NEWS AND VIEWS: Museum of Reconciliation: appropriate for Canada (08/29/99)

NEWS AND VIEWS

Museum of Reconciliation: appropriate for Canada

by Lubomyr Luciuk

Millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis. Very few Canadians don't know that. Few, very few, would deny that it happened. Those who do, don't count.

The shelves in my den hold dozens of volumes about the Holocaust. My bookstore of choice annually offers many new books about the particularly Jewish dimension of this tragedy, properly called the Shoah. Popular culture is infused with Holocaust-related themes; scarcely a day goes by without a poignant reminder of this undeniable event. Dozens of Holocaust centers already exist across North America and Europe and the subject is included in many high school curricula. The Jewish Holocaust has not been forgotten. It won't ever be. Oddly, proponents of a publicly-funded Shoah museum in Ottawa seem unaware of this.

Advocates for an inclusive Genocide Museum in Canada's capital, however, have a different agenda. They want us to remember that many other crimes against humanity - war crimes, and acts of genocide - also befouled the 20th century and overtook ethnic, religious, and racial minorities not only in Europe, but in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere.

The truth about many of these horrors, such as the "killing fields" of Cambodia, "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans, the genocidal civil war in Rwanda, the man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine, and the Rape of Nanking - to list but a few - is being buried. Why? Because, in contrast to the furtive mutterings of an irrelevant few "Holocaust-deniers," there are governments and powerful interests that have dedicated considerable resources to manipulating historical memory and obscuring their responsibility about these events.

Are the atrocities perpetrated by Imperial Japan against Chinese and Korean civilians accurately described in Japanese school texts? No. Does anyone think responsibility for the atrocities in Kosovo will be laid at the doorstep of Mr. Milosevic in Serb classrooms? Not soon. Or that we can expect the man-made famine of 1958-1962 in Maoist China to be studied in the People's Republic, even though as many as 30 million people were starved to death? Not likely. And let's not be too smug. Canada's own War Museum won't countenance an exhibit about the innocent Japanese Canadians herded into Canadian concentration camps during the Second World War.

The world is not only polluted with modern-day war criminals, of whom more than a few remain in power, but it is also awash in their many millions of victims, some of whom have found sanctuary on Canadian soil. The latter, understandably, believe that the horrors that befell them must be remembered.

And, truth be told, each community is far more interested in recalling what happened to its own than in remembering what happened to any others. There's nothing unique about that. Nevertheless, they have rallied together to form the ad hoc coalition known as Canadians For A Genocide Museum. They appreciate that even if the perpetrators of the crimes they experienced can not be punished at least these villains can be condemned publicly. And so Canadians of Chinese, Albanian, Kurdish, Cambodian, Arab and many other heritages call for a facility that will recall all of their peoples' calamities.

However, the latter would not be included in a "Holocaust only" museum except, perhaps, obliquely. That's not enough, nor is it acceptable in our shared, multicultural society.

Sixty years ago, this very month, a dictator informed his generals about the fate he planned for a nation whose state they were about to destroy. He spoke approvingly of a precedent for their action, of a by-then nearly forgotten massacre that had occurred only a quarter century before:

"Genghis Khan had millions of women and men killed by his own will and with a gay heart. History sees him only as a great state-builder! I have sent my Death's head units to the East with the order to kill without mercy men, women, and children! Only in such a way can we win the living space [lebensraum] that we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

The speaker was Adolf Hitler. He was baldly stating what he intended to do. But not, as some might think, to the Jews but to Poles, millions of whom perished during "the other Holocaust." Would those Polish victims of the Nazi terror be remembered in a Shoah museum? Doubtful. And, arguably, Ukraine lost more of its population than any other Nazi-occupied nation in Europe. Would the millions of Ukrainians slaughtered or enslaved by the Nazis be recalled in a Shoah center? Probably not.

In contrast, all of these horrors, alongside the Jewish tragedy, would be included in a Genocide Museum. Such an educational and memorial facility would preserve the memory of all these victims and many others, regardless of how many or who they were, or how much or how little documentation exists about their fates.

To defeat the Hitlers of this world, dead and gone or still with us, we must hallow not just some of the victims of one of the greatest of the genocides of the 20th century, but must hallow annihilated Armenians as well.

Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk is director of research for the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

| Home Page |