The Importance Of Genocide

Sean Leary

English 1

Mr. Shea

5/7/2014

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. Wiesel’s book, Night, and other books like it are relevant because they show us what it’s like to live as someone who is persecuted during a time of genocide. These accounts of atrocities help us prevent them from occurring in the future. These books help us to understand the patterns of actions that occurred before tragedies like the Holocaust or Cambodian Genocide. Also, these accounts are all we will have left soon, since many of the survivors of the Holocaust are dying out.

As the poet and philosopher George Santayana said in the first volume of his book The Life of Reason, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This quote can be interpreted many ways, but provides great understanding when applied to genocide. We do not learn from our actions. Obviously, if people knew how bad events such as the Holocaust were, later genocides would not have happened. So many people say “Never again.” These words are enshrined in memorials all over the world. They were said by politicians, humanitarians, survivors, and average people. History shows that this “Never again” is false. Genocide has happened many times after the Holocaust. Even with our increased knowledge of genocide, it still continues to occur around the world in places like Darfur. Learning from genocides is incredibly important. The study of such tragedies is necessary to form a plan to inhibit the creation of any more. Unfortunately, just studying genocides isn’t enough. Actions must be taken to make “never again” more than just a phrase.

All genocides in the past have had common tones that it shares with others. T...

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...ng the fact that they are approaching the end of their natural lives. Those who were just infants when taken to the concentration camps are now in their seventies or eighties. They have the true eyewitness accounts of the horrors of the time. Only from them can we truly know the atrocities that occurred, but once they are gone, their experiences will die with them.

Even though Night is relevant to us today, why is this important? We must use what we’ve learned from the experiences of others to stop genocide. We as a world community must recognize and act when it seems like genocide is in the works. The survivors of these tragedies are now dying and their experiences will go with them. The relevance of Night is important because learning from it, the experiences of others, and our own past is the only way we can progress as a community into a future without genocide.