On January 30, 1939 Adolf Hitler made a chilling prediction on the 6th anniversary of his accession to power: “Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" This is prior to what is still one of the darkest hours in human history. In addition to a war with the Allied forces the Nazis waged a domestic war against the Jews.
The magnitude of the atrocities committed by Hitler defies any logic and up to this day memories linger. Not only did the Nazis desire to exterminate Jews but they targeted Communists and “undesirables;” Hitler took his crusade against Jews to Europe and approximately 6 million Jews were murdered when it was all over. Add 5 million Poles killed during this war and you get a level of evil that is scarcely imaginable. In fact when discussing evil men of our time Hitler’s name is sure to top many a list.
Atrocities against a specific race of people were officially defined after the Holocaust. The term genocide came into existence with the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide(December 1948). Acts of genocide were outlawed: these include killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. World leaders agreed that they could not allow such a thing to ever occur, “Never Again” became the phrase of choice regarding such atrocities.
61 years have since passed since the Convention and “never again” has proved to be a misstatement:
# Cambodia: 2,000,000 deaths (1975–1978)
# Bosnia: 200,000 deaths (1992–1995)
# Rwanda: 800,000 deaths (April 6 through mid-July of 1994)
Is the international community culpable for these tragedies? According to the Convention acts of genocide occurred in Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda. How strongly did the signatories of the historic Convention signed in pursue peaceful outcomes? Looking at the examples above, possibly not very much happened to stop the killings as they happened. A lack of political will combined with Cold war politics have prevented any action in some instances of horrible warfare including some of the ones mentioned earlier.
A few years after the Rwandan genocide President Bill Clinton speaking at a genocide museum in that country stated, “It may seem strange to you here, especially the many of you who lost members of your family, but all over the world there were people like me sitting in offices, day after day, who did not fully appreciate the depth and speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror.” A true confession or an excuse? The Rwandan genocide was well documented by the Red Cross who remained in the country even during the killings and the small United Nations mission led by L. Gen. Rome Dallaire. Hindsight is 20/20 but surely modern day genocides like Rwanda, and Darfur are more evident to the outside world than ever before.
Acts of genocide are not limited to the cases mentioned above. Brutal civil wars in places like Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Liberia have seen civilians caught up in war, their lives the price they are forced to pay. Today Darfur, Sudan is one of the stages of the nightmarish scene of genocide. World leaders have been debating and discussing terminology as millions have been displaced and hundreds of thousands killed.
After Hitler the world said, “Never again,” but genocide is still a reality. Samantha Power, (Director of the Human Rights Initiative at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard Univeristy) describes all the instances of uncontested genocide in the last fifty years as, “Again and Again.” The latest installment in genocidal attacks being in Darfur Sudan where millions have been displaced and hundreds of thousands have lost their lives. We said Never again before, what will it take to fulfill the promise?
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