I Learned a New Word Today...Genocide
© Brian Feinblum, Planned Television Arts
Elizabeth, who was voted the 2008 Volunteer of the Year by Aid Sudan, shares insight on
the following:
• Why children, as early as fifth-grade, should learn about genocide.
• How to teach young students about the world’s worst atrocities in an age-appropriate way.
• Showing our youth what they can do to prevent or stop genocide – or help its victims.
• Why educating American children about global events is important.
• How children, once informed, could help educate their parents on genocide.
• What we need to know about the past century’s human atrocities and genocides, including the Holocaust, Rwanda, Darfur, and others.
• Why the debate over teaching genocide to elementary school students should not be seen as any more controversial than teaching sex education or evolution in the classroom.
“What’s important to remember when discussing genocide with children is to keep the discussion age-appropriate. We don’t have to go into detail about brutality specifics or discuss something like rape,” says Elizabeth. “But it’s important for kids to learn that groups of people are selectively targeted, that these people are killed and harmed because of prejudices about race, religion, ethnicity or nationality. It’s also imperative that students understand that genocide is not limited to one country or time period, and that they
can and should have a role in helping end and prevent genocide.”
Throughout the book, children learn about:
• Major genocides of the twentieth century.
• The Genocide Convention and the United Nations.
• New words such as impunity, extermination, witness, and justice.
• The causes of genocide.
• How each of us can do something to help - and the urgency to take action.
• How each of us should see each other as human before we classify by race, religion,
nationality or ethnic group.
• Why revenge is wrong and forgiveness is a key factor for healing.
• Other genocidal campaigns like the one in America that nearly exterminated the Native Americans, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, etc.
Perhaps one of the more challenging passages in I Learned A New Word Today…Genocide, is when the question is raised about why doesn’t God intervene when it comes to genocide.
Another passage questions why world leaders or the UN haven’t done enough to prevent or
stop genocide. The book also debates the very issue of whether genocide should be taught in schools at such a young age.
Over the past century, millions of lives have been lost to genocide and tens of millions more have been displaced as a result. Elizabeth’s book teaches readers about a half-dozen genocides from the past century, including: Darfur and southern Sudan; Rwanda; the
Holocaust; Bosnia and Herzegovina;
Some of the take-away points sprinkled throughout the book can cause one to really ponder.
A sample of the statements includes:
• “And when you make a whole history of somebody or some group go away, it is very
hard to remember what you are not supposed to forget.”
• “Forgiveness just means that the person who was hurt decides that he or she will not
hold hate and anger and a plan to get even in their heart.”
• “Do the thing that you can do.”
• “Real peace is more like having understandings between people and countries – and
these understandings lead to safe communities where people are treated fairly no matter what they believe or what color their skin is or what language they speak.”
Elizabeth comments, “If genocide, an act of genocide or war crimes happen when a vast
amalgam of minds and willing bodies are intent on destroying a race, religion, ethnicity or
nationality, then anti-genocide must simply be the opposite. Anti-genocide efforts can and
must entail an immense coalescing of our time’s greatest hearts and minds and wills – all
directed at accomplishing whatever it takes to protect the innocent and maintain a just peace that includes stolid adherence to basic human rights.”
Certainly writing about genocide isn’t an easy task. Elizabeth remarks: “In writing I Learned a New Word Today … Genocide, it was challenging to deconstruct the complicated architecture/
personally, what was most rending was studying in-depth the worst of man’s inhumanity to
man – the pictures, the articles, the books. Genocide wasn’t new to me because of my work in southern Sudan. But the spectrum of genocidal acts and mass atrocities I researched and wrote about for this book was, at times, leveling. The dark creativity, the ghastly ways in which people were systematically destroyed is haunting – it stays with you.
But what’s even more arresting is pondering the defenselessness of the victims as they heard gas chambers slam to a close, as they marched to their deaths or killed their neighbors or watched their infants being slain before their own protracted sufferings and deaths got underway. What were their last thoughts? Was there a point where pain was so great and powerful, the administration of further torture couldn’t register?
Realizing these realities is a lot like holding your breath too long under water or looking at an eclipse. Except in this case, it’s mind-smothering and soul-burning/
About the author:
Elizabeth Hankins is a human rights advocate and the author of a new book, I Learned A
New Word Today…Genocide. She works closely with a number of humanitarian aid groups, including Aid Sudan and ServLife International, where she’s a member of the board of directors. Her human rights advocacy work has been recognized by the United States Holocaust Museum and she was recently named 2008 Volunteer of the Year by Aid Sudan, honoring her advocacy and fundraising efforts. She is driven by the belief that every person can do something to help in the fight against human injustice, oppression, and
extreme poverty.
Elizabeth participated in and/or hosted advocacy efforts through Save Darfur, Amnesty
International USA, Genocide Intervention Network, and the ONE Campaign. She also
writes literature and play scripts for special events and churches, helping to communicate the plight of some of the world’s worst situations – poverty, disease, war, and genocide.
She has spoken at several universities and churches on the subject of genocide intervention and prevention, as well as the ongoing plight of Sudan. In 2007, she traveled to northern Uganda and southern Sudan.
Seeing oil-rich southern Sudan devoid of even the most basic infrastructure (minimal access to clean drinking water, no health care and education systems, no basic roads), Elizabeth returned to the U.S. and began researching initiatives aimed at helping stem the flow of conflict resources.
Her prior book, The Calling, also addresses genocide via a novel aimed at highlighting the
decades-long plight in southern Sudan. Using themes of trust and betrayal, love and loss,
faith and heresy and the many faces of war, human suffering and redemption, The Calling
follows the evolution of a personal mission over the course of a lifetime.
Elizabeth, a native of New Orleans, worked in the energy industry for five years, part of
which was spent as a corporate journalist and speechwriter. She switched gears in the early 90s and headed up a young family ministry at a local megachurch. A few years later, she began consulting and writing for churches and other religious non-profits undergoing
change.
She graduated from Houston Baptist University with a Bachelor of Science degree in English and psychology.
For further information please visit Elizabeth' website at: http://elizabethhankins.com/
To order your copy today: http://elizabethhankins.com/
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
