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Glendale News Press
Published April 22, 2006
Do human beings learn from history? We do ...
And we don't.
Unfortunately, collective memory does not exactly work the same way as an
individual's. We don't learn as quickly as a child burnt by the hot stove.
As a collective, we suffer many blisters before we learn to avoid danger.
And if instead of the stove, it is the electrical outlet, we don't always
get a second chance.
History is filled with victims of such high voltage electrical outlets.
Beginning with the Armenian Genocide, modern history has no shortage of
proof on resistance to learning.
advertisement
The enormity of the Jewish Holocaust, the killing fields in Cambodia, and
the crimes in Sudan, all remind us that we are slow learners.
So how do we judge progress? How do we know we have graduated from "special
ed"?
First, we should be able to recognize the common characteristics of
genocidal acts, and be able to identify the conditions, which pre-exist such
horrors.
A systematic plan to eradicate a people, the existence of an exclusivist
ideology to justify the crimes, the opportunity of chaos and war to hide the
horrors from the world, are some of the common threads in all acts of
genocide.
Moreover, with every genocide comes a set of deniers. But whether it's the
agents of Turkish government dressed in fine European suits, or the voice of
neo-fascists in Europe, or the head of a fundamentalist state, they all
share a similar intent.
The ability to identify the denialists is an important test in graduating
from the class of learning.
If we are to learn from history, we should also have the capacity to
understand the universal nature of the sufferings.
If we are only capable of mourning our own ethnocentric losses, while being
indifferent to the suffering of others, then we have only learned that
specific paragraph in the lesson.
I'd read about the Jewish Holocaust, seen numerous documentaries regarding
the atrocities, but it was not until I visited the Museum of Tolerance when
the gravity of the crimes took deep roots in me.
In the museum, I received a photo passport card with the story of a child
whose life was changed by the Holocaust. Throughout the tour, the passport
was updated and at the end, the ultimate fate of the child was revealed. It
is at that moment, when the pain of that child and her family became my
pain. It is exactly at that moment when, I believed human beings are capable
of learning.
We can claim we have learned from history, only when we don't have to be
Armenian to be respectful of the memory of the martyrs on April 24, when we
don't have to be Jewish to realize the magnitude of the crime of Holocaust,
when we don't have to be black to shut down shop on Martin Luther King Day,
and we don't have to be Muslim to recognize that they too, can be victims of
persecution and injustice.
Moreover, if we claim we are learning from history, we should also have the
capacity to recognize the uniqueness of each and every genocide. Often, we
can be caught up in the senseless competition of who suffered the most.
While understanding the common factors, each genocide should be recognized
as a unique act. This will not only help us learn from each criminal
process, but it is also the most dignified way to remember the victims.
And finally, during routine commemoration ceremonies, we can lose sight of
individual stories.
The murdered millions were not a lump sum, but a sum of individuals, a sum
of fragile young brides, grieving mothers, helpless infants, desperate young
boys and inconsolable fathers. A genocide is also a sum of individual
orphans without childhood, and their forever-wounded descendants.
If we are to learn from history, we cannot forget the stories of individuals
like Haig Baronian: "At one place, my little grandmother ... loudly cursed
the Turkish government for their inhumanity, pointing to us children she
asked, 'What is the fault of children to be subjected to such suffering.' It
was too much for a gendarme to bear, he pulled out his dagger and plunged it
into my grandmother's back. The more he plunged his dagger, the more my
beloved Nana asked for heaven's curses on him and his kind. Unable to
silence her with repeated dagger thrusts, the gendarme mercifully pumped
some bullets into her and ended her life. First my uncle, now my grandmother
were left un-mourned and unburied by the wayside." (From the Oral History
Project on Armenian Genocide by Ara Oshagan and Levon Parian)
At the time, Haig was about 8 years old. I am a descendant of someone like
Haig.
* PATRICK AZADIAN works and lives in Glendale. He may be reached at
padaniaearthlink.net.
Published April 22, 2006
Do human beings learn from history? We do ...
And we don't.
Unfortunately, collective memory does not exactly work the same way as an
individual's. We don't learn as quickly as a child burnt by the hot stove.
As a collective, we suffer many blisters before we learn to avoid danger.
And if instead of the stove, it is the electrical outlet, we don't always
get a second chance.
History is filled with victims of such high voltage electrical outlets.
Beginning with the Armenian Genocide, modern history has no shortage of
proof on resistance to learning.
advertisement
The enormity of the Jewish Holocaust, the killing fields in Cambodia, and
the crimes in Sudan, all remind us that we are slow learners.
So how do we judge progress? How do we know we have graduated from "special
ed"?
First, we should be able to recognize the common characteristics of
genocidal acts, and be able to identify the conditions, which pre-exist such
horrors.
A systematic plan to eradicate a people, the existence of an exclusivist
ideology to justify the crimes, the opportunity of chaos and war to hide the
horrors from the world, are some of the common threads in all acts of
genocide.
Moreover, with every genocide comes a set of deniers. But whether it's the
agents of Turkish government dressed in fine European suits, or the voice of
neo-fascists in Europe, or the head of a fundamentalist state, they all
share a similar intent.
The ability to identify the denialists is an important test in graduating
from the class of learning.
If we are to learn from history, we should also have the capacity to
understand the universal nature of the sufferings.
If we are only capable of mourning our own ethnocentric losses, while being
indifferent to the suffering of others, then we have only learned that
specific paragraph in the lesson.
I'd read about the Jewish Holocaust, seen numerous documentaries regarding
the atrocities, but it was not until I visited the Museum of Tolerance when
the gravity of the crimes took deep roots in me.
In the museum, I received a photo passport card with the story of a child
whose life was changed by the Holocaust. Throughout the tour, the passport
was updated and at the end, the ultimate fate of the child was revealed. It
is at that moment, when the pain of that child and her family became my
pain. It is exactly at that moment when, I believed human beings are capable
of learning.
We can claim we have learned from history, only when we don't have to be
Armenian to be respectful of the memory of the martyrs on April 24, when we
don't have to be Jewish to realize the magnitude of the crime of Holocaust,
when we don't have to be black to shut down shop on Martin Luther King Day,
and we don't have to be Muslim to recognize that they too, can be victims of
persecution and injustice.
Moreover, if we claim we are learning from history, we should also have the
capacity to recognize the uniqueness of each and every genocide. Often, we
can be caught up in the senseless competition of who suffered the most.
While understanding the common factors, each genocide should be recognized
as a unique act. This will not only help us learn from each criminal
process, but it is also the most dignified way to remember the victims.
And finally, during routine commemoration ceremonies, we can lose sight of
individual stories.
The murdered millions were not a lump sum, but a sum of individuals, a sum
of fragile young brides, grieving mothers, helpless infants, desperate young
boys and inconsolable fathers. A genocide is also a sum of individual
orphans without childhood, and their forever-wounded descendants.
If we are to learn from history, we cannot forget the stories of individuals
like Haig Baronian: "At one place, my little grandmother ... loudly cursed
the Turkish government for their inhumanity, pointing to us children she
asked, 'What is the fault of children to be subjected to such suffering.' It
was too much for a gendarme to bear, he pulled out his dagger and plunged it
into my grandmother's back. The more he plunged his dagger, the more my
beloved Nana asked for heaven's curses on him and his kind. Unable to
silence her with repeated dagger thrusts, the gendarme mercifully pumped
some bullets into her and ended her life. First my uncle, now my grandmother
were left un-mourned and unburied by the wayside." (From the Oral History
Project on Armenian Genocide by Ara Oshagan and Levon Parian)
At the time, Haig was about 8 years old. I am a descendant of someone like
Haig.
* PATRICK AZADIAN works and lives in Glendale. He may be reached at
padaniaearthlink.net.