 70. Learning about the Holocaust is not enough to stop it. In fact, and this shouldn’t have surprised me but it did, those who perpetrate genocide have themselves studied the Holocaust… in detail.
Bystanders
From 1933 until 1938 Britain was a bystander nation. We all know what we mean by ‘bystander’: like the guy who sees a bully beating on a child but doesn’t intervene. They stand by and let it happen, feeling powerless and trying not to think about it too much. Throughout most of the period from 1933 until 1945 the religions were largely bystanders too.
What was the UK’s reaction to the Rwandan genocide in 1994? Do you know? Can you remember? A million people lost their lives.
What about Sudan? Have you heard about what is happening in Darfur?
Are we bystanders again?
What are we to learn?
I don’t really know yet. I’m just beginning to unpack all the things that I have experienced in the last few days. Yet, as I reflect on things, pondering my reactions, I am aware that it is entirely likely that more people are being exterminated through the hatred of difference.
What is my response to be?
One thing was stated by both of the Holocaust survivors to whom I was privileged to listen over the past two days: “One person can make all the difference”.
Words from the Talmud resonate for me:
…whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.
That is enough for now.
__________
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A good piece mate. I vaguely remember the events of Rwanda, mostly because they formed the basis of some of the lessons I did in both PSHE and RE during the academic years 94-97, but it has truly shaken me to think about how little I remember of it, even in the light of some training provided by members of Beth Shalom when on a SACRE training session in Nottinghamshire!!
As for Darfur, I am very aware through the coverage in the Church Times, but can’t honestly comment on how much has been in the ‘standard’ press as I have too little time to actually read a paper every day.
One thing which occurs to me is to wonder if there is an equivalent thing to genocides that happens with giving to charity. What I mean is that I have often been involved in discussions around compassion exhaustion – i.e. people are just too numbed by the sheer amount of ‘needy’ situations that they blur, and so people become apathetic and/or paralysed into inaction.
Given the sheer number of wars and atrocities the news media chooses to cover, is there info and compassion overload?
I don’t have an answer to this one, just a thought. It may form part of the problem as to galvanising people in to action over any genocide – alongside the usual of ‘it’s not my problem’. Unfortunately.
I know its controversial an opinion, but I feel the Holocaust, or Shoah, has gone from a lesson for us all to a political cudgel and an intellectual smothering blanket. That the term “Holocaust denier” can effectively end someone’s career or have them imprisoned in this day and age is not only ridiculous but an affront to humanity. The story of the Holocaust isn’t even finished yet, as we still lack all the Soviet archives of the time and it is doubtful if we will ever get our hands on them; at that point any oral history will be lost as well.
Open, honest and intelligent discussions about these things just aren’t possible. Discussion of the existence of Israel inevitably leads to accusations of Nazism and the invoking of Godwin’s Law.
Genocide, for all the modern examples, is not a modern thing and has been a part of human history for probably most of our entire existence. Yet due to the complex media and personality driven nature of the post-war western liberal states we live in, genocide and the holocaust have become not just a dark example of the horror of our species, but a way of censorship and villification. That’s way I will always see these things with a healthy sense of cynicism and will question constantly whether I should challenge what I don’t agree with or leave people to accept what they are told.
Again, let me make this clear. I do not deny the Holocaust, or genocide, but I decry how we handle such issues in our global society.