By Lucy Scholey, Assistant News Editor
Lessons from the Holocaust should help de-escalate today’s civil conflicts and prevent future genocides.
That’s the message one event at Holocaust Education Week hoped to convey.
“After the Holocaust, the world looked back and said, ‘Never again,’” said speaker Simin Fahandej. “(But) we’re sitting here today, in the year 2009, and we’re still talking about some things that are going on today.”
Fahandej, University of King’s College student and native of Iran, was one of three speakers at the Nov. 3 public discussion, “Genocide Past and Present.” It was one of many sessions at Holocaust Education Week. The fifth-annual event is hosted by the Atlantic Jewish Council and includes speakers and films related to the Holocaust. The Nov. 3 lecture related the Holocaust to modern-day conflicts like the persecution of the Baha’i in Iran and the civil war in Darfur, Sudan.
“We try to raise awareness so it doesn’t happen again and it doesn’t escalate to the way it did with the Holocaust by giving the Baha’i living in Iran a voice and by giving the people who are living in Darfur a voice,” says Director of Community Engagement of the Atlantic Jewish Council, Edna LeVine.
Local Holocaust survivor Helena Jockel set the tone by recounting her time spent in Auschwitz and other concentration camps.
“The indignity of their dying was so terrible, I cannot express it in words,” Jockel says of the deaths of schoolchildren and her family. Nearly 50 people, filling the room at a house on Inglis Street, listened intently to her story. It’s one that Hockel has shared often since she emigrated from the former Czechoslovakia 20 years ago. She gives talks multiple times a year.
LeVine says silence helped perpetuate the Holocaust.
“What we do know about the Holocaust is it didn’t occur overnight,” she says. “It was a continuous hatred and a continuous prejudice over a long period of time … the people remained silent and the people did nothing when they heard and they witnessed the hatred. They did absolutely nothing. That allowed it to continue and result in the Holocaust where millions died.”
Fahandej agrees and says that sharing stories like hers and Hockel’s is important to preventing similar incidents.
“One of the ways of stopping this is by informing and by talking about it,” she said during her speech.
Fahandej and her family fled Iran in 1999. They are members of the Baha’i faith, the largest religious minority in Iran, and Fahandej says her family felt threatened. According to Iran’s constitution, religious freedom is only granted to Shia Muslims. This means non-Muslim Iranians like the Baha’i struggle with finding employment and higher education according to Human Rights Watch, an independent human rights advocacy group.
Darfur has also suffered a civil war that many characterise as genocide. The conflict in the ethnically-diverse Sudanese province erupted in 2003 between groups of black Africans and Arabs. The Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement accused the government of oppressing black Africans. It is unclear whether the Sudanese government is working with the Arab Janjaweed militia, a rebel group that is currently killing mass numbers of black Africans. The war has caused nearly 300,000 deaths, according to United Nations figures. But the UN says it cannot be labelled as genocide.
Members of Students Taking Action Now in Darfur (STAND) say more action is needed in war-torn countries.
STAND is an organization that raises awareness about the civil conflict. Through advocacy and activism, STAND calls on the government to take action in Darfur.
“It really makes you feel bewildered at the state of the world and the state of humanity … that things like this still go on,” said Dalhousie’s STAND co-chair Tara MacDougall.
Arielle Goldschlager, another STAND co-chair, added that there’s still room for change. Fahandej and Hockel have proven that, she says.
“It’s important … to keep the hope … They’ve done that and we need to do the same.”
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