COLUMN – GENOCIDAL KILLERS BENEFIT
Dennis Dalman, Alexandria Echo Press
Alexandria Echo Press
262/group/Opinion/
April 23 2010
Never forget! But, of course we do – again and again. Since the
Holocaust ("Never forget!"), in which an estimated six million Jews
were systematically put to death, untold more millions of human beings
have been slaughtered time and again.
Never forget!
But, of course we do – again and again.
Since the Holocaust ("Never forget!"), in which an estimated six
million Jews were systematically put to death, untold more millions
of human beings have been slaughtered time and again. Humankind not
only forgets but seems intent on repeating the horrors of the past.
What is just as despicable as this constant forgetting is the
insistence by some fools that the Holocaust never happened. Instead
of acknowledging the hideous crimes of history, these shameless
revisionists (some of them posing as "scholars") want to erase
historical facts, bury the evidence and muffle the screams.
To this day, Turkey will not admit it perpetrated genocide against 1.5
million Armenians from 1915-1923. Japan still refuses to acknowledge
the vicious rampages of its troops in Nanking, China in 1937 when
300,000 of the city’s residents (men, women and children) were shot,
beheaded, raped, drowned, hanged, disemboweled, buried alive and
burned alive. Japan and Turkey are only two examples of the denial
of genocidal butchery.
This refusal to accept responsibility is never-ending, country after
country.
"It didn’t happen." That’s the biggest cop-out line of all time.
How can we "never forget," how can we "always remember" when so many
ostriches, heads in sand, come up for air to squawk, "It didn’t
happen, didn’t happen." This willful "amnesia," in and of itself,
fuels genocide because such enabling behavior induces forgetfulness
and helps let perpetrators off the hook.
One of my personal heroes is Larry Tillemans of St. Joseph, Minnesota.
He was a secretary who transcribed testimony from Nazis during the
war-crimes trials in Nuremburg, Germany. He knows firsthand, indelibly,
the genocide that occurred in Germany. He cannot forget what he saw
and heard, and he wants others – especially younger people – to know
what happened and not to forget it. The fact that some so-called
"scholars" deny the Holocaust disgusts Tillemans to the bottom of
his very soul. That is why, even now in his early 90s, he continues
to give talks to any group that will listen. His message?
The Holocaust happened. Learn what happened and how it happened and
then don’t you forget it!
The trouble is, so many eyewitnesses to the genocidal barbarity during
World War II are now dead and gone. Too many young people think the
Holocaust was so long ago, why should the world keep dwelling on it?
Many do not know (or they forget about) the variations of Holocaust
that have happened all through the 20th century and into this one:
Pol Pot’s bloodbath in Cambodia, Chinese persecutions and killings of
people in Tibet, Idi Amin’s homicidal fury in Uganda, the vicious
ethnic rapes and killings in Serbia-Bosnia-Croatia, the mutual
slaughters between Hutus and Tutsis in Uganda, the current mass
murders in Darfur. The long, long list of genocide goes on and on,
as the world keeps forgetting.
That is what most genocidal killers depend upon – human beings’
penchant for forgetting the "bad." After their bloody crimes, tyrants
often go unpunished, living in hiding or in exile and sometimes in
plain view among populations that forget – or too easily forgive.
Thank goodness for the War-Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, Netherlands
where justice, now and then, is still meted out to the savage
criminals who led their all-too-willing people to commit so much
violence against innocent people.
They say those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to
repeat it. But we cannot learn anything if we remain in a state of
willful amnesia. Of course, we cannot dwell on those horrors daily
forever. But at the very least, we can acknowledge with dread and
sorrow they did, in fact, happen.
A good way to "remember" is to Google "Holocaust Museum in Washington,
D.C."
Dennis Dalman, a former reporter for the Echo Press, is a regular
contributing columnist to the Opinion page. He is currently the
editor of the St. Joseph Newsleader. He can be reached via e-mail
at [email protected].