I begin my intervention with an African proverb that says: “We prevent the one who wants to leave but it is difficult to prevent the one who has already left”
Genocides do not arise in a vacuum. It is the result of propaganda, images and speeches repeated at the top of their heads by those who plan them thoroughly. Genocide is not a phenomenon that occurs overnight or without warning signs. It is in fact a deliberate strategy whose repercussions are felt beyond the borders of the affected country because this crime has a negative impact on the safety and security of the populations of the surrounding areas. How to understand the crime of genocide? Can we explain this crime out of the ordinary? Why has the twentieth century been called a “century of genocide”? Can we really prevent genocide? What place to devote to “the duty of memory and transmission” so that it does not happen again? How can the tragedy of the Jewish people, Tutsis and Armenians be remedied? There was no real global awareness and these sad facts become relegated to history, without recourse to real prevention mechanisms. When we look at these dramas, we will always be amazed at the human bankruptcy to prevent this unjustifiable phenomenon of genocide, and to see how the world remains at the center of this human problem.
Those who are threatened with genocide today, whether Rohingas or Yazidis, have a status of inferior in the eyes of their persecutors. European Jews of the 2nd World War were identified by the Nazis as having unclean blood in their veins, to justify their abuse in the eyes of a public intoxicated by racist propaganda. In such a situation, we must realize the consequences of promoting values that put one culture above another, and thereby create artificial divisions between human beings. It is the international bodies that must lead the debate. , and who must obtain from all nations that their educational systems include genocides in school curricula. Fear of criticism, nationalistic drifts as we observe them in Poland or Hungary, hesitations to recognize the responsibility of genocides must in no way be tolerated. It takes women and men of courage who never give up the fight for human dignity. Leaders of all faiths must join forces, and educate their followers against racism and ethnic division to enable spirituality to play its active role in what we call Tikkun-Olam, a term stemming from the Jewish tradition that means to embellish, raise, repair and heal the world. Genocides are a task on the divine image of the human being. It is wrong to believe that we are capable of such atrocities and come out unscathed. Europe is still in the process of healing the Holocaust of its Jews and Gypsies. The latter, however as European as the others, are always prey to the worst xenophobia and social ostracism. The child soldiers of the Great Lakes regions of Central Africa, become traumatized adults, whose reintegration is extremely difficult may be future genocidaires. It is necessary to do together a therapy of the communities of the victims and fight without fear the ideologies and philosophies which reduce the human to a number without soul which one can dispose at will. We, at the FJN, believe that every human being entitled to his title of nobility, and that we must constantly remind him that in essence, he is the guardian of his brother. “Awareness and education remain the best weapons to prevent genocide. ”
To those of our co-religionists who are tempted by a denial, do you say that you represent all that the racists excrete by being part of a so-called “normality”. So yes you can succumb to the sirens of a new logorrhea addressing the Jewish community through false bitterness. The attempt to eliminate genocide by denying it is as morally intolerable as it is intellectually inadmissible. But the extermination of the Jews, paroxysm (with that of the Gypsies) racist delirium born on the soil of the old anti-semitism, plague of Europe, also has another meaning. Under the pretext of race, it is to the people witnessing the force of law and ethics, witness of the universality of values, that Nazism is attacked. Denying genocide is a way of evacuating the questions posed to Europe, the destiny of the Jewish people (Christians and friends of human rights in particular). It seeks to destroy the memory of a monstrous package committed in the center of Europe, which questions Western consciousness and incites vigilance against fusionist mystics and morals based on obedience and submission (of the performers) . In France, where we gradually learn how the Vichy regime composed with the victor to the point of contributing to the realization of the final solution, the memory must be preserved, and the knowledge passed on. We must fight negationism.
Jews Holocaust deniers at home.
When one hears from a rabbi’s mouth that the Jews who died during the Holocaust, it’s their fault. Charles Rozjman replies: “The obstacles we encounter in life are often the result of a deep detestation of ourselves. Dislodging this unconscious feeling can help us really repair ourselves. When we encounter difficulties, we tend to think that they come from others or circumstances that are not conducive. We have trouble seeing that they come from our own hindrances and what they translate: a bad image of ourselves. As long as we are not aware of what has been done to us, we risk in our turn, without seeing it, to make ourselves feel guilty.
G-d gives wisdom only to those who already possess it.
The need to have competent men to get the best out of it. The community is a subject in which women and men are in charge of management and organization. The community leader, if competent, must be wise, prudent and realistic. He must be smart in order to properly manage the community, hence wisdom and prudence. The transmission of the memory of the Holocaust is a failure today.
The Memory of Genocides : A Look to the Future.
