Again and again

I just stumbled across this post that I wrote several months ago after returning to Rwanda from a trip over Christmas that included a day in Amsterdam. I had forgotten to finish writing it and post it...

When I visited the national genocide memorial in Kigali several months ago (see 'Kigali Memorial Centre'), I was especially impressed with the fact that the memorial centre included displays not just on the Rwandan genocide but on other genocides that have taken place and are taking place throughout the world. I felt like this showed a true commitment to the fight against genocide by acknowledging that Rwanda is not the only place where a genocide has occurred and the way in which the Rwandan genocide happened is not the only way in which a genocide can take place.

As impressed as I was with this global perspective of the Kigali Memorial Centre, I was disappointed - no, I was angry - with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. The majority of the house is fairly and appropriately dedicated to the Holocaust. However, at the end of the tour, there is space for additional displays. This space is filled with exhibition called "Free2choose" which displays "how basic rights can clash: the freedom of speech versus the right to be protected against discrimination." While this display gives insight into how limiting rights such as the freedom of speech can develop into discrimination which can turn to violent attacks and genocide, it does not acknowledge the ways in which this has occurred outside Nazi Germany. In fact, nowhere in the Anne Frank House is there mention of the genocides in Armenia (1915-1917), Cambodia (1975-1977), Bosnia (1992-1995), Rwanda (1994) or any of the other locations and times in the world where genocide has occurred.

I found the lack of any such information infuriating. I hate that such a thing tainted my experience of visiting a historical location with such importance of its own, but I walked out of the house feeling more anger than sadness or thoughtfulness or regret or any of the other feelings that are usually associated with visiting a genocide memorial. The world acknowledges the terror of the Holocaust, yet so many are ignorant of the genocides that continue to occur again and again. I feel like the Anne Frank House is such a well-known site that it could be a tremendously effective location to educate people on the dangers of genocide, not just in terms of the Holocaust, but in terms of these continued events that occur again and again around the world. Instead, unfortunately, it supports Samantha Power's cynical, yet insightful, assessment of the UN genocide convention of which she wrote, that in practice it means “never again would the Germans kill Jews in Europe in the 1940s.”