Message from Ruth Barnett of the Holocaust Education Trust

To the Honourable Members who have signed the Holocaust EDM 698

The Holocaust, the Nazi genocide against the Jews, has now been fully acknowledged by all European countries. This has led to two important major results: firstly, the survivors have gained access to the places where the murders took place, memorials have been created so that individual and collective mourning has been enabled and resolution is now possible. Secondly, an annual Holocaust Memorial day has been created in our national calender, around which Holocaust education for schools and local communities has grown year by year.

Since the first HMD in 2001 there has been a commendable broadening of Holocaust education to include study of and remembrance of subsequent genocides to enhance the intent in the vow "Never Again" expressed annually at Auschwitz. However there was a major genocide, currently unacknowledged, against Christian Armenians, Pontos Greeks and Assyrians during WWI that contributed substantially to the impunity that enabled perpetration of the Holocaust. An in depth understanding of the Holocaust requires teaching and learning about the Armenian Genocide, in relation to which Rapahel Lemkin coined the term 'genocide', which consequently became recognised in International Law. Furthermore, the Armenian genocide is currently continuing in the eighth stage of Denial (according to GenocideWatch six clear stages of developing genocide, seventh stage killing and final stage denial). This is experienced psychologically by the survivors as a second murder of their ancestor through the attempt to wipe out their ever having existed. Current survivors of the Armenian Genocide are not able to memorialise their ancestors and therefore carry them , unburied, in their minds and collective psyche. Not only individual mourning but collective mourning of this tragic loss to humanity cannot begin until the genocide is acknowledged.

Therefore, I ask you to sign EDM 357 to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, reports of which were commissioned by your predecessors and now reside in the British Government archives.

Sincerely,

Ruth Barnett
Holocaust and Genocide Educator
HET and LJCC