| Preface
Which Genocide Matters More?
Learning to Care about Humanity
ISRAEL W. CHARNY
He was all alone after the inferno had ended. He had lost his wife and six children, also his parents, three brothers and two sisters.
This is the vignette I begin with when I speak to audiences on “uniqueness versus universality of the genocide,” a subject I have been invited to talk about not only in professional settings but also on several occasions before both specifically Jewish and Armenian audiences. In each case of a specific ethnic audience, the living survivors of the tragic hell of their respective genocide have no doubt in their minds that their genocide, the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide, was unique. I never argue with the survivors; for I have no question that on an experiential level, the staggering suffering endured in any genocidal event is in the eyes and hearts of those who undergo it “beyond belief,” and beyond anything that any other civilized people could have endured. In the small events of our everyday lives, too, each of us tends naturally to speak excitedly about our own individual experience of events — “I shook the hand of the President,” “I was at the scene of the fire,” “I heard the shot a block away,” and so on. Certainly each survivor of a forced march of a death camp is entitled to speak of his/her personal horror as overwhelmingly unique in much the same way, and collective groups of peoples who have suffered genocide quite naturally frame the tragedy and suffering they have endured as unique.
I then turn to my audience and say, in each case according to the audience’s collective ethnic identity:
I am aware of the pain you felt for this survivor, but I have to point out to you that I did not actually say to you that this 52-year-old-man and his family were (Jewish/Armenian). How would you feel if I now told you that, in fact, they were an (Armenian/Jewish) family? and I then reverse the identity from that of the audience. The feeling in the audience seems to change immediately. Something of the terrible heaviness of shock and mourning that had been filling the room seems to lift the moment I suggest the victims are not of the people of the audience. Now I comment on this phenomenon:
I have the feeling that the pain in the room has lessened now, but why have your feelings changed?
You seem now to feel less deeply for the victims than when you thought they were of your people. Of course, I believe that it is entirely natural to feel more deeply about one’s own people, and less for another people, and I don’t think that is wrong in any way. But you and I nonetheless need to ask ourselves whether we feel sufficiently involved and caring for this other people. How much do you as a (Jew/Armenian) want to care about this other people?
A discussion then generally ensues in which some members of the audience acknowledge that, of course, they feel more intensely about their own people, but that they also do care about the (Holocaust/Armenian genocide). Typically, some will add that they know many (Jews/Armenians), they have learned a good deal about their history; and, in fact, that there are historical connections between the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust because in the opinions of many scholars, the “successful” completion of the Armenian genocide paved the way for the Holocaust 20 years later.
Obviously, it is the simple nature of humans that we care more about ourselves first of all. Each of us cares selfishly about our own survival first, next for our loved ones, and then for our people, but we also should not be indifferent to the plight of others and the tragedies of their losses of life. In any case, it is also a matter of self-interest to care about the genocide of others. In cases of genocide of peoples other than our own, it should also be obvious to us that any and every event of mass murder, to any and every people, also opens the door to greater possibilities of further genocidal massacres of additional peoples, perhaps again including our own people. I turn to the audience once again and now add as follows: The truth that I haven’t told you is that the family I have described was neither Jewish nor Armenian. Please see now how you feel if I tell you that, in fact, the family that I described was Cambodian. Now the mood in the room changes once again. It is evident that, unwittingly, some lesser degree of caring than before settles on the majority of the members of the audience; in both cases, Jews and Armenians tend to feel less familiar with and less involved with the much more different and far-away Asiatics.
Again I comment on the naturalness of the phenomenon: As I said earlier, I believe it is proper to accept the naturalness of the fact that we all tend to care less about other people the further away we feel from them. In this case, these are people who live on the other side of the world, look very different from us, speak a more unfamiliar language, practice a religion with whom we have less historic connection, and so on, but again the question has to be how much genuine empathy do we want to feel for this other people?
How much do we want to expect of ourselves to feel towards a “strange” people who have suffered a horrifying extermination of their innocent men, women, and children?
In western consciousness, there is generally widespread acceptance of the Holocaust as the single most terrible event of genocide to date in human history, to such an extent that it has become the archetypal or generic statement of mass murder, referring not only to its own incredible events, but now also standing as a reminder of other instances of genocide to other people. Consciousness of the Holocaust has become not only a memorial to the terrible Jewish tragedy but a reminder of all mass murders, with the welcome result that, hopefully, humankind can never again be as indifferent or unaware of the dangers of genocide in the future history of our species. The Holocaust is unique in a number of ways, but these actually underscore that much more how capable human beings and society have been — and still are — of destroying different peoples en masse.
Never was there a society so totally committed to an ideology of the total destruction of another people; never were the near-total resources and the organizational genius of a modern society devoted toward creating an actual “industry of death”; never were the tools of science and engineering harnessed so extensively for making more efficient deaths of civilians in assembly-line machinery that transformed people into disposable refuse
to be burned in ovens; and never were a people persecuted so relentlessly as sub-human, degraded, and tortured cruelly and systematically for long periods of time on their way to their tormented “appointments” with death.
The Holocaust was a decidedly unique event which is superimposed on a pattern of genocidal killing long familiar in human history, and this is the reason it has forced us into a new stage of awareness of the dangers of mass murder in the evolution of human society... |
