Terezin, North Bohemia, May 9 (CTK) – A Centre for the Studies of Genocides was opened in the premises of the former wartime Jewish ghetto in Terezin today as a facility to offer educational and cultural events, its head Simon Krbec told CTK today, adding that the knowledge of what genocide means is a precondition of prevention.
The centre’s goal is to promote the studies of and teaching on the causes, origin and consequences of genocides, violence, ethnic purges and mass extermination in world history.
The centre wants genocide studies to be taught at school on all levels.
“Unfortunately, denials of genocides is a moment that makes a society unaware [of the past events], as a result it can commit the same crimes again, as is the case in Turkey now,” Krbec said.
The fight against the denial phenomenon is the main reason why many European countries have outlawed Holocaust denial, he said.
The genocide studies scientific branch is based on comparing various cases of genocide violence in world history, such as the liquidation of the original inhabitants of America and Australia, the Armenian genocide, the Nazi-committee genocide of Jews, Romanies and other European nations and groups, the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and other regions.
“This phenomenon has accompanied with mankind since the beginning. Unfortunately, even now such things have been occurring in Iraq and Syria, and some experts consider the developments in North Korea a genocide as well,” Krbec said.
On July 10-19, the Terezin Centre will host the 6th Lustig Train event with a theatre performance according to a novel by the late Czech-Jewish author Arnost Lustig (1926-2011), former inmate of the Terezin (Theresienstadt) wartime ghetto and later also of several concentration camps, world-famous for his works dealing with the Holocaust issue.
rtj/dr/kva
