Government officials and members of the diplomatic corps accredited to Rwanda, yesterday, joined Israelis and Germans to mark the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. 

The commemoration of about six million Jews who were killed during World War II took place at Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre under the theme, "The Holocaust and Human dignity.”

Beylanesh Zevadia, the Israeli Ambassador to Rwanda, said the joint commemoration serves as a testament that Germans and Israelis can today remember the victims of the Holocaust side by side, demonstrating that reconciliation was possible even in the aftermath of terrible crimes.

"We must unite in dismay at the way in which so many were stripped off their humanity and we must work together to educate people and to show them the bareness for their prejudice, to create a world in which there is no evil,” said Zevadia, who added that Jews who survived the gas chambers of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis chose to rebuild their country over revenge.

The Nazi low

Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire.” The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were racially superior and that the Jews, deemed inferior, were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community, hence persecuting them in 1945 as a "Final Solution”.

"Today, Germany is one of the most reliable allies of Israel, the two countries have been enjoying strong bilateral relations since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1956,” Zevadia said.

"The Holocaust commemoration, seven decades later, serves as a reminder of the terrifying consequences of the past, drawing lessons for the future generations,” the envoy, who is based in Ethiopia, added.

Peter Farenzholt, the German ambassador to Rwanda, said Germany has always owned up to its guilt and responsibility of the Holocaust and will face the truth in the path to reconciliation.

"Germany knows the magnitude of its guilt and responsibility for the Holocaust, such a barbaric crime against humanity. The genocide of six million Jews in the name of Germany and by Germans has brought indescribable suffering to the Jewish people, Europe and the entire world,” Farenzholt said.

"If there is anything Germany can share from its own experience, it is facing up to the grim truth of what took place as the only path to begin reconciliation.”

The German envoy said the world should work together, correct mistakes, persevere and remain committed to ensuring that genocide never happens again anywhere in the world.

Farenzholt said after almost 50 years since the Jewish Holocaust, the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi happened in Rwanda, claiming more than one million lives. Has the world learned nothing and forgotten nothing from the "Never Again” slogan? he posed.

Fighting genocide ideology

Jean Damascène Bizimana, the executive secretary of the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG), said "Never Again” to genocide would remain just a slogan if the world does not fight against genocide denial, revisionism and its ideology.

"It’s very important that the world knows that genocide is a major crime that has to be prevented around the world. The Genocide in Rwanda took place 50 years after the United Nations said that ‘never again’ was genocide going to happen anywhere in the world,” Bizimana said.

"It’s as if the whole world has not yet known, on the same measure, how to prevent this crime against humanity.

We don’t have to wait until people are killed so the international community can intervene.”

Bizimana added that the Genocide in Rwanda took place when the UN forces were in the country, but the peacekeepers chose to flee the country at the height of the killings, and the same killings of civilians are currently happening in the neighbouring DR Congo while UN forces are watching.

He said it was important for the UN to put in place measures to fight genocide denial, hence a need to for international collaboration to put in place laws that punish genocide denial.

The UN resident coordinator, Lamin Manneh, said if genocide ideologies, ethnicity, racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia are not fought, they could lead to more bloodshed.

"Together we must uphold the terrible truth of holocaust against those who deny it. We must fight any genocide tendencies and ideology,” said Manneh.

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