The Institute for the Study of Genocide began with a meeting with Simon Wiesenthal in the foyer of an orthodox syna-gogue on West 14th street in New York City. I had learned that Wiesenthal would be speaking and arrived just in time to catch these words: "Twenty-one nations were with me in the camps. Eleven million died. We must remember the five million non-Jews, including a large percentage of Europe's gypsies."
He was interrupted by boos.
He continued, "It is not enough only to look back at the holocaust. We must concern ourselves with the genocides of the future as well as the past. (More boos.) The question is, '"Who will be the Jews next time?" The booing increased. Just before he ended he answered his own question about the victims next time. He said, "It may even be the Jews.
Then he walked off the lectern into my greeting. I said, "A very Jewish thing has happened to you. You have criticized your fellow Jews, and they have punished you for it." Before he could regain his self-possession, I hurried on, "You must come to speak to the students of my school, John Jay College of Criminal Justice." He said that he had no time. I persisted: "You have repeatedly said that a dictatorship always requires a takeover of the organs of justice." (He nodded agreement.) "I teach at a college which trains future police officers, future prosecutors, future judges. If they don't learn what you know, they may not be able to protect themselves from a betrayal of their duty."
His demurrers became weaker. "I am just like you, Simon. There is no way I can accept a refusal." For the first time that evening he smiled.
He came to John Jay College. He told of the creation of the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna-an organization dedicated to the identification of unapprehended Nazi criminals-and to the struggle to bring them to justice. We gave him an honorary degree at our next commencement. During the traditional breakfast at the Russian Tea Room, we created the Institute for the Study of Genocide at John Jay College.
The ISG was created by a holocaust survivor who had forged himself into a scholar in order to work as an activist. His activism consisted of concrete efforts to move governments to bring particular persons to trial. But his purpose was not merely punishment. The sentences actually meted out were often so minimal that they mocked the gravity of the crimes. But Simon was not fixated on punishment. He had to wait for years in virtually every case. It was the trial and the verdict, rather than the sentence, which interested him. "A trial," he explained, "is necessary to educate future generations." It also held off the decay of memory for a while.
Moreover, because his fact-finding had to satisfy the legal requirements of evidence, his research had to be meticulous. In this too, his scholarship served his activism-and his research was focused on concrete objectives. Not formally an educator, his educational impact was enormous. Not formally a scholar, his research had to be impeccable in order to achieve a practical result.
Research and Action
In its first few years, under its first and second Executive Directors, the vital link between scholarship and action was maintained. We unearthed hitherto lost archives of Israel Lemkin-materials which shed fresh light on his long struggle to move the UN's Genocide Convention. And we engaged in action: we harried a major genocidal figure.
While our second Executive Director, the historian Joe O'Brian, concentrated on issues of research, I preoccupied myself with a special project. Simon had introduced me to a Romanian activist, Charles Kramer, a former dentist, who was devoting his life, and driving Simon to distraction, in a lonely effort to bring about the deportation of a popular and prominent cleric-a man who had once been invited to give the opening prayer at a session of Congress. But before becoming an American citizen, Archbishop Valerian Trifa had had another life. He had been a prime mover of the genocide in Romania.
The dentist's obsession became ours. The task required years, but in the end we had the satisfaction of witnessing the actual deportation of the Archbishop, who shortly thereafter died in exile in Spain. His life-work completed, the former dentist, Charles Kramer, permitted himself to lie down and die.
A preeminent genocide scholar, sociologist Helen Fein, accepted the demanding but unpaid position of Executive Director. Under Dr. Fein's leadership the ISG has become a major instrument for research and education. Under the board presidency of the Reverend Orlanda Brugnola at John Jay College, she has repeatedly brought international scholars together for symposia-an effort which recently witnessed the formation of a new international organization, the Association of Genocide Scholars made up of scholars, educators, and human rights lawyers from six countries on three continents. The goal of the association was to look at new cases and neglected ones, means of prevention, and new kinds of research-such as gender and genocide and communications-and teaching about genocide. Another objective was to bring in another generation of genocide scholars.
The scholarly achievements of the ISG cannot be doubted. Whether one counts publications, meetings, or the number of involved participants, the record speaks for itself. Nevertheless, it would be consistent with the tradition of its activist co-founder, Wiesenthal, to question whether we should measure success mostly in terms of the proliferation of scholars, articles, research projects, and symposia. I cannot forget a comment by a survivor at one of our earlier meetings. "Did we die," he asked, "so that you professors could go on talking?"
Like many utterances that spring from unrequited pain, the comment was not wholly fair. Professors act by learning and teaching-and they need to talk to one another. But we might ask ourselves: what concrete anti-genocidal actions have we directly mediated and pursued? Do we evaluate ourselves only in terms of efforts which succeeded? What about efforts attempted? In his book, I Can't Accept Not Trying, the basketball player Michael Jordan writes:
I never looked at the consequences of missing a big shot. Once I'm in there, I'm not thinking of anything except what I'm trying to accomplish. .. If it turns out my best isn't good enough, then at least I'll never be able to look back and say I was too afraid to try.
The Genocide Convention which Lemkin labored to bring forth has yet to begin its first trial of accused perpetrators. But while he lived, there was not a Chancellory whose doors he had not worn with his knocking, not a statesman who had not been hectored by his voice on the telephone. Today the International Tribunal stands on the verge a world-wakening action.
I remember the midnight phone calls by the former dentist. I cannot number the times when we made such pests of ourselves that we virtually wore out our welcome-and I confess that a time came when the only joy I could imagine would be release from that Ixion wheel. Trifa was finally deported. I could resume my own hair-shirt: criminal justice, and my action-research in the implementation of change in jails and prisons.
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