Category: Genocide

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Curating Silences

I started participating in conversations about archival silences during the second phase of digitizing our oral history collection. While creating a quality report spreadsheet, I started to take a closer look at the way the previous staff coded interviews. I noticed a homogony within an otherwise silenced group —  the lack of Righteous and resistance members was particularly disheartening.

But this is a fairly conventional view of archival silences. As we began reprocessing our Record Group collection a few years ago, I started to take notice of how much silence existed throughout. For example, the “persons” listing in the index of the Brodecki Family Record Group:

Piekarska, Joseph (b. Unknown, d. Unknown)
Piekarska, Marysha (nèe Zylberstein) (b. Unknown, d. Unknown)
Piekarska, Lolek (b. August 1, 1930, d. Unknown)
Zilberstein, Monich (b. Unknown, d. Unknown)
Zilberstein, Jacob (b. Unknown, d. Unknown)
Zilberstein, Lola (b. Unknown, d. Unknown)
Zilberstein, Sissman (b. Unknown, d. Unknown)
Zilberstein, Issac (b. Unknown, d. Unknown)
Zilberstein, Sara (b. Unknown, d. Unknown)
Zilberstein, Ellush (b. Unknown, d. Unknown)
Zilberstein, Reuven (b. Unknown, d. Unknown)
Zilberstein, Moshe (b. Unknown, d. Unknown)
Zilberstein, Kubis (b. Unknown, d. Unknown)
Zilberstein, Zosia (b. Unknown, d. Unknown)
Zilberstein, Miriam (b. Unknown, d. Unknown)

This represents the bulk of what we know about Zosia Piekarska’s immediate family. We have no photographs of them. We have no documents from them. We know the bare minimum of what happened to them after the Nazi’s invaded Poland.

We often discuss the cultural destruction taking place within a genocidal event but what is seen in the later archival collection is the physical manifestation of this process. In a real sense, we have collected silences. [1]

As we’ve been reprocessing, I’ve started collecting data from each of the updated finding aids. We will eventually use this information for a spatial representation when we update our Survivor’s Room and Tower of Remembrance exhibits; however, it’s left me with a number of questions about the nature of archival silences in our work (in no particular order):

  • How does curating large groups of “record silences” help inform the larger conversation of archival silences?
  • How might examining the tactics of genocidaires record keeping inform our view on archival silences?
  • What would a comparison of genocidal regimes’ record keeping methods tell us about the creation of archival silences?
  • How can the methods we use in curating genocide records be applied to other archival silences?

There are certainly articles dealing with these questions in varying degrees. However, as we’ve been doing the work, I find I’m attempting to address the rather specific interplay between appraisal, processing, silence, discovery, and remembrance in a way that I suspect is unique to human rights work but may be useful in addressing other silences.

[1] At present, the number of people indexed with minimal information is 66%.

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Obama, not likely to stop genocide

The Museum started a sort of book club — which is really more of a topic-based discussion group — and during our first meeting (last night) I made a comment that I don’t think went over well. The subject of this first meeting was Samantha Power’s A Problem From Hell, and in a broader sense the United State’s lack of involvement in cases of genocide.

During this discussion, I commented that I suspect that very little is actually going to be done by the Obama administration to curtail the ongoing genocide in Darfur. The reason for me saying this is actually enumerated in Power’s conclusion:

Knowledge
Obama is certainly coming into the job with a tremendous amount of knowledge about the current situation. Even if he weren’t receiving an intelligence analysis, it would be hard to overlook the various national activist groups that have organized around stopping this particular genocide. Nonetheless, for reasons I’ll discuss a few points down, I suspect this administration will wind up hiding “in the fog of plausible deniability.”

Influence
As Power points out, perpetrators are often keeping their eyes on Western reactions in order to gauge if they should take the next step. Having seen little reaction from Washington over the last five years, it’s unlikely that Sudan is going to suddenly reverse course because of a new administration. If the United States decides to do anything less than overt (which I think is highly doubtful) Khartoum is going to continue unfettered.

Will
This is, without question, the real problem. Regardless of whether Obama’s administration has the “moral will” to act, his policy makers are going to have an incredibly tough time convincing Congress to commit to ending this, or any other, genocide. Even if they could, the real crux of a solution in Darfur lies with China.

Basically, no force, sanction, or relief is going to be successful without the backing or cooperation of China and, unfortunately, the United States has little leverage to apply in order to make this happen. Not only has China rebuked any attempt through the United Nations, but their continued oil interests in the region makes force and sanctions utterly untenable from a diplomatic and economic standpoint (to say nothing of the physical).

Accountability
This last point is probably not even worth mentioning. No sitting President has been held politically accountable for inaction and considering the economic and domestic problems, it certainly won’t be starting with this administration.

Truly, this is one of those times when I’ll happily be wrong. I hope that Obama does intervene in Darfur; and I would be lying if I said I hadn’t voted for him with the hope that he would reverse our position on stopping genocide. But at the same time, I approach this from the long lens of a genocide researcher, and it’s from that vantage point that I suspect no real impact will come from a new administration.

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Hate groups on Facebook

Daniel posted a comment today which I felt should be upgraded to a full entry. It concerned a Serbian nationalist hate group who are using Facebook to advocate anti-Muslim views and genocide denial.

Reuters’ reported the story earlier this week:

The group, created on Monday under the name “Close Group Noz Zica Srebrenica,” alerted administrators about the language of hatred against Muslims on the site.

“Administrator, we ask you to close the group ‘Noz, Zica, Srebrenica’, which glorifies the acts of genocide that took place in Srebrenica, where 8,000 men and boys were murdered,” read the Bosnian group header on Facebook.

“In addition, this group propagates hatred to all Muslims,” it said. Muslims or Bosniaks account for nearly half of the population of Bosnia, which they share with Roman Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs.

Like many sites of its kind, Facebook does have an extensive Terms of Use policy, which states that the user must agree not to:

*upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;
*intimidate or harass another;

Even though the story was published four days ago, the group remains active on Facebook. While it’s likely that none of the administrators can actually read the posts in Noz, Zica, Srebrenica, you would assume a different stance when it comes to American hate groups, particularly considering the above mentioned “Terms of Use.” Yet, after only a few minutes of searching I easily uncovered four active hate groups[1] on Facebook — American Vision, League of the South, The Knights Party (Ku Klux Klan), and multiple variations of White Pride.

We’ve known for years that the Internet gives hate groups and deniers the same exposure that non-profits and grassroots organizations have experienced. It does, however, raise questions about how they should be dealt with as well as how social networking spaces will ultimately be managed.

You can read Daniel’s full entry at his Srebrenica Genocide Blog.

[1] As defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

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Solutions for Darfur activist burnout

Activism n. : a doctrine or practice that emphasizes direct vigorous action especially in support of or opposition to one side of a controversial issue.

Darfur activism has been getting a tremendous amount of press over the last few weeks, and not all of it has been positive. For some, the Olympics and Mia Farrow’s alternative games have been the impetus for reflection on how the “movement” is doing.[1]

The real problem is no different than with other activist movements. If the people who are involved on the grassroots level — the most important level for such groups — don’t get a regular sense of accomplishment, their involvement begins to slide off, and the group will eventually become stagnant.

Volunteerism thrives on engaging activities that bring some kind of reward. Regardless of how enthusiastically you care about a cause, burnout is inevitable if the final result is always failure. As Just correctly pointed out in his The New Republic article:

Genocide really is different from other foreign policy crises, in that it will not wait. Either you stop genocide immediately or you fail to stop it.

This creates a “perfect storm” for activist burnout. Fortunately, there are a few things that may help keep your group active, encouraged, and invigorated.

Keep it as social as possible
Even though we’re fighting for a cause, it’s always a thrill to get together with like-minded people. This is why Dining For Darfur is such a great idea, as it combines the social aspect of bringing people together, with an engaging activity.[2]

Work on multiple genocide issues
While you’re working on stopping the genocide in Darfur by organizing letter writing campaigns and public forums, talk to your local coffee shops about carrying free-trade coffee from one of the cooperatives that are helping Rwandan genocide survivors regain their independence, or volunteer to work with a refugee service, helping Sudanese (or Cambodian, Bosnian, etc.) immigrants.

Attempt to partner with other groups
Find other groups that have a similar mission who may need occasional volunteers for events in return for helping organize or host one of your events. This is particularly easy with Holocaust organizations who often do modern genocide programs (including Darfur).[3]

Use Web 2.0 applications
Your group is hopefully already doing this, but if you’re not, then you should start. The reason this is a good idea is because you can push advocacy and education while giving millions of people the chance to respond to what you’re doing. In a world of YouTube, Facebook, and blogs, not having an online presence is damaging even to the smallest of groups.

The key is to keep the group evolving. Despite what might be happening with your issue, if you can push a variety of events and campaigns that appeal to different personalities, you’re far more likely to maintain a certain level of commitment.

While these suggestions are mainly focusing on Darfur activists, you could easily apply them to other groups — environmental, political, social, etc — as any type of organization that promotes change through volunteerism is likely to face the same lags in participation. If you’re working with another cause or would like to find others who might be involved in your issue, you should check out Britt’s, Have Fun Do Good or the Changebloggers Facebook page.

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[1] The Truth Will Not Set You Free by Richard Just

[2] If I could find enough people, I’d love to pull together a team of Darfur activists for our co-ed flag football league.

[3] See the Association of Holocaust Organizations membership page for a full list of Holocaust institutions.

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Why do people exhibit genocide apathy?

Paul Slovic, a University of Oregon psychology professor, recently recommended that the international community enact a formal process that would require nations to publicly address why they’re choosing not to act. His proposal is based on his NSF-funded study on psychic numbing, which showed that people may respond well to one person in need but become numb to larger numbers.

The problem, according to Slovic, is that moral intuition, guided by feelings and emotions, is not sufficient to motivate action when genocide is happening. Both moral intuition and moral reasoning, that is, logical argument and calculation, are needed to stimulate action.

“Our basic way of responding through moral intuition is a problem because it breaks down in the face of large scale atrocities,” says Slovic. “Our compassion, our empathy, our feeling about what we should do gives us a rush of immediate concern, but it doesn’t sustain us when large numbers of people are involved.”

The solution is to engage moral reasoning, a slower and more logical way of thinking about problems that challenge principles of right conduct, along with moral intuition.

For example, he argues that the U.S. government doesn’t leave it to the moral intuition of citizens to determine how much money they should pay in taxes for Social Security. Instead, moral reasoning leads to laws that require individuals to pay specific amounts for this program.

“Moral reasoning says all human lives are equally valuable,” says Slovic. “Given that, if a large number of lives are at risk, they should be proportionally more valuable than a single life. But if left to moral intuition, we would feel a certain amount of concern for the large number of lives at risk, but that feeling would not necessarily be enough to lead us to action.”

This is one of the most perplexing, and difficult to explain, components of genocide studies. Even though students have difficulty understanding how so many people would do nothing, the evidence consistently shows that the vast majority of people disengage themselves from any involvement in these acts; this is true for people on the ground, facing the genocide firsthand, as well as the international community.

In America, it’s often hard to rationalize how these acts are so passively viewed. Particularly when you consider that:

  1. they do receive a modicum of media coverage,
  2. are often addressed by public officials,
  3. questions frequently surface during press gaggles, and
  4. they’re continually highlighted by a host of non-profit groups

Slovic’s research would seem to help answer the question of how we, as a nation, develop apathy towards ongoing genocides, when we are in fact aware of them. Whether this sort of approach would help governments form a more cohesive (and decisive) policy in dealing with these crimes is difficult to say, but based on the premise, it would certainly be an interesting first step.