3181 - Genocide and humanness

N. Lygeros
Translated from the Greek by Evi Charitidou

Why does genocide of the Ukrainians remain unknown to Greece and Cyprus? Recently it has been recognized by Spain and Argentina. More than 10 states have already recognized it, while genocide of the Pontiacs has been recognized only by Greece and Cyprus. Aren’t seven million victims enough for recognition? What else do we want? If we on our part don’t recognize the genocide other peoples suffered from, who will recognize our own? Whereas there are conspiracies among barbarians aiming at eliminating entire peoples, rarely do victims support each other. Barbarity makes every effort to isolate victims; and they feel that they are alone indeed. In any case, they have to prove what they have suffered from. The genocide of the Jews and the one of the Armenians show us how methodology of recognition works. In fact, genocide of the Armenians allows us to ensure ways of recognition, even in cases where the guilty does not admit his culpability. We follow developments but we are not on alert. We only know how to be in standby phase. We all occupy ourselves with our own job, which usually is our mere life; for, we lack scope or greatness to see the pain of the other. We are waiting for recognition work to be accomplished by the communities. Except that these communities, especially when they still are in economic migration phase are incapable and ineffective regarding these issues where human rights expertise is needed. Consequently, we should not wait for one another. The work of recognition is too big for a single individual to do, even when this individual is human. It necessarily is a collective work. Thus, we should not simply wait for the Ukrainians to move towards Greece and Cyprus, where economic complexes are still developed due to the recent soviet system collapse. We, too, should help them in any way possible; by translating material condemning barbarity in Greek; by publishing articles informing the Greek population; by delivering lectures explaining the historic facts of 1933. We cannot simply wait for the others; for, they might do the same thing and in this way we may find ourselves at a useless ‘Nash equilibrium’, while we could attain an effective ‘Pareto equilibrium’, if we had a cooperative framework against barbarity. Each of the genocides teaches us something and our resistance makes our humanness grow; as long as we want it.