One of the greatest crimes in this world is that of genocide. The mass murder of a people due to their race, their beliefs or their location is beyond evil.
Simon Wiesenthal died today at the age of 96. He experienced genocide first hand in the death camps of Nazi Germany and lost 89 members of his own family. He dedicated his life to hunting down members of Adolf Hitler's regime who sought to escape prosecution and brought more than a thousand of those responsible for these crimes against humanity to justice. His goals were lofty and going from what I have heard and what I have read on the Wiesenthal Centre website, are sometimes clouded by Israel's ideals rather than that of Judaism. However still he is a great man for what he accomplished, hampered as he was by countries more occupied by the Cold War. Those who chose to blame a whole people for society's ills and seek to destroy them can never be allowed to continue their hate. We seem to have learned nothing from him when we allow genocides like Bosnia, Rwanda and Sudan to continue to happen. Maybe his death will bring these things to the forefront of our mind once more.
As Simon once said, "If we ignore the past, if we distort or deny what happened, then the past will return. Only by remembering can we and our children and their children build a just future; a future in which human life never loses its value."
The past keeps returning,
San Nakji for President!
1 comment:
He was a good man, and it's a shame he's gone. But, now he rest in peace and happiness.
It's sad that we can't learn from out past mistakes. In fact, we take 'em, and make them worse. Depressing, isn't it???
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