Chris Bohjalian Quotes

For most of history, genocide was just something governments did and nobody blinked.

A process of genocide is being carried out before the eyes of the world.

Yet, only years after the Nazi-era, millions were sent to their deaths in places such as Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda, and the world once again took too long to act.

I certainly think that another Holocaust can happen again. It did already occur; think of Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia.

When there are no gas chambers, no barbed wire, and no concentration camps, many don't recognize the perpetration of new genocides and other targeted mass atrocity crimes because they may not look the same.

One could reasonably argue that the Turkish pogrom against the Armenians during World War I qualifies as a crime against humanity, as does the United States' ethnic cleansing of Native Americans.

Once genocide is under way, it is unlikely that anything but military force will end the horror.

The idea of telling the story of the Armenian genocide - or, really, any other genocide - and repeating those stories is really important. I also think it's important to always be exposing the warning signs for what was leading up to it. Those tend to always be the same.

It was commonplace to hear it said, after the Bosnian genocide kicked off in 1992 and the Rwandan genocide erupted in 1994 and the Darfur genocide began in 2003, that the 'international community' had learned nothing since the Holocaust.

Expulsion and genocide, though both are international offenses, must remain distinct; the former is an offense against fellow-nations, whereas the latter is an attack upon human diversity as such, that is, upon a characteristic of the "human status" without which the very words "mankind" or "humanity" would be devoid of meaning.

Genocide is not war! It is more dangerous than war!

The [concentration camps] were swarming with photographers and every new picture of horror served only to diminish the total effect. Now, for a short day, everyone will see what happened to those poor devils in those camps; tomorrow, very few will care what happens to them in the future.

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history.

Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay.

The Holocaust is not only a tragedy of the Jewish people, it is a failure of humanity as a whole.

What is the difference between burning and gassing people in ovens and doing it to a whole nation out in the open?

I became interested in genocide, because it happened so many times. It happened to the Armenians and after the Armenians, Hitler took action.

Mr. Speaker, genocide is the most potent of all crimes against humanity because it is an effort to systematically wipe out a people and a culture as well as individual lives.

Genocide begins, however improbably, in the conviction that classes of biological distinction indisputably sanction social and political discrimination.

In their greatest hour of need, the world failed the people of Rwanda.

I don't think nations can stand aside for ethnic cleansing and genocide.

I believe the only time when we can call for intervention is when there is an ongoing genocide.

Saddam has committed many crimes against humanity and against his own people.

In Bosnia, the case was there were white, blond-haired, blue-eyed Muslims who were being slaughtered and identified as Muslims. That really touched me.

Mass killing has very clearly not been eliminated, nor has the 'international community' developed a response that will avert it or bring it to a quick end.