DOV TALES
by Dov Burt Levy

My columns on the Anti-Defamation League's position concerning the Armenian genocide brought the following letter challenging genocide remembrance and educational programs. The writer is Jewish, served in the US army in World War II and had a career in government and public affairs. In short, someone I take seriously.

"My problem with the Armenian genocide, and I have the same problem with our own six million dead in the Shoah, is what value is gained by inculcating in our children the not-to-be-forgotten knowledge that millions of us, Armenians or Jews, were at some point slaughtered by Germans or Turks?

"I am fully aware of the admonition that "those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it." But, do we really believe that if the Jews don't continue to remind their children that their co-religionists were slaughtered, they might also, in some distant future, be slaughtered because they were not constantly reminded.

"Primo Levi said, 'once they have you in concentration camps, they have you forever.' I say that being dragged into a concentration camp is involuntary. But we Jews who were never in concentration camps have an option. We can opt not to be prisoners of that past. As for the American Armenians, most have never even seen a Turk, much less been imprisoned by one. So they have an option not to be forever in terror of being locked in a church and burned to a cinder."

The letter is right to the point. Should we expose — or educate — children about the Holocaust in all its horror? No question it is an appallingly negative and depressing story. Also true is that education against genocide has provided little evidence of positive effect.

Yet, I do believe that the Holocaust story joined with the uplifting story of Israel, the first Jewish nation in over 2000 years capable of defending itself, is a positive message for our young people. As for the Armenians, they have made their decision to keep on commemorating their genocide.

What the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has to say about the Holocaust memorials and education shows that Holocaust education reaches a far wider audience than just school children.

"The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum stimulates leaders and citizens to confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy…. The Museum provides a powerful lesson in the fragility of freedom, the myth of progress, the need for vigilance in preserving democratic values. With unique power and authenticity…millions of people [are taught] each year about the dangers of unchecked hatred and the need to prevent genocide...we encourage them to act, cultivating a sense of moral responsibility among our citizens so that they will respond to the monumental challenges that confront our world.

"Since its dedication in 1993, the Museum has welcomed more than 25 million visitors, including more than 8 million school children and 85 heads of state. Today 90 percent of the Museum's visitors are not Jewish, and our Web site, the world's leading online authority on the Holocaust, had 15 million visits in 2006 from an average of 100 different countries daily."

We must reluctantly admit the world's record on genocide has been poor since 1945. Most of us, after World War II, thought that the evidence of the enormity, cruelty, downright horror of the Holocaust, would ensure that such events would never happen again.

How wrong we were. Since WWII, genocides have occurred in Cambodia, Rwanda, East Timor, Belgrade, Sudan, Guatemala and Darfur, according to the Yale University Genocide Studies Program. The world's response? Tepid, at best.

Now, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threatens the six million-person nation of Israel with extinction. And as he announces the development of nuclear weapons with delivery systems capable of reaching Israel, Ahmadinejad compounds the outrage by branding the Nazi Holocaust as a political myth. World reaction? Not great.

Today, as many as 100 major genocide education programs are operating at museums and universities. They exist throughout the United States, in Israel, in countries around the world. They are coupled with innovative projects like Stephen Spielberg's Shoah Visual Library.

The impact of all these efforts won't be known in my lifetime, and perhaps not in yours or our children's.

Sometimes we choose to do things without scientific evidence of certain results. That is called, Hope.