Ishmael Beah Quotes
Whenever I speak at the United Nations, UNICEF or elsewhere to raise awareness of the continual and rampant recruitment of children in wars around the world, I come to realize that I still do not fully understand how I could have possibly survived the civil war in my country, Sierra Leone.
Beah, Ishmael. "The Making, and Unmaking, of a Child Soldier." The New York Times, 14 Jan. 2007.
Many German officials, after the war, tried to justify the Concentration Camps. However, the argument has little historical merit as by the time the Nazis implemented them, they had complete control of the country and were in no danger of Civil War. And certainly the torture, medical experiments, and murders were not required to prevent civil strife. And using inmates as slave laborers in Donitz’s shipyards had nothing to do with civil war. After the war Donitz was found guilty of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare and using thousands of slave laborers in his shipyards. He was sentenced to 10 years, one of the lightest sentences if the German War Crimes Trials. He himself was not only an enthusiast about the concentration camps but was a murderous anti-Semite as well. See {624978}. The thought that the Germans had to kill little children to avoid civil war is as absurd as any argument could be.
The Justice Department and the White House were arguing that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to terrorist groups. See {589865}.
Ishmael Beah is a Sierra Leonean author and human rights activist who rose to fame with his acclaimed memoir, A Long Way Gone. His novel Radiance of Tomorrow was published in January 2014. His most recent novel Little Family was published in April 2020.
