Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library Blog: Blog

Genocide Awareness Month

April is recognized as Genocide Awareness Month because there are three recognized days of remembrance for the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, and the Rwandan Genocide. 

• April 7th - Kwibuka: This means "remember," and through a period of official mourning in Rwanda honors the memory of more than one million Rwandans who died in the genocide in 1994. "The day recalls the aftermath of the assassination of Rwanda’s president in 1994, which set in motion a pre-planned effort by radicalized members of the Hutu majority to destroy the Tutsi minoritized ethnic group.  Over the next 100 days, nearly a million Rwandans would be murdered and half a million women subjected to rape."  (Watenpaugh, 2021, April 13). 
• April 9th - Yom HaShoah, which means Holocaust Remembrance Day:  "In part, the day recalls the Warsaw Ghetto uprising (April 19, 1943), when Polish Jews fought back against Nazi efforts to transport them to concentration camps. It was the most significant act of Jewish resistance during World War II. 'We fought simply not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths,' Mark Edelman (1919-2009), one of the few surviving leaders of the uprising recalled.  In Israel the day is marked by a two-minute moment of silence and the later in the evening, the recitation of the mourners Kaddish to remember the six million murdered." (Watenpaugh, 2021, April 13).
• April 24th - Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day: This "remembers the night when the Ottoman Empire, rounded up and, to borrow a word from the history of Human Rights in Latin America, 'disappeared' over 250 Armenian journalists, lawyers, politicians, priests, and poets.  It was an act calculated to destroy the Armenian community’s leadership and to make the deportations and mass slaughter that would follow easier.  By 1922 1.5 million Armenians had been killed and those who had survived were living in refugee camps or dispersed across the globe." (Watenpaugh, 2021, April 13). 

In honor of Genocide Awareness Month, for the month of April there is an exhibit about these three genocides curated by Niki Carpenter. There is also a book display in the law library about these three genocides. Below is a sample of some of the books in the display. 

The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law by Kevin Jon Heller

ISBN: 0199554315

Publication Date: 2011-07-15

The Key to My Neighbor's House by Elizabeth Neuffer

ISBN: 9780312261269

Publication Date: 2001-11-17

The Armenian Genocide Legacy by Alexis Demirdjian (Editor)

ISBN: 9781137561626

Publication Date: 2015-11-18

References

USC Shoah Foundation. Genocide Awareness Month. https://sfi.usc.edu/genocide-awareness-month

Watenpaugh, K.D. (2021, April 13). April is Genocide Awareness Month: In the Face of Ongoing and Unacknowledged Genocides, What Does that Mean? University of California, Davis: Interdepartmental Program in Human Rights Studies. https://human-rights.ucdavis.edu/news/april-genocide-awareness-month-face-ongoing-and-unacknowledged-genocides-what-does-mean