We’d rather not hear about world’s genocides
By Brian Lewis

News-Leader.com, MO
May 7 2005

I drove to the synagogue Thursday. I listened to the radio news on
the way.

I heard an interview with a Holocaust survivor and the veteran who
helped liberate the death camp he was in.

A report followed about the Bush administration’s actions regarding
Sudan and the genocide in Darfur.

A fitting juxtaposition. So many similarities.

Although from where I sit, it’s hard work to think much about Darfur
and the genocide in the Sudan.

I’m well-informed. I read newspapers. I watch television news. I
scour Internet news sources and blogs. But I can’t explain much to
you about the mass killings of black Muslims, Christians and animists
in southern Sudan by a militant Arab Muslim regime.

I did find an article from a recent Christianity Today about Terri
Schiavo headlined “Questions for Both Sides.” One question: “Why did
the single case of Terri Schiavo get so much front-page coverage,
and the more than 10,000 per month dying in the Darfur genocide get
hardly a mention in the newspapers in the last month?”

Yes. Somebody please tell me why.

I know the Schiavo case was about more than the death of one woman.
The Darfur genocide is also about more than the tens of thousands of
people who are dying.

Why do we know so much about the extravagant wedding of a woman from
Duluth, Ga.? And Michael Jackson?

They don’t sell supermarket tabloids with headlines about international
affairs. No. It’s got to be Bigfoot sightings.

Meanwhile, once a year we remember the Holocaust. Usually it is
referred to in Hebrew as “Hashoah,” a word meaning “the whirlwind” or
“the calamity.” More than 6 million Jews were killed in Nazi death
camps. So were an additional 5 million other people. The disabled.
Jehovah’s Witnesses. Gypsies. Homosexuals. Others deemed undesirable.

We must remember Hashoah, the Holocaust. We must also remember the
genocides that preceded it. Specifically, the Armenian Genocide.

“Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
Hitler said in 1939, just days before his army invaded Poland. He
referenced the Armenian Genocide. Between 1909 and 1918, the Ottoman
Turkish government killed 1.5 million Armenians. I’d never heard of
the Armenians, not until I saw a historical marker in the Armenian
Quarter of Jerusalem’s old city.

We still speak today of the Holocaust. Sometimes we say, “Never
again.” Do we really mean it? Time and again we have chances to stop
genocides from happening again. And most of us would rather watch
“American Idol.” Or “Seinfeld” reruns.

Given the opportunity to save the lives of thousands of people,
most Americans would just rather not know about it.