“The international community keeps quiet when genocide is underway, but they remember the victims afterwards”
Virtual Tour of Yad Vashem and the lesson for Ethiopia
Amharic version is also available on my blog https://mezemirethiopia.blogspot.com/2021/04/blog-post.html
Wednesday, 21 April, 2021
Mezemir Girma
Debre Birhan, Ethiopia
On Tuesday, 20 April 2021, we the participants of the virtual tour held a test zoom meeting with Ambassador Reta Alemu, the Ethiopian ambassador to Israel and Mr Nurhussein Nuru, a public diplomacy official at the embassy. As we made sure everyone of the lecturers from the universities across Ethiopia was able to use the virtual platform, we set an appointment for Wednesday for the tour of Yad Vashem.
We were advised to make the necessary preparations by referring sources on the issue. For this reason, I watched a virtual tour of Auschwitz Birkenau. Located at Auschwitz proper, this museum teaches and reminds visitors of the Holocaust. I also read online how the Jewish Diaspora suffered across the globe over millennia.
On Wednesday at 15:30 Jerusalem time, the tour resumed. Mr Nurhussein gave me the opportunity to speak about my genocide prevention endeavors in Ethiopia and I spoke. I explained that I translated Left to Tell, a book on the Rwandan Holocaust into Amharic and distributed 23000 copies. Not only that, I got the book translated and published 2000 copies in Afaan Oromo. A friend translated into Tigrigna as well. The media interviews we gave and the discussion we provoked helped the public have an understanding of how hatred can devastate a country and its people. The concern I raised was that the elite and politicians might not have been reached or convinced by the campaigns we the writers made.
After a short introduction, we started the virtual tour that was supported with an explanation from our guide. Lecturers from Ethiopian universities and one person from the media took part. This is a summary of the points I took note of from both the tour and my online research.
A tribute to the lives of the Jews before the war is rendered in one of the sections of the museum. European Jews mostly lived urban life. The German Jews lived for a long time at the place including in five German republics as German citizens. They comprised 12 percent of German soldiers in the first World War. Their influence was bigger than their number in the national population, eight percent. Jewish youth movement that was trying to save fellow Jews, the victim story, and the wartime ordeal is also covered. Finally, there is a section on the future of the Jewish people. It is a temporal arrangement that they employed in telling the story of the Holocaust.
Equality’s origin is the Enlightment, whose source is Christianity. And Christianity is rooted in Judaism. That was why the Nazis targeted the Jews. Pure Aryan race was what the Nazis sought. Before they killed the Jews, they also killed handicapped and mentally retarded Germans. Where did the Nazis bring the idea of eliminating the Jews from? It is from earlier Antisemetic research and thinking. There were Nazis’ imagined views of the Jews being their enemies. They thought they were communist members.
560, 000 Jews lived in Germany in early 1930s. Their number gradually dwindled as they emigrated from that country due to the racist policies and practices. We learned how the Nazi party, Hitler and the Third Reich came into being. In 1933 different books were burned down and that determined what one can and can’t think. Jews were branded of controlling the world. Before World War II, the German youth and people understood without being told to discriminate the Jews. This is the power of propaganda. Jewish businesses were boycotted. Even a children’s storybook portrayal of Jews was as communists.. How hate developed is unbelievable. If a quarter or sometimes half of a quarter of your blood is Jewish you are branded as one. Radio propaganda was employed. Rwanda copied radio propaganda idea from Germany the same as social media is used today. One can see how overtime hate developed. German citizenship was taken away from the Jews and the whole world didn’t welcome them. Jews were identified with the yellow star and the J symbol in their passports. The looting of Jewish property went on.
Holocaust is the code name for the whole process. The killing did not take place under the premise of a huge war. This is one of the similarities between the Rwandan and Jewish genocides. During the Second World War, Germany invaded Poland where 2.2 million Jews were in the ghetto. In 1942 the final policy was reached at regarding the Jewish in ghetto – they should be exterminated. In the Warsaw ghetto and many others killing massively and industrially was a means used to exterminate the hostages. Bring these people to the places of murder than the murder to the people was the idea. Burning in crematoriums has helped the vilians leave no trace when their Soviet adversaries come. At some places the victims were forced to dig their own burial pits.
Due to the Nazi advance the Jews were also targeted in the eastern European countries they immigrated to. They were kept in various ghettos and massacred by any means possible. They were also subject to torture, hard labour and abuse of every kind. Nazis and their collaborators killed six million Jews. Yad Vashem, the museum, has the names of four million victims and they know the total number of six million from statistical analysis.
How Ideology made the perpetrators act was analyzed and presented. There could be better humane options during such daring times, but human actions and decisions are highly affected by propaganda and fear. However, there were the righteous gentile, people who saved others in the face of danger.
The Yad Vashem museum is located within a campus. We were told that knowing about each other'scountries was critical. One of the guests invited from the museum was Bob, a historian of genocide and African studies. He said he came to Ethiopia and lectured on genocide a few years ago. This is interesting to know especially for me because I saw how authorities here fail to cooperate on genocide prevention activities.
During the Holocaust not only Jews, 125 000 non-Jewish communities were also killed. The Antisemitism led to the expansion and implementation of a racist ideology. As soon as a hatred is ethnically motivated it doesn’t differentiate between even children and women.
I asked the questions after the tour. One of them was this: Since we are at a time of putting out fire, why don’t you rather try to educate the politicians in Ethiopia to hold national reconciliation than just teach lecturers? They responded that educators also have a role in expanding the word to their students.
My second question was: As researchers how do you feel the pain of reading and working on genocide? Bob responded it was getting open enough to be thick-skinned that helped him.
There may still be questions in one’s mind why at the turn of the 21st century Germany has the only growing number of Jewish communities in Europe. These Jews are Russian speaking ones though. Whatever happens, humanity has to interconnect again. This is a great lesson for humanity as a whole and those politicians and hate mongers the world over who try to make one group of community rise against the other.
This visit helped us learn how civilized people can be perpetrators of genocide. Yad Vashem and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MoSHE) plan to expand the lesson in the higher education sector in Ethiopia. In the future a similar tour will also be given to the media and the public.
We can teach our students and communities how important it is to keep human dignity, the right to life and respecting people that are different from us. One shouldn’t have the values the Nazi perpetrators had. Holocaust education overall teaches that hatred, racism and extremism are damaging and we should stay away from them. The world has not stopped any genocide after the Holocaust. The international community keeps quiet when genocide is underway, but they remember the victims afterwards. The American president of the time Franklin Roosevelt said he cared, but still couldn’t do anything. The world gave a similar response to the Rwandan genocide. International politics does nothing but remember victims after they die.This bitter truth urges every country and people that they should work for their own peace and safety than wait for other countries or the international community to save them.
