The convention was adopted after the campaign of lawyer Raphael Lemkin and also the text of the convention was mostly written by him.
Raphael Lamkin was a Polish-Jewish lawyer and peace researcher born in 1900. He started to work at the Genocide Convention after the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust during which he almost lost his whole family.
To raise awareness of genocide in general and in particular about the genocide convention and to remember and honor the victims of genocide there is since 2015 on the 9th of December the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime.
I personally think that this topic is very important and everybody should be educated about it. When I was 16 years old I went with my school to Auschwitz, the biggest concentration camp of the Nazis. In Auschwitz there were 1,1 million people murdered and when you are standing there, I think you can feel this.
And you start to think about this topic. Not only about genocide but also about discrimination and the “reasons” for genocide. I put reasons in quotation marks because they are no reasons for genocide.
As a 16 year old girl, this visit of Auschwitz really changed me and my personal view on life.
i think a visit like this should be obligatory for everyone.
It is the responsibility of each person to not let a genocide happen again.
I want to end this article with a quote of Ellie Wiesel, which is very fitting in my opinion.
Ellie Wiesel was a Romanian American Jewish writer, professor, political activist and Nobel Laureate. He survived the holocaust and his work is mostly about his experience as a prisoner in Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
“At the time of the liberation of the camps, I remember, we were convinced that after Auschwitz there would be no more wars, no more racism, no more hatred, no more anti-Semitism. We were wrong. This produced a feeling close to despair. For if Auschwitz could not cure mankind of racism, was there any chance of success ever? The fact is, the world has learned nothing. Otherwise, how is one to comprehend the atrocities committed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia…” Ellie Wiesel
written by Johanna Dilling