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| You are here: 2004 / Plenary Sessions / Plenary Session 4 / Address by Dr. Stephen D. Smith, Aegis Trust and Beth Shalom | |||||||||
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Participants Countries and organizations Conference documentation Conference programme 
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Address by Dr. Tarek Heggy Address by the Assistant Director-General of UNESCO, Pierre Sané Address by the Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Pavel Vosalík Address by the Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland, Jakub T. Wolski Address by the Director of the European Training Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, Professor Wolfgang Benedek Address by the Ambassador of Brazil in Stockholm, Elim Dutra Address by the State Secretary for European Affairs of Belgium, Raoul Del Corde Address by the Ambassador of Australia in Stockholm, Richard Rowe Address by the Ambassador of Turkey in Stockholm, Tomur Bayer Address by the Deputy Special Representative for the UN Interim Administrarion Mission in Kosovo, Jean-Christian Cady Address by the Chief of Activities and Programme Branch of the UNHCHR, Jan Cedergren Address by the Deputy Director of the Bureau for Crises Prevention and Recovery of the UNDP, Georg Charpentier Address by the Head of the Central Division in the Directorate General of Education, Culture and Heritage, Youth and Sport of the Council of Europe, James Wimberley Address by Dr. Stephen D. Smith, Aegis Trust and Beth Shalom Address by Dr. Stephen D. Smith, Aegis Trust and Beth Shalom Smith, Stephen Address by Dr. Stephen D. Smith, Aegis Trust and Beth Shalom Imagine I was not here… How would you describe me? What would you learn from me? …how would you remember me? Remember, remember, remember…. How many time do we say it? But what do you want to remember? …who? …where? …how? …why? Hédi Fried said yesterday, memory is our enemy or memory is a friend... which will it be? Fifty seven years to the day after Pinhas was liberated from Terezin, I was standing next to him in Majdanek saying goodbye to his twin sister. He doesn’t remember her face. How do you remember that? Last night, not one, not two, not even two hundred, or two thousand, but probably twenty thousand people or more tossed and turned and sweated in their sleep. Just ten years ago, someone hacked their father to death, sliced through their brother or raped their mother … How do you remember that…? We have now completed our Statements, and very fine they have been too… thank you. As academic advisor to the conference I have been asked to address the academic outcomes of the conference, so here they are… (silence) …of course there are none. Genocide is death or worse, the curse of survival, a choiceless choice, a black hole, the loss of humanity… there is nothing academic about that… how would you like me to turn the death of your family into an academic exercise? We will of course renew our fervour to examine the causes and consequences of genocide, to use the best minds in the best institutions to unravel the pathology of this curse. This forum has given us new impetus. We will renew our emphasis on higher research and learning, books, testimony projects, courses, papers, departments of genocide studies… If we have a special rapporteur, we will also need an army of highly skilled, focussed, professional academic institutions, and reporting mechanisms, grappling daily with the nuances of genocidal threats, understanding its DNA. But the question still is whether we have the first principles in place … which brings me back to memory… You see, remembrance is ninety nine percent forgetfulness and one percent the reworked narrative of another’s experience… so it’s not what we remember, but what we don’t forget, that counts… and this is more crucial to our work than we realise… So don’t forget, the Nazis did not kill six million Jews…. nor the Interahamwe a million Tutsis, they killed one and then another, then another… genocide is not an act of murder, it is millions of acts of murder Don’t forget… genocide never happens by chance…it is slow, intentional and there is always time to act Don’t forget, silence is a form of words, inaction is the act of complicity… Don’t forget, genocide prevention is mainly about listening… victims know when they are being victimised, listen to their faint voices… Don’t forget, go and visit the sites, listen to survivors, touch, feel and agonise, then and only then apply it to your portfolio… Don’t forget Rwanda, let it be dangerous, unsettling, unnerving… Don’t forget, what Samantha said… take it to the cabinet…. I add, take it to your conscience first… Don’t forget what the Prime Minister said, be unreasonable in your judgement… genocidaires do not work on logic, neither should you… Don’t forget, when the killing stops, the genocide is not over… Don’t forget the survivors… don’t condemn them to a second death… support them, listen to them; they are our teachers… Don’t forget the forgotten… they have no face, no name, no intellect, power, or portfolio… they were raped in the streets, thrown in the gutter, beaten, hacked,….shot, gassed, burned… and they only have us… Don’t forget… policies, conferences, committees, statements, speeches, seminars, programmes are all necessary, but never enough… And if you must remember anything… remember for the future. >> Back to top |
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Introduction Opening Session Plenary Sessions Workshops, Panels and Seminars Closing Session and Declarations Other Activities |
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| For information about this production and the Stockholm International Forum Conference Series please go to www.humanrights.gov.se or contact Information Rosenbad, SE-103 33 Stockholm, Sweden | |||||||||