iR2P

“I have both the right and the duty to write to you, for my heart is seething with indignation, and I was not endowed with the gift of speech merely to make myself an accomplice by remaining silent.”

So wrote Armin T. Wegner in 1933, in an open letter to Adolf Hitler to express his deep misgivings about recent measures to boycott Jewish businesses in Nazi Germany. Wegner had previously been arrested for documenting evidence of the Armenian genocide while serving with the German army in World War I. This time he was tortured by the Gestapo and sent to the concentration camps. He was eventually released and fled the country.

Wegner’s photographs and letters are cited as an important inspiration in an essay by Nina Krieger, Education Director at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. Hers is one of a collection of essays paying tribute to the works of art and media that influenced the authors’ engagement with genocide and crimes against humanity in a new book called Evoking Genocide, edited by Adam Jones. Selected essays, including Nina Krieger’s, can be read on the book’s website (link above).

Gerald Kaplan’s endorsement is interesting:

“Those who spend their lives studying genocide in order to prevent its recurrence are by definition a curious breed. These very personal and often moving essays reveal the disparate sources that have motivated otherwise ‘normal’ women and men to immerse themselves in trying to fathom the most egregious examples of man’s inhumanity to man (and yes, it’s mostly men). Readers may be surprised to find themselves wanting to join the cause.”