genocide |ˈjenəˌsīd|
noun
the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.
The origin of the word comes from the 1940s, during World War II, as a result of Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution to mass murder the Jews between 1941 and 1945, which has come to be know as the Holocaust. A very dark period in human history, the world vowed not to allow something like this to happen again. Sadly, as can be the case with so many other negative moments of the past, history tends to repeat itself. Another one of the most notorious genocides is the Rwandan genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus that took place over three months in 1994. These are not the only two, but are two of the more publicized, better known occurrences.
But why does this keep happening? Even if we are not specifically discussing genocide, there is so much to be learned from history and the small and huge mistakes that civilization makes. So why don’t people learn from the mistakes of the past? Are you just doomed to repeat it? What must happen and what must we do for us to learn from our past, our family’s past, our nation’s past, world history, so that we don’t continue to repeat mistakes that can have such devastating consequences?
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