Professor Emeritus John Roth
to Give Holocaust
Remembrance Address

John K. Roth, the Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, and founding director of The Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights at CMC, will be a featured speaker during the California State Assembly's annual Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) observance on Monday, April 27.
Roth's remarks will emphasize the significance of survivors and liberators alike during current "hard times" that include a worldwide economic downturn, wars, and humanitarian crises.
"In hard times, what good can it do to remember the Holocaust?" Roth says in his remarks. "Doesn't such remembrance invite more disappointment, when we consider how little the world has learned from that catastrophe, when we realize that the cry, 'Never again!' echoes unconvincingly as atrocities large and small take place again and again?"
Despite the tendency to fall into bleak despair about the chance that humanity at large will follow (in Abraham Lincoln's words) "the better angels of their natures," Roth quotes Elie WieselHolocaust survivor, humanitarian and author, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prizewho vividly remembered the uplifting arrival of American troops at Buchenwald in mid-April 1945.
"I will never forget the American soldiers and the horror that could be read in their faces," Wiesel wrote in his book, All the Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs. "I will especially remember one black sergeant, a muscled giant, who wept tears of impotent rage and shame, shame for the human species, when he saw us. He spewed curses that on his lips became holy words." Wiesel adds, "We tried to lift him onto our shoulders to show our gratitude, but we didn't have the strength. We were too weak even to applaud him."
Roth urges that the Holocaust always be remembered because the genocide of European Jewry at the hands of the Nazis during World War II remains an extremely dark chapter of human history. "We forget it at our peril," he says. "In addition, out of the Holocaust's ashes, important steps were taken, including the UN's Declaration on Human Rights and its Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
"In no way, of course, do those positive steps 'make up' for the Holocaust," Roth cautions. "To the contrary, we remember the Holocaust to remind ourselves of how little has been accomplished, how much there is to do, as genocide and other mass atrocity crimes (ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity) continue to besiege the world. We remember the Holocaust to hold ourselves accountable."
Mike Feuer, a California Assemblymember representing the 42nd District and a former CMC student, extended Roth the invitation to address the Assembly in Sacramento.