Death, and more Death. Sorry for the Downer

 

We've all heard of The Holocaust - the genocide of European Jews between 1941 and 1945 by Hitler's Nazis. Six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population, were systemically murdered. It is considered the single largest genocide in history.

Also, during those years, over another million Russians, Serbs, Romas, Muslims, Croats, Poles, and a variety of other groups were killed. The eighty years since then have seen a long list of other mass killings and "ethnic cleansings".

Most of us have heard of the Rwandan genocide, perhaps only from seeing the movie, "Hotel Rwanda." Over a half-million members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group were slaughtered by armed Hutu militias in only one hundred days in 1994. That was within most of our lifetimes.

I had never even heard of the Darfur genocide until my daughter did a paper on it for school. Considered the first genocide of the 21st century, this event saw around 200,000 people killed between 2003 and 2005.

I also just learned about the Civil War in Myanmar, which began in 2017. Called the Rohingya genocide, it involves ongoing persecution and killings of the Muslim Rohingya people by the military of Myanmar.  

When I volunteered in Peru for a week in 2009, I was introduced to the Shining Path terrorist group. Beginning in 1980, the Shining Path, led by founder Abimael Guzman, inflicted havoc on the countryside, killing over 24,000 innocent people. Because these acts of violence weren't against any particular group, it's not considered a genocide. But I was horrified hearing first-hand stories from survivors. 

You can look anywhere in the world and witness the senseless death of any population of people. Look at the modern Middle East. Look at the Old Testament books of the Bible, where God commissioned the Israelites to wipe out entire cities.

I bring this all up now, not only because all this violence makes my heart sick, but because I am traveling once again to a country that has experienced more than its share of death.

Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, carried out the systematic persecution, torture, and killing of Cambodian citizens. As many as three million men, women, children, and babies died by horrific means. That was nearly 30% of the total population at the time. You've maybe heard of the "Killing Fields" or seen the movie.

When I'm in Cambodia two weeks from now, besides seeing the spectacular Angkor Wat temple complex, I'll visit the real Killing Fields. Odd how I first learned about the country in 1974, one year before those atrocities began. And so sad.

I'll keep you posted.  

(The first picture above was taken by one of my kid's when they were in Germany at one of the concentration camps. The other two pictures I took at the Museo de la Memoria in Ayacucho, Peru.)