Today, January 27th, is Holocaust Memorial Day. It marks the date of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the Nazi concentration camps.
Holocaust Memorial Day is held in honour not only of the Nazi Holocaust, but also of subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
The word Holocaust usually conjures up images of the Nazi camps in which approximately six million Jews were killed, although some studies suggest that the true death toll of the Holocaust could be up to 20 million.
But the Holocaust isn’t the only atrocity committed in recent years. In Rwanda, somewhere between 800,000 and two million people, mainly Tutsis, were slaughtered over the course of just 100 days in 1994 – over six people per second. Up to 500,000 women were raped, 67% of which were infected with HIV as a result of the rape.
In Cambodia, the regime led by Pol Pot killed up to three million people between 1975 and 1979. In the Bosnian war (1992-1995) 100,000 people were killed, including 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from the town of Srebnica in July 1995 – the largest European massacre since the Holocaust.
But, in case you think that atrocities like the Holocaust only happen in a distant past, it’s worth remembering that the genocide in Darfur has claimed 400,000 lives beginning in 2003 and continuing to this day. It has the dubious honour of being the first genocide of the 21st century.
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