Shreeya Garg: Week #15 - Forgetting Genocide
The words “we will never forget” are repeated endlessly after any type of tragedy or autocracy from 9/11 to the Holocaust to slavery. But do we actually fulfill this promise to always remember, when it comes togenocides?
According to Kit Ramgopa, “1 in 10 respondents . . . did not recall ever having heard the word ‘Holocaust’ before." Furthermore, “sixty-three percent of those surveyed did not know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and over half of those thought the death toll was fewer than 2 million.” These statistics are alarming and reveal that most Americans do not remember the Holocaust.
This is especially devastating because the Holocaust is actually one of the most well-known genocides. There were many other genocides that people are even less aware of. For example, the Holodomor Genocide has been largely forgotten. In 1922, Ukraine became a part of the Soviet Union but Stalin was afraid of the nationalistic sentiment in Ukraine and tried to curb this by “intentionally manufactur[ing] . . . the mass starvation, execution, and imprisonment of 9 million ethnic Ukrainians." He “declared war on the kulaks, which were the larger land-owning farmers” and sent them to prison camps. Furthermore, Ukraine was required to produce 42% of the entire Soviet Union’s grains, but Stalin purposely did not supply Ukraine with farming equipment like tractors. Brigades were sent to find and confiscate hidden grains, so essentially “whatever food there was, the central government took.” Such policies led to devastation as “over a third of Ukrainian villages failed to meet grain quotas and were blacklisted,” which meant that everyone in these villages was “condemned to starvation.” All of these actions led to terrible conditions for the Ukrainian people, and at its peak “approximately 28,000 people died of starvation every day.” Although “as many as 10 million people may have died,” Stalin “silenced all the talk of hunger.” Even though this genocide was so terrible, very few people today know about it because of Stalin’s oppressive policies that kept this a secret for nearly 70 years.
Unfortunately, this is far from the only example. For example, “Operation Searchlight, the massacre of Bengali civilians by Pakistani soldiers” is a genocide that “has largely slipped out of public awareness—even though the upper estimate for the death toll is 3 million.” Other examples include the Mao Zedong’s Regime Genocide, where “Mao Zedong terminated anywhere between 40 million and 70 million people,” the Armenian Genocide, where nearly 2 million “ethnic Armenians and other non-Turks were massacred, deported, or starved to death in the Ottoman Empire,” and the Rwandan Massacre, where extremist groups killed 1 million people in only 100 days.
George Santayana once said that “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” However, Toni Morrison offers a more nuanced perspective on the negative consequences of living in the past. What do you guys think: Is it better to move on and forget or should such crimes always be remembered?
Sources:
https://www.borgenmagazine.com/worlds-worst-genocides/
https://everything-everywhere.com/holodomor-the-worlds-forgotten-genocide/
https://yetagainuk.com/remembering-the-holodomor-ukraines-forgotten-genocide/
https://www.fairobserver.com/region/north_america/holodomor-ukraine-genocide-russia-us-relations-latest-world-news-22444/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/genocide-us-cant-remember-bangladesh-cant-forget-180961490/
https://quotepark.com/quotes/2099800-george-santayana-those-who-cannot-learn-from-history-are-doomed-to/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/survey-finds-shocking-lack-holocaust-knowledge-among-millennials-gen-z-n1240031
Hi Shreeya! In terms of the structure of your blog, I really loved how you started with a rhetorical question that really caught my attention on the essence of remembering a certain occurrence versus forgetting it forever. To answer your question, I think remembering crimes from the past are needed to the extent where you can take something you learnt from the consequences of such a crime to heart to prevent yourself from doing anything even remotely similar to what happened; however, you should never consider the significance where you might harm yourself or be frightened to be in your normal state. Sometimes students might take certain occurrences too personally which might lead to ruining their emotional presence in the current moment they are living in. Thank you for your blog!
ReplyDeleteHi Shreeya! I don't want to undermine the Holocaust, but seeing the death toll on all these other massacres really makes me wonder why so much emphasis is put on the Holocaust while these more people have died else where and those events are overlooked. I've actually never heard of any of these other genocides, which is really concerning, but what is more alarming to me is how Americans actually haven't heard of the Holocaust considering how much it is taught in schools (at least the schools I've attended). This is also unrelated, but your blog post reminded me of WWII, which reminded me of how I've always wanted to know how history is taught in other countries. I feel like in our learning of history, the US was always portrayed as some sort of hero, where we always intervened and turned the tide of major wars, and I really want to know the German perspective when they teach the Holocaust in schools.
ReplyDeleteHi Shreeya, I think it is really weird that somehow 1/10 of Americans have no idea about what the Holocaust is. I wonder how they have no idea about what the Holocaust is, although every school teaches it. America is also starting to forget about 9/11, as read in the article that we had to annotate during the beginning of the school year. Furthermore, the government also tries to remove knowledge of certain genocide because it makes them look worse. China tried to hide knowledge about a time when they took a tank and destroyed protestors at a park, and the effort to hide the knowledge worked. Countries like China that control all of the knowledge that their citizens take in can remove the knowledge of certain eventsl
ReplyDeleteHi Shreeya! I agree that horrific events like genocides should always be remembered, but I also don't think that the average citizen necessarily needs to be extremely aware of major historical events. If a key reason behind remembering genocides and oppression is to avoid making those same mistakes in the future then it should be up to government leaders and legislators to understand and remember these events. Nonetheless, education about history in general as a general understanding of historical tragedies does help students establish a more comprehensive view of the world. Also, learning about these events helps citizens make more informed decisions in general, especially when electing future leaders.
ReplyDeleteHi Shreeya, I completely agree with the points you make in this post. I also like how you use statistics and numbers to back up your point(logos, am I right :)) This is exactly why I'm such a big advocate of the proper education of history in schools. The only way we can remember these events in an accurate way is if we learn them constantly. It serves not only as a reminder of the past, but as a lesson for the future. What can we take away from these events and what can we learn from the future? What are the connections we can make from the trends of today's society to past trends? These are really important questions that we should be asking ourselves, and that is why it is extremely important we never forget these events.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that genocides can be forgotten seems to be impossible, but it happens in front of our very own eyes. The Armenian genocide is barely taught in schools and is practically forgotten to most people. There are many more cases, and even more cases forgotten. The horrors of these events are somehow forgotten, for there is not enough people that want to remember. Those that would spread the message are either silenced or the ones being massacred, making for a nearly impossible situation. The simple fact that genocides can just be lost to history and to time seems impossible, but is somehow.
ReplyDeleteHey Shreeya, your blog post this week was very informative and detailed, using a lot of evidence and sources to back up your points. People definitely need to be aware of these darker facets of our history, as it is a crucial part of preventing these occurrences from happening again. Understanding how these horrors were allowed to occur is definitely something that people should understand, regardless of how uncomfortable people are made by them. By simply sweeping them under the rug for the sake of blissful ignorance and convenience, it allows these patterns to recur and cause these problems again and again. This essentially is the entire point of studying history, as it becomes increasingly helpful to understand years of previous successes and mistakes to pave our future.
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