By Evely Laser Shlensky
No tragedy is comparable to any other. Yet the annihilation of European Jewry during the Shoah, by the scope of its monstrousness, should have provided the world with a curriculum for the prevention of genocide. It seems that critical lessons have been ignored.
In his introduction to The Abandonment of the Jews by David S. Wyman, Elie Wiesel argued that one crucial factor that allowed the horrors taking place in the concentration camps of Europe to continue was “the press’s burial of news of the death factories in the back pages of their newspapers.”
Wyman confirms Wiesel's argument, explaining that lack of news coverage of the fate of the Jews "impaired the growth of American concern for rescue. For one thing, only a limited amount of news about the murder of European Jews reached the American public. The mass media reported it only sporadically and almost always without emphasis. Newspapers printed comparatively little of the available knowledge and commonly buried it in inner pages." (p. 28, The Abandonment of the Jews).
From this history, our history, we have learned that news media bear a particular responsibility to shed light in the darkest corners of the world, corners where murderers can murder and rapists can rape at will only behind a screen of secrecy.
The Darfur Response Committee of Congregation B'nai B'rith is determined to apply this lesson to the current slaughter, pillaging, raping and massive displacement of villagers in the Darfur region of Sudan. We are aware that genocide is proceeding unabated in that tortured region.
We have examined the archives of the Santa Barbara News Press to determine if our local newspaper is fulfilling its responsibility to shed on light on the horrors that are occurring. Sadly, we have found that over the past couple of years, only a few articles have dealt with Darfur, and only one or two of these has discussed the substance of the situation.
Therefore it is our intention to meet with the editor and publisher of the News Press. We will point out that we believe that our local newspaper can and should play a far more prominent role educating the public regarding the situation in Darfur than it has since the genocide and attendant atrocities there first came to light. We hope you will join your voices with ours.