03.12.2008

Again and Again? Never Again!

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) and the Cathedral Clergy and Staff (Domkirchenkollegium) request your presence at:

Berliner Dom
Memorial Service to Commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the UN Convention against Genocide and its author Raphael Lemkin

on Tuesday, 9.12.2008 at 11 a.m. in the Berliner Dom (Berlin

Cathedral) with

  • Cathedral Preacher Dr. Petra Zimmermann and STP founder Tilman Zülch (Welcome and Introductory Address)
  • Dr. Shimon Samuels, Paris, Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (Europe)
  • Prof. Gregory H. Stanton, Washington, President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars
  • Eyewitnesses to the genocides in Chechnya, Srebrenica (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Halabja (Iraqi Kurdistan), Biafra (Eastern Nigeria) and Rwanda and the genocides against the Christians of Iraq and the Maya of Guatemala
  • Bishop Martin Schindehütte, Head of Foreign and Ecumenical Affairs for the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD)
  • Berlin schoolchildren reading passages from the Convention
  • Prof. Dr. Claudia Kraft, University of Erfurt: "The Work of Raphael Lemkin”
  • Prof. Gunnar Heinsohn, University of Bremen, editor of the Encyclopedia of Genocide, presiding
  • Special guest: Charlotte Knobloch, President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany

    • Countless events are held across Germany to celebrate Human Rights Day but the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide has attracted little attention. Looking back on its own 40 years of human rights work to combat genocide, expulsion and the persecution of minorities, the Society for Threatened Peoples is anxious to remember the Holocaust and other genocides, "ethnic cleansings” and expulsions in the past. The importance of STP's work was emphasised by Charlotte Knobloch on the occasion of a "Save Darfur” rally on 27.11.2007 organised jointly with the Central Council of Jews in Germany in front of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin: "We have to deal not just with the past, but with the present also.”

    The Memorial Service in the Cathedral will close with the presentation of STP/GfbV's Victor Gollancz Prize. The recipients of this year's award are Dr. Halima Bashir, a torture victim and campaigner against genocide from Darfur, and the Bosnian Serb human rights worker and retired general Jovan Divjak, who defended the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, against the forces of the war criminals Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić. The Prize will be presented by Livia Gollancz (London), daughter of Victor Gollancz. Her father, the British Jewish humanist and publisher who by 1933 was already drawing attention to Nazis crimes at Dachau concentration camp, was a tireless campaigner against fascism and Nazism and on behalf of Jewish refugees seeking asylum in Britain. After 1945 he organised a humanitarian airlift for German expulsees. He became the great advocate of post-war German-British reconciliation. Introductory addresses will be given by Günter Nooke, Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Assistance at the German Foreign Office, and Tilman Zülch.

    We would be grateful if you would publicise the Memorial Service and we very much hope that you yourself will be able to attend and also report on the service. We will be very happy to provide you with any additional background material you may require.

    To the german version

    If you have any questions please contact

    Tilman Zülch Tel. ++49 (0)151 153 09 888, or

    Jasna Causevic Tel. ++ 49 (0) 551 499 06 16