Religious Leaders

On Wednesday Adama Dieng, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide, visited Interfaith Scotland for a dialogue event. He presented the UN’s “Plan of Action for the Prevention of Genocide”.

In the dialogue he realised that a lot of good practise that he encourages people all over the world to do is actually already happening in Scotland. The plan of action addresses mainly (but not only) Religious Leaders and Actors. For me this gives me an opportunity to reflect a bit on the role of religious leaders for interfaith dialogue and genocide prevention.

Impression from the “Prevention of Genocide” discussion

The connection of interfaith dialogue and genocide prevention

For me the prevention of genocides and religious violence is one of the most important motivations for interfaith dialogue. Good interfaith relationships are probably the best way to prevent religious motivated hate crimes (and the genocide is the worst form of a hate crimes). In the Holocaust, as well as in the persecution of Baha’i in Iran or Rohinga Muslims in Myanmar religion was/is one of the motivations for the committed crimes.

The important role of religious leaders for interfaith dialogue

Faith communities are structured in very different ways. They can be very hierarchical or with a very flat hierarchy. They can be structured top-down or bottom-up. Nearly all faith communities have some kind of persons that are responsible for representing them at different occasions.

It is very different how much “power” the different religious leaders have in speaking for their community, but what they are doing as representatives is usually highly symbolic. When religious leaders for example meet people from other religions this usually has an impact on how the public and people from their own religion see the relationship to people of other religions. Depending on the structure of their faith community religious leaders are also able to “set themes” for the discussion inside their community.

One difficulty with religious leaders can be that not everyone in their faith community might be excited about a larger interfaith engagement. Because of that it is possible that certain religious leaders can’t go as far forward with their actions as they might wish to do, because they have to respect and also represent those members of their community that are not interested in interfaith. Another difficulty for an interfaith dialogue between faith leaders can be that in case a leader is not very much interested in interfaith themselves it can handicap the initiatives of those members of their faith communities who want to drive interfaith forward.

The religious leaders of Scotland at their meeting in the beginning of May 2018.

How I experienced the religious leaders in Scotland

The religious leaders of Scotland meet twice a year together and a third time for a joint summit with the first minister. Interfaith Scotland is functioning as secretary for those meetings. I personally had the opportunity to participate in those meetings as a note taker. The actual content of the meetings should not be shared here but it is possible, to give some of my impressions.

1) The religious leaders seem to appreciate the cooperation with each other. The meet each other very open and respectful and a lot of faith communities large ones and small ones were represented.

2) The religious leaders are talking open with each other. At the meetings they tell openly about what is going on in their communities. As far as I could witness it there seems to be a true base of trust between them.

3) The religious leaders cooperate with each other. At points that concern all/some of the faith communities they work together. For example were most of the face communities and their representatives involved in an event about the risks of climate change at the Scottish Parliament some weeks ago or they show solidarity if one faith communities suffers from certain problems.

That the  leaders of the faith communities are working so good and smoothly together is not usual, especially on a world wide perspective and Scotland can be proud about the process of cooperation which has been made in the last years.

“Hine mah tov…”

When you are studying protestant theology in Germany you have to learn Latin, Ancient Greek and Hebrew. Fortunately for me I had learned Latin and Ancient Greek in school, so I had to learn “only” Hebrew when I started my studies. It was definitely not very easy to learn the language of the Hebrew Bible but in the second attempt I managed to pass the exam. When we learned the language, we not only learned how to read the alphabet and from the right to the left and not only vocabulary and grammar, but we also learned some traditional Hebrew songs. One of those songs has the text

“Hine mah tov uMah-Nayim shevet achim gam yachad“ and it quotes the beginning of Psalm 133. The verse means “Behold how good and how pleasing if brothers (people) could sit together in unity“. The song was also sung at the National Holocaust Memorial Day event, which I reflected about last week.

But it came much more to my mind after I visited a Shabbat service at Glasgow Reform Synagogue last Saturday. To be guest in this service was a very special experience for me. Not only because it was a remembrance service for Holocaust Memorial Day and not only because of the difficult history between Christians and Jews – especially in Germany. The experience was special because I felt welcomed and in a way “at home” that is unusual for visits in places of worship of other faith tradition than my own. Of course it helped a lot, that I was able to follow the Hebrew texts of the liturgy but also the texts itself and the setting of the service felt very familiar. That was of course because Christians and Jews share not only a lot of history, but also a large part of their Holy Scriptures. Probably because of that I had the feeling, that I could truly participate in the prayers say “Amen” to what was said in the service. The differences to my own tradition, which I definitely experienced as well, did not feel larger than when visiting a service in a different Christian denomination. Of course that does not mean that Jews should be seen as just another Christian denomination – that would be wrong and dangerous, but it shows the brother- and sisterhood between Christians and Jews.

Up till now I had the feeling that people stressing the “Christian-Jewish heritage of the Western World” do this mainly to support Anti-Muslim tunes in society, and I think very often this is the case. But during this service, listening together the story how god saved the Israelites on their way through the dessert, singing psalms, praying and remembering the Holocaust I really had the feeling: “Yes we are brothers and sisters. And there is a deep understanding between us. And besides all the differences that should not be denied, we share much more than we ourselves might think.”

If I could have a wish, I would wish that this deep understanding I experienced in this Shabbat Service is possible between believers of all the different religions. I would wish that Jews can pray with Muslims and Muslims with Christians and Buddhists with Hindus and Hindus with Sikhs and Skihs with Baha’I and Baha’I with Jews and so on. That would really be “good and pleasing”!

“Hine mah tov uMah-Nayim shevet achim gam yachad“

Holocaust Memorial Day 2018

Tomorrow is Holocaust Memorial Day. Because of that a lot of HMD events are organized these days all over the world. The National Scottish Memorial event was organized by Interfaith Scotland on Wednesday. It was a successful, moving and dignified event. In the centre of the evening we heard two stories about the Russian city Rostov-on-Don. We heard about how the Nazis massacred the Jewish population with mobile gas chambers. We heard also how Feodor Michalichenko a young man, saved and protected a young boy (7 years old), who later became the chief-rabbi of Israel, in the Concentration Camp of Buchenwald. We saw a drama and listened to music performed by Glaswegian school children. We heard from young people about their trips to Auschwitz and Rwanda. The First Minister of Scotland, the Lord Provost of Glasgow, the chair of the national Holocaust Memorial Day Trust were involved in the programme as well as Holocaust survivers, guests from Rostov-on-Don, representatives of the different victim groups in the Holocaust and representatives of Scottish Jewish communities and other faith communities.

I have to admit before the event, especially in the beginning of the planning from September onwards, I was a bit sceptical, if it was possible to have this kind of event with so many involved groups in a dignified way. My fear was that I, as someone who was raised in a country where remembering the Holocaust is very present in the political and social discussions, might have different expectations about a Holocaust Memorial Day event, than people outside of Germany. About some of my thoughts I wrote in this blog in my article from 8^th September 2017. In the end I was satisfied with the way how the event went.

There is only one question I have very ambivalent feeling about: Is it right to remember “subsequent” genocides together with the Holocaust?

On the one hand I totally agree that every genocide is horrible and worth remembering. For the person who is shot to death I might not make a huge difference if they were killed by a German, a Cambodian or a Serbian soldier or if they were killed by their neighbour in Germany, Dafur or Rwanda. Everyone in the world should know about this genocides and everyone should work hard so that this list doesn’t become longer and longer. So again it is definitely worth and important to remember all the different genocides and maybe it is an mistake (but even understandable) that German remembering culture is so concentrated on remembering the Holocaust.

But there are three questions that make me doubt about combining the remembering of the Holocaust with the remembering of the “subsequent genocides”.

1. Isn’t the Holocaust a singularity?

From my point of view this question must be answered yes. Not only is the total number of victims higher than in the other remembered genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Dafur. From everything I know the other genocides (and that might be much to little in the end) the highly industrialised way of organising and conduction of the killing in Nazi Germany is a significant difference to the other genocides. Where else did such a bureaucratical way of killing millions of people exist?

2. Does remembering the Holocaust together with other genocides relativize the Holocaust (and the other genocides)?

In Germany the persons who say “Well there were horrible genocides in other places in the world as well” have usually a right wing (extremist)/neo nazi background. Those voices come often together with appeals to change the remembering culture away from a focus on the German guilt towards a more patriotic/nationalist view onto German history. This relativistic attitude is very dangerous and even, when I don’t believe anyone at the official Holocaust Memorial Day event in Scotland or somewhere else in the UK has this attitude, there is the danger of seeing the Holocaust as “just one of many bad events in history”. And even if the remembering is done in a way that doesn’t relativize the Holocaust I see the danger of relativizing the other genocides. The Holocaust with it’s millions of deaths and the different groups of victims (besides the genocide of the Jewish population, there were persons with disabilities, LGBT, Roma and political opponents of the regime killed) looks always larger than the other genocides and it could make people think about Bosnia, Cambodia, Dafur or Rwanda: “Well at least it was not as worse as the Holcoaust”.

3. When remembering genocides why only “subsequent” genocides?

Of course not every killing of people fits the official criteria of a genocide and not always is it easy to draw the exact line between a genocide and other crimes of mass murder. But there other, at least “genocide-like”, events which happened before the Holocaust. One example are the crimes of the Germans against the Ovaherero and Nama in Namibia between 1904-1908 – already with Concentration Camps and the death of half of the population of those two people. Another example would be the crimes against the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1918. Other examples could be the killing of large parts of native populations in the Americas and other parts of the world during the age of colonization.

Because of those three questions I still have my doubts whether it is good or not to combine the remembrance of the Holocaust with the remembering of the different genocides. But in the end it might be much more important that those events are remembered than the question if they should be remembered separately or all together.

Remember, Remember …

When I wander through Glasgow I see places of remembrance all over the city. Especially soldiers from the World Wars have their monuments on many places – often marked with the symbol of the poppy. There are a lot of War monuments in Germany too, with long lists of names. Maybe I’m wrong but when I see the monuments here I have the feeling that people here have a more positive attitude towards their fallen soldiers, than in Germany. The monuments speak about them as heroes, who served their country bravely. This experience makes me thinking about remembering and remembrance culture today.

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On Monday people in the United States but also in Europe and in many other countries will remember the terror attack of 9/11. I assume everyone – at least in the Western countries – who was old enough in 2001 is remembering what he or she did the day when the planes hit in into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. People will remember the victims with religious services, with silence and tears. The terror attack on 9/11 and all terror attacks before and after this date are awful and turned innocent people to victims of violence.  It is good to remember them – especially for all the people who lost people they loved. But I’m also afraid of this remembering culture, especially if the actual US president is going ta talk at this day. Will he use the victims to produce more hate and violence? And who is remembering all the (innocent) victims of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which followed 9/11? How can people or states remember without producing more enemies?

Von UA_Flight_175_hits_WTC_south_tower_9-11.jpeg: Flickr user TheMachineStops (Robert J. Fisch)derivative work: upstateNYer – UA_Flight_175_hits_WTC_south_tower_9-11.jpeg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11786300

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About one week ago I participated at the first planning meeting for Holocaust Memorial Day 2018. The official Scottish event for this Day is going to be held in Glasgow this time. The planning was good and I’m sure it will be a good event. Some days later two friends from Germany visited me in Glasgow. I told them about Holocaust Memorial Day and they were very surprised that this day is not only about remembering the Holocaust but also about remembering different other genocides, eg. in Rwanda or Bosnia. Our shared feeling was that it is very difficult to do so, because from our (German) perspective the Holocaust is different. We could not imagine that Jews would accept that the Holocaust is compared or put on the same level as other historical occasions. For me and presumably the most Germans remembering the Holocaust means remembering it as a singularity, it means remembering the German guilt, it means especially remembering the suffering of Jews, even if also Disabled, LGBT, Roma and Communists were killed in the Konzentration Camps. It means that no other occasion in history is comparable with it and it means to do everything to prevent that such things are happening again.

For me it’s interesting that people in Scotland can have a more general look at the Holocaust. I’m completely convinced that the victims of Screbrenica and Rwanda must also be remembered. But it’s difficult for me to compare their dying to Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin Von K. Weisser – Selbst fotografiert, CC BY-SA 2.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12313104

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The 11^th September is a special day of remembrance in my hometown Darmstadt. At night time of this day all church bells in the town are ringing. Not because of the terror attacks in the United States in 2001, but because of the bombing of Darmstadt by the Royal Airforce in 1944. 99% of the city centre were destroyed. According to official numbers about 12.000 people were killed and about 66.000 people became homeless. Remembering this attack is very difficult, because people are aware that without the bombing of Germany cities and towns it would be harder to stop Hitler and the Nazis, but it also might have killed much more people, especially women and children, than might be necessary to win the war. From my point of view a remembrance culture which cries about the victims but is also aware about the responsibility to prevent the world from another World War, another Holocaust or another 9/11 is the only appropriate way of remembering.

Remembering is never unpolitical and we all are responsible for the remembrance culture in our town, country and our world.

What do you think? How do you remember?

Interfaith Comedy

This week I had a good meeting with EIFA (Edinburgh Interfaith Association). After the meeting, I took the opportunity to experience the festival atmosphere. One of the shows I saw had an interfaith background. Its title was “2 religions – 1 comedy show”. The two comedians, Henry Churniavsky and Joe Bains, have a Jewish and a Sikh background. Their experiences as parts of religious and ethnic minorities were the main topic of their show and the audience had a very diverse background as well. From my point of view, it was a great show and it was kind of a dialogue event.

Henry Churniavsky

Joe Bains

Interfaith comedy is not a classical method of interfaith dialogue. Jokes about religious topics are always a bit difficult, because people get offended very easily. One example for (maybe) failed religious satire might be the caricatures about Mohammed at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005, which were followed by protest in many countries.

Can comedy about religious be a way for a better understanding between religions? That’s difficult to answer, but I suppose in some cases it can and I have an example from my own experience: The protestant student congregation/chaplaincy in Münster has an exchange programme with Western Galilee College in Akko in Israel. This college is special because it’s students have Jewish, Arab-Christian, Arab-Muslim and Drusian background. In 2012, I joined a group of students from this college on their trip to Münster and Berlin. During this journey, most of the Muslim and Jewish participants visited houses of worship of the other believe (mosques and synagogues) and Christian churches for the first time of their live. In Berlin, we visited amongst other sights the Holocaust memorial site, the KZ Sachsenhausen and the house of the “Wannsee Conference”. I know that in these days me and the other German participants of the group felt very bad visiting all these places of collective German guilt. One evening in a room at the hostel where we stayed one of the Jewish students made a joke. It was spontaneous and it included the words “Germany” and “gas” and probably not very politically correct but in this situation, it was the best what could happen. Suddenly everyone in the room, independent of his ethnic or religious background, was smiling and laughing. This joke and the laugh broke the ice between us and it made us one group and it made the common visits to the different religious and historical sights much easier.

This situation showed me that in some cases even a bad joke can be a basis for dialogue. That means not, that people who want to start an interfaith dialogue should go around and make jokes about religions and the Holocaust, but sometimes humour and jokes can help to a better understanding between different groups. I think it is important to see who makes the jokes about what and how the relationship between the different persons is. In my example, it was a young Jewish man who made the joke and I’m not sure, if it would have the same effect if the joke was made by a one of the Germans or Arabs. There even was already an atmosphere of trust and knowing about each other in the group. We had already spent some days together and knew about the others and the joke showed everyone that we trusted each other and that we accepted each other with our whole history and religion.

That means: From my point of view Comedy can be a good way to deepen relationships if there already is an atmosphere of trust. Often it is a big difference if the joke about a religion is made by a believer of this religion himself or by someone else.  Interfaith dialogue is dialogue about very serious topics, but dialogue is getting easier, if we don’t take ourselves so serious that it’s getting impossible to laugh about ourselves.

And so, I want to finish this blog post with a quote by Stephen Colbert in a Parade interview 23^th September 2007:

“Not living in fear is a great gift, because certainly these days we do it so much. And do you know what I like about comedy? You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time — of anything. If you’re laughing, I defy you to be afraid. “

The long way to peace between faiths

This week I visited the local interfaith group in fife. They told me about their activities and we discussed how Interfaith Scotland could support their work. One thing they told me was that they built a peace garden in the large park in Kirkcaldy. The project needed a lot of resources and it took about 4 years until it was finished in 2012. Even if I couldn’t visit the garden it is good to know, that there is a place where all the different religions are calling for peace in the world. Hearing about the peace garden made me think about all the conflicts which have existed and still exists between the different faiths. And I started thinking about how religious groups, which have been enemies for a long time, can become peaceful partners.

I know at least one example where that happened after a nearly 2.000 years history of persecution. I’m from Germany and a protestant Christian, so the example comes from the history of my own faith. In the so called New Testament (a part of the Christian Bible) there are scripture which have very strong anti-Jewish tendencies. From a historical point of view that’s completely understandable because the first Christians split up from the Jewish community and there were a lot of conflicts between both religious groups during the first centuries of their common history. After Christianity became the main religion of the Roman Empire Christians had the possibility to supress Jews and they did it because of the anti-Jewish tendency in the New Testament. Not all Christians did this but over the centuries it became a common sense in Christian theology that Jews were the “enemies of God”. During the middle-ages and the modern times it continuously came to pogroms against Jews in the Christian areas of the world. Even great Christian theologians such as Martin Luther the “founder” of Protestantism had strong anti-Jewish opinions. During the 19^th century the theological antijudaism became an important radix for antisemitism.  Even if the first Christians and the Christian theologians during 2000 years of Christian history are not directly responsible for the gas chambers in Auschwitz, so have they prepared the way for it. Even if there were Christians in Germany during to Nazi regime who fought against Hitler and the Nazis most of the Christians did not and during the Weimar Republic the most Nazi supporting areas in Germany were those which were traditional protestant. After the war, the protestant church in Germany (and in other western countries as well) started slowly to change their theological thinking about Jews. They remembered all the things these two faiths have in common and the shared believes.

Today in the protestant church in Germany it is a real no-go to say that Jews must become Christians to be in a relationship to god. The Jewish faith is accepted as an equal way to god – not only because of political and historical reasons but even for theological ones too. The most important step on the way from persecuting and killing Jews to accepting them as equal partners was that the Christian churches admitted their guilt for the persecution of Jews. My (regional) church where I am going to work as minister from next summer changed its basic article in 1991. This text is the basis for everything what happens in the church. Every minister in the church is getting ordained on this article. Since 1991 the article ends with two new sentences:

“For blindness and guilt called for repentance, she (the church) again testifies to the permanent election of the Jews and God’s covenant with them. The confession of Jesus Christ includes this testimony.” ( „Aus Blindheit und Schuld zur Umkehr gerufen bezeugt sie (die EKHN) neu die bleibende Erwählung der Juden und Gottes Bund mit ihnen. Das Bekenntnis zu Jesus Christus schließt dieses Zeugnis ein.“)

I think it is not usual that a religious group has the permanent election of another religious group as one of their main articles of believe but it gives me hope. It gives me the hope that the different religious faiths can accept another as equal partners without a repeating of the history between Christians and Jews. It would mean that Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Bahais and all the other faiths would confess everything they done to each other. It would mean that they admit their guilt and that they forgive each other. Maybe it’s idealistic but I hope it will happen. I think this is a task for every believer and everyone can do something for this. The “normal people” can try to build good relationships to their neighbours from different faiths. Have a chat when they meet, ask how they feel, let their children play together… The theologians must rethink their theological positions towards each other. The example of the Christian-Jewish relationship shows me that this is possible, even if it is a long and difficult journey.

What do you think? Is peace and reconciliation between the religions possible?

 

If I write about the “protestant church in Germany” I mean the EKD. If I write about “my (regional) church I mean the EKHN.

Saskia and her mother Brigitte’s story

Saskia Tepe is travelling to Scotland as Interfaith Scotland’s guest to join speakers at various Holocaust Memorial Day events – read her story in her own words…

When Interfaith Scotland invited me to speak as part of the 2017 National Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) events they are organising over the week beginning 22^nd January, I was absolutely delighted.

I have been talking about my mother Brigitte’s remarkable survival of the Holocaust and the aftermath of war ever since I can remember.  I try to bear witness and in paying tribute to her experiences and the choices she was forced to make, I also hope that what I tell my unsuspecting victims will make them reconsider their preconceptions!

Which is also the point of HMD.

HMD is a time when we seek to learn the lessons of the past and to recognise that genocide does not just take place on its own, it’s a steady process which can begin if discrimination, racism and hatred are not checked and prevented. The aim of Interfaith Scotland to promote peace through dialogue between people of all faiths, is part of the process that should prevent a genocide from taking place on these shores.  The United Nations is trying to ensure that this same process of dialogue takes place across the world, and has designated the 27^th January a worldwide time of remembrance, bearing witness, and education.  Most of my week long schedule of bearing witness will be held in schools. I believe, hearing a first hand testimony from a live witness makes all the difference to young people with little life experience. And given that most actual Holocaust survivors are now in the autumn of their lives, it behoves the children of survivors to carry on bearing that witness.

My mum was a Catholic Sudeten German, whom the Nazis labelled “Mischling” (mixed race Jew) because of her Jewish heritage.  As such, she experienced the tribulations of WWII during the Holocaust and again during the ethnic cleansing of German Nationals that occurred in the former Sudetenland between 1945 and 1947. She told me some of her experiences – but most of her story I had to learn from documents she left after she died, and research.  Which of course would make my story simply a second hand account.

But the HMD theme this year – “how can life go on” allows me to talk a little more about how her life continued after the war, and how the legacy of a war ravaged Europe directly affected me…

Born in 1954, I spent my early childhood in a Refugee (DP) Camp in Nurnberg, Germany.  After being fostered by families in Switzerland and Belgium, I emigrated with my mother and stepfather to the UK when I was 7 years old, as part of the 1959 UN’s World Refugee Year initiative. Contrary to common belief, many displaced people continue to languish in camps across Germany and other European countries until well into the 1960’s.  Life did not suddenly improve for those caught up in war because the bombs stopped falling.  How can life go on, when you cannot return to your home because it no longer exists or has been appropriated by strangers or an aggressive regime?  How can you build up a new life in a country that is still struggling to rebuild itself?

We spent much of our lives being aided by charities… the Red Cross, the British Refugee Council, the Catholic Church,  a teacher’s Association, and countless individuals who offered my family friendship and understanding as we struggled with ill health, low paid work, hindered by a lack of language skills.  In those days, adoptive countries took no account of foreign based qualifications.  War is a great equaliser.  However,  it also makes you realise that kindness exists in abundance and is not to be taken for granted.

Then of course, there is the not so small matter of the mental scars that are left.  Painful memories deliberately buried deep so that you don’t give up hope, and can face looking forward and plan for a new life.  And to do that, you must come to terms with the worst in mankind, your personal losses, choose whether to forgive or blame, and learn to trust again.

My mother was able to do all of those things. It was me, the second generation survivor, as we are sometimes called, that found things more difficult.  Because the children of survivors of genocide have their own cross to bear.  They carry their parents’ pain, whilst trying to assuage it and protect them from more.  They try extra hard to fulfill their parents’ ambitions for their futures, whilst being the go between with strangers and the sometimes incomprehensible cultural norms and traditions and expectations of their new foreign homes.

And the children become the voice that their parents – the survivors – lost.  They are the ones left with a specific burden.  Angry at the injustice their parents encountered, they encourage their parents to tell their stories if they can, or else they take on the responsibility themselves to shout out the message, that a great sin against humanity was committed.  And that those stories of survival, during the genocide and afterwards, must become a lesson for new generations to learn.

Read more about Holocaust Memorial Day 2017

Follow Saskia’s journey via her Twitter account.

Are Genocides Worth Remembering?

A shortened version of this originally appeared in Scotland on Sunday on 23rd January 2016.

On 27^th January Scotland, and the UK, remembers the Holocaust and other genocides.  Given the challenging financial situation in the UK, is the hosting of memorial meetings across the country a good use of Scottish or UK Government resources?  Isn’t life depressing enough without having to remember that the last 100 years has witnessed many states sponsoring the planned, systematic mass murder of their own populations including Turkey, Germany, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and in the Darfur region of the Sudan?

Millions die every year from hunger, disease and war so why pause on 27^th January and remember the Holocaust and other genocides?

In his book ‘Rwanda and Genocide in the 20th Century’, former secretary-general of Medecins Sans Frontieres, Alain Destexhe, says: “Genocide is distinguishable from all other crimes by the motivation behind it. Genocide is a crime on a different scale to all other crimes against humanity and implies an intention to completely exterminate the chosen group.  Genocide is therefore both the gravest and greatest of the crimes against humanity.”

The UN Convention on Genocide came into effect in January 1951 and it is estimated that 20 million men, women and children have died as a result of the Holocaust and other genocides in just over 100 years.  Despite a UN Convention; such shocking figures; and the now overused and under implemented words ‘never again’ the genocidal process is still allowed to develop.

So what is the point of remembering?  Is remembrance enough?   Remembering without understanding the process of genocide might well make us feel marginally better but will it prevent further genocides happening?  Surely we must find better ways of learning from remembrance and from challenging the processes of genocide whenever and wherever we see them beginning to take root.

Gregory Stanton, President of Genocide watch has identified ‘ten stages of genocide’; classification; symoblization; discrimination; dehumanization; organisation; polarization; preparation; persecution; extermination and denial. In each of these stages he has outlined what can be done to stop the advancement of the process and has stated that ‘ultimately the best antidote to genocide is popular education and the development of social and cultural tolerance for diversity’. He has further identified that ‘the movement that will end genocide must come not from international armed interventions, but rather from popular resistance to every form of discrimination; dehumanization, hate speech, and formation of hate groups…. it must rise from each of us who have the courage to challenge discrimination, hatred, and tyranny’.

Education is often put forward as a tool for building a fairer, better society and I would be the first to agree that education is crucial – but I would ask the question ‘education for what?’  The Nazi’s were extremely well educated; educational games were developed for children that encouraged hatred of the Jews; scientists developed the equipment of the death camps; social scientists developed the racist theories that underpinned the Holocaust; even the cultural education of classical music, literature and the arts were used as tools of propaganda against the Jews.  So the question again has to be asked ‘education for what’?   Do we need to have, right at the heart of our education system, the ‘social and cultural tolerance for diversity’ that is identified by Gregory Stanton as the ‘best antidote’ for genocide?

Children spend much of their lives in educational environments but just how much of that time is actually spent exploring tolerance for diversity?  Are the children of Scotland learning about cultural and religious diversity and its positive impact on society?  Are examples of best practice shared throughout the country?  Are programmes being developed for schools that really celebrate global citizenship?  As Director of a National Interfaith Dialogue organisation, Interfaith Scotland, I could ask are children learning the tools needed to successfully talk about difference and to do so with respect and openness.   Hopefully the answer to all of the above is yes but educators and Governments need to be constantly vigilant to the voices that would sow distrust and fear in society.

And what of the environment outside the classroom; what of our adult world and our ‘tolerance for diversity’?  How influenced are all of us by what we read, hear and see in the media? The media has always had a powerful role to play in the process of genocide. Historically it has been a tool used effectively in the dehumanizing stage of genocide.   So are we constantly vigilant and questioning of the stories told in our national newspapers, on TV and on the radio?   If we think of some of the recent reporting on the current refugee crisis it would be hard not to identify shocking negativity towards refugees in some national newspapers.  As far back as 2010 a Red Cross report stated that 72% of respondents in a poll said newspaper reporting about asylum seekers and refugees was negative and the public most readily associated the word scroungers with refugees.  No one can have missed the extreme language used by Katie Hopkins, columnist for the Sun Newspaper, when she described migrants as ‘cockroaches’ and ‘feral’ – similar language used in the Rwandan genocide!  Thank God the decent British public rose up and condemned her, demanding an apology.

On Holocaust Memorial Day, this Wednesday, Scotland will remember the Holocaust and other genocides.  It will embrace the theme for 2016 – ‘don’t stand by’ and will welcome to Scotland Mukesh Kapila, the former UN Ambassador to the Sudan who had the courage to blow the whistle on the genocide taking place in Darfur.  Scotland will also welcome Inge Auerbacher, who as a child survived Terezin a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia.  Of the 15,000 children who entered only 1% survived.  Mukesh and Inge, both know only too well that doing nothing to prevent discrimination, hatred and intolerance has terrible, unthinkable consequences.  Inge was a child in November 1938 when she witnessed first had ‘Kristallnacht’. She saw how Nazis torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses, killed close to 100 Jews and in the aftermath sent 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps.

Mukesh witnessed first-hand the atrocities committed in Darfur.  In his book ‘Against a Tide of Evil’ he tells the moving story of how in March 2004 he was sitting in his office in Khartoum writing a report for the UN about the situation unfolding in Darfur when he heard a commotion outside his office. A tall woman in torn, dirty clothes fought her way in to speak with him. Her name was Aisha. He offered her a chair but, fearing she would spoil it, she sat cross-legged on the floor. She had travelled from North Darfur, from a village near the town of Tawila, and now she told him her story. She had been in Tawila with her family on market day when Arab militia – the Janjaweed – on horseback and in vehicles stormed the marketplace. They rounded up the women and girls and raped them systematically “like it was a production line in a factory”.  Her father, husband and two sons were in the crowd as she was raped repeatedly until she passed out. Huts and trees were set alight. In the aftermath, she couldn’t find her family and fled 1,000km to Khartoum.  This was a testimony from one brave victim, sitting on the floor of his office and it was the catalyst he needed to blow the whistle, to defy his superiors and throw the story open, telling the world that “the first genocide of the 21st century” was taking place in Sudan.

In an interview with Alice Wyllie of the Scotsman Mukesh said that ‘the higher you climb in office, the more distant you become- the numbers are there but in a way the bigger the numbers, the more abstract they become. In Darfur, meeting the individual victims and perpetrators, I began to realise that each little mini situation in the big drama was utterly unique. This really came home to me when I returned to Rwanda … for the first time in 18 years. I looked at a room full of skulls and bones and, with my medical knowledge I could tell how each individual had died; a blow on the head, a machete in the back of the neck. And I realised that amidst the hundreds of thousands, each death was unique and hence each survival was unique. From that grew the idea that I wasn’t interested in speaking to the intellectuals or the policy makers. I was interested in speaking to ordinary people’.

It will be the ordinary people of Scotland that Mukesh and Inge will talk – so yes Scotland will remember but it will do so much more.  In the coming week a befitting national memorial event will be held in Falkirk; hundreds of local memorial events will take place across Scotland; thousands of school children will learn about the Holocaust and other genocides; films will be shown; dialogue events will take place; public lectures at Universities across the country will be held – and we will not forget; we will honour the victims; and we will do what we can to understand, to learn, to speak out, and to say very loudly and very clearly that yes the Holocaust and other genocides are worth remembering.

Dr. Maureen Sier, Director, Interfaith Scotland