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Never Again? Raphael Lemkin Center and Auschwitz Museum seminar on genocide prevention.
The first seminar organized by the Raphael Lemkin Center for Genocide Prevention and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum will take place in Oświęcim from May 12 to 19. The participants from over a dozen states, including Argentina, Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Burundi, Cambodia, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Latvia, and the USA will discuss about issues of genocide prevention. Lecturers will include some of the best-known researchers in the field of genocide and associated areas: Israel Charny, Barbara Harff, Ted Gurr, Gregory H. Stanton, and Philip Zimbardo. The seminar will be officially inaugurated by professor Władysław Bartoszewski, the chairman of the International Auschwitz Council.
On May 15 the professors will take part in the discussion titled "Never Again?" organized at the Jagiellonian University. The meeting in Cracow will be conducted in English.
Seminars concentrated on the subject of genocide, genocide prevention and response mechanisms are planned to be conducted three times throughout the year. Their aim is sensitizing hundreds of individuals in government positions throughout the world to genocide problems in all its dimensions including its enduring political, economic and humanitarian consequences.
The Raphael Lemkin Genocide Prevention Center is being set up by The Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (AIPR), in partnership with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. It had received the support of the former German President Johannes Rau, who recently has passed away, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, former US Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, Prince Hassan of Jordan, and former Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski. The Center was set up to coalesce decision-makers in the entire world for preventing genocide and armed conflict. It had received the support of the former German President Johannes Rau, who recently has passed away, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, former US Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, Prince Hassan of Jordan, and former Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski.
Raphael Lemkin, whose name the Center bears, was a Polish Jew and lawyer who, already before World War II, had coined the term "genocide". During the war he was able to make his way to the USA, where he remained after the end of hostilities. In 1948 The UN Convention on the Prevention and Prosecution of the Crime of Genocide was adopted in part thanks to his ceaseless efforts. The Convention was the international community's response to the crime of the Holocaust. Its authors intended it to prevent mass crimes to be committed in the future. The reality of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Darfur and Rwanda, however, demonstrated that, more than 60 years after the liberation of the camp at Auschwitz, humanity has not drawn the lessons of the crimes committed in World War II.
The conference is being sponsored by Fred Schwartz, AIPR founder and director, the Ford Foundation, and the Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future Foundation.
