HUMAN RIGHTS MUSEUM PLANS TO BRING NEW MEANING TO “NEVER AGAIN”
Huffington Post Canada
May 18 2012
Bernie Farber, Human Rights Advocate
It was to have been the very last time that a world gone mad would
permit the attempted genocide of a people. For Jews it became known
as the Holocaust or in Hebrew the Shoah; for the Roma, another
group persecuted by the Nazis, it was called the “Porajmos” or the
“Devouring.”
To be sure it was not the first time in human history when such
evil walked the earth. Only a generation before the Nazis, Soviet
dictator Joseph Stalin attempted to rid the U.S.S.R. of a portion of
the Ukrainian population by instigating a man-made famine known as
the Holodomor.
Earlier in the 20th century, the Turks, trying to find ways to deal
with its rebellious Armenian population slaughtered over one million
men, women and children. Known as the Meds Yeghern, it was this
genocide that Adolf Hitler, in preparing his own plans to murder
the Jews of Europe, famously asked his leadership “who remembers
the Armenians?”
So out of the ashes of the Holocaust where Hitler’s barbarians managed
to murder almost two-thirds of European Jewry and just as many Roma,
the cry “Never Again” was repeated and almost believed.
And yes, immediately following the war, with war crimes trials in full
swing, with the reconstituted United Nations developing international
law against genocide, humanity took a break from such evil.
Sadly evil never leaves us. It may remain dormant for a while, but
like a virus it needs only to find a willing host to yet again spread
its poison.
It didn’t take long. Barely 20 years later as we entered the 1960s
mass murder was once again in vogue. As the Vietnam War dragged on, it
provided a shield for Cambodia’s brutal dictator Pol Pot to slaughter
almost two million of his people.
Buried in mass burial sites known as the “Killing Fields,” Pol Pot’s
Khmer Rouge seemed to have forgotten “Never Again.”
And let us not forget the wanton slaughter by the Pakistani army
of upwards to 1.5 million Bangladeshis. And of course Mao Tse Tung
was responsible for countless millions of deaths of Chinese during
his rule.
More recently, Rwandan Hutus are said to have hacked to death close
to 1.5 million Tutsis, fellow countrymen of a different tribe. And
in the last decade, Sudan’s brutal Janjaweed are responsible for the
mass murder of countless Darfurians. Indeed “Never Again” seems to
have become “Again and Again.”
Canadian philanthropist and Manitoba politician, the late Izzy Asper
was deeply troubled by such ugly inhumanity. He struggled to find a
way to ensure that the lessons of history would become real for the
next generation. And so was born the Asper Foundation Human Rights
and Holocaust Studies Program. Over the last ten years thousands of
young high school students have benefited from this course of study
which culminates with a trip to Washington’s astounding United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum. Students who go through this program are
moved to action.
After visiting the museum, one 14-year-old student remarked “I think
there is a big importance in teaching our youth about what has happened
in the past so it doesn’t happen in the future. We need to teach good
values like tolerance and to be fair and not discriminatory.”
However, Asper realized that even his widely used program could only
touch a fraction of people. He had bigger dreams; a museum similar to
the United States Holocaust Museum but moreso, a museum that would
detail both humanity’s capacity for evil while trumpeting the need
for human rights as a standard bearer. Thus was born The Canadian
Museum for Human Rights.
To be situated in the center of Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Asper’s
dream was to have a place where the next generation can learn, and
visualize a future; a place that would speak forthrightly of genocide,
discrimination, and even Canada’s own human rights record both good
and bad, while heralding human rights heroes; a place that would be
a canary in the mine for future generations.
With $20 million dollars from his own foundation, this was to be a
private public partnership. And while Izzy Asper did not get to see
his dream fulfilled in his lifetime, his daughter Gail has stalwartly
taken over the reins.
It has not been without its difficulties. Victimized groups vying for
limited space, arguments over the extent of one genocide over another.
Yet despite these issues, Gail Asper moves boldly forward. Gail
has quite simply inherited the spirit of her late father. She gets
it. As she told me, “we can’t be complacent, we can’t rest while
any one’s rights are under attack, and we all need to take personal
responsibility for the preservation and enhancement of human rights
in Canada and around the world”.
Sadly today human rights are under attack from those who believe it
stifles freedom. Can anything be further from the truth? Thankfully
with visionaries like Gail Asper, Canada can become a focal point of
understanding humanity through a museum whose time has come.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/bernie-farber/human-rights-canada_b_1522160.html