“Never Again” Means Everyone

Written by Anne Fox

Last semester, three friends gathered in a room at the Jewish house on my campus to watch a copy of Hotel Rwanda, the Oscar-nominated 2004 movie about the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s. While one friend pulled the DVD from its case, another inquired, “So what is this movie about?”

“Its about the genocide in the ‘90s in Rwanda,” the first nonchalantly replied.

The other two, both residents of the Jewish house, stared at her blankly. “There was genocide in the 1990s?” one finally asked.

When this story was related to me later, I was, more than anything, bewildered. Not only were the two blank faced friends intelligent and thoughtful people who kept themselves informed on world events, but one, let’s call her Rachel, was one of the leaders of the Jewish community and, at the time, a main planner of the university’s Yom Hashoa programming. She has always been very active in Holocaust remembrance. The idea that she could be so intelligent and so involved in issues relating to the Holocaust, yet ignorant of one of the world’s most atrocious genocides, an event that has often been called a holocaust itself, seemed impossible to me.

But when I started discussing the incident with various members of my campus’s Jewish community, I realized Rachel’s situation was not only possible, but common. Although I had been raised with the notion that being Jewish and being cognizant of the Holocaust meant being a force against genocides in my own time, many of my classmates indicated that while their own childhoods had been full of Holocaust remembrance and education programs, education about modern day genocide and genocide prevention had played no part in their Jewish upbringing. After a while, I began noticing that even my university’s Jewish programming generally lacked any mention of anti-genocide activism or education besides Holocaust remembrance. Rachel herself had once announced, just before Kiddush one Friday night, a meeting about the situation in Darfur, but she was making the announcement for a friend’s group, and her mention of the issue passed without much interest or action on the part of the Jewish community. In fact, the only time the community ever really discussed contemporary genocides was in debates over whether or not calling the 1940 genocide of European Jews a holocaust instead of the Holocaust was anti-Semitic. The idea that genocides inflicted upon other peoples had a significance beyond how their labeling affected Jews didn’t really seem to come up.

This is not to say the Jewish community at my university is apathetic. The opposite is true. We are a vibrant and politically involved community, with three different clubs focused on the situation in Israel alone. But perhaps that’s precisely the problem.

When I hear Rachel talk about Israel, she almost always mentions that Holocaust. It is clear that for her, in fighting for Israel, she is providing a safe haven for Jews and preventing genocide; she is living up to the promise made by her grandparents, embodied in the words “Never Again,” to educate the world about the horrors they experienced in the Holocaust and make sure they are never repeated. I admire her for it, and I admire her community for raising her to be passionate about Israel and passionate about making “Never Again” a reality for Jews. But I am saddened, and frankly amazed, that the message was never extended to making that same promise apply to everyone.

I can only conclude that if Rachel wasn’t taught about Rwanda, an atrocity committed while she was growing up - while she was being taught about Auschwitz, Dachau, and Treblinka - someone was failing her, and failing the promise of “Never Again.” Because “Never Again” does not mean fighting for Israel so that Jews may be safe from genocide, it means fighting for humanity so that everyone may be safe from genocide.

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.