‘A TEMPLATE FOR GENOCIDE’

Jewish Exponent
62/
Nov 6 2008
PA

A photographer chronicles how neighbors continue to turn on neighbors

Nov. 9 and 10 mark 70 years since Kristallnacht, the mad rampage
unleashed by the Nazis against the Jews of Germany and Austria, a
long, dark night and nearly a full day that saw synagogues burned to
the ground, Jewish businesses looted, and many Jewish males rounded
up, beaten or tortured, then sent to concentration camps. As this
somber anniversary of what many call the prelude to the Holocaust
fast approaches, no book could be more fitting (though experiencing
it is quite disturbing) than Never Again, Again, Again … by Lane
H. Montgomery, a photographer who has traveled throughout the world
to catalogue instances of genocide. The 40 photographs she has taken
are supplemented by contemporary images from each particular period and
abundant archival material. A variety of texts have also been included:
Montgomery’s reflections on her work and travels, eyewitness reports
from both the criminals and the survivors, and writings by scholars
and journalists, all of it drawn together to demonstrate that human
beings have been motivated in frightening ways by their hatred, and
that, at certain moments over the last 100 years, their cruelty has
known horrific depths.

The work’s scope is broad, indeed, taking in all of the 20th century,
and then moving on into the 21st; which means that the photographer
begins with the slaughter of the Armenians by the Ottoman Turks and,
eventually, leaves us to contemplate Darfur and the nearly deafening
international silence that has accompanied the tragedy.

There has been a tendency in the Jewish community to overlook books
like Montgomery’s. Though the Nazi slaughter of Europe’s Jews gets
more play than any of the other events here — whether it’s in
Cambodia, Bosnia or Rwanda — people worry that Jewish suffering
will be diminished because the very context of the book seems to
stimulate comparisons.

That is the farthest thing from Montgomery’s mind. As her title
suggests, she wishes to know why, after the world said "Never
again!" to mass slaughter (echoing the Jews in this), it happens again
and again and again. Where does such blood thirst come from? What
motivates neighbor to turn on neighbor? And she wonders, as well,
why we have not been able to control it after a century of dreadful
evidence and testimony.

There are echoes here in both words and photos that will deeply
disturb you — may even horrify you — but may also painfully increase
your understanding, not just of Jewish experience, but of the human
condition. All you need to do is turn to page 16 and look at the
photo there. It is an aged black-and-white image, showing children
in tatters and obvious anguish, hungry, begging for compassion. You
might think immediately "Warsaw ghetto," but you would be wrong;
these are the orphans of the Armenian genocide.

The title of Richard G. Hovannisian’s essay on the Armenian slaughter
sums it up: "The first genocide of the 20th century is the template
for genocides to come."

‘Who Today Remembers the Armenians?’

You may recall that, eight days before he was to invade Poland,
Hitler exhorted his officers to "send to death mercilessly and without
compassion, men, women and children" who might stand in the way of
the Nazi dream of power and domination."

He then added, "Who today remembers the extermination of the
Armenians?"

Tragically, as it turned out, he was not wrong. It was a mere 20-plus
years beyond the slaughter by the Turks, and the world had, indeed,
forgotten.

In the teens of the last century, the Armenian cause had been a
widely recognized human-rights issue. Newspaper headlines screamed
about the tragedy and the need for action. Citizens mobilized to force
governments to right the wrong, and there was no ambiguity about it,
especially in the United States. But, in the ’20s, an isolationist
tenor gripped America, and the political climate turned, caring little
about human-rights crusades.

Hitler knew of what he spoke.

Forgetting is easy, looking away is easier still, especially on one’s
nerves. But these photos and documents deliver an insistent message
— we can’t, we mustn’t. Or it will continue … then it will happen
again … and again … and again.

Photo: Images of children scarred by genocide (clockwise, from above),
drawn from Armenia, Darfur, Cambodia and Auschwitz