NEW YORK — Leaders from a number of Christian traditions met Nov. 9 in New York in an attempt to mobilize Christians to “reflect on their responsibility in the face of genocide.”
Armenian, Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian representatives met on the 69th anniversary of Krystalnacht, the 1938 attack on Jews and their property in Nazi Germany. The panel was designed to be a “point of departure” on which other Christian groups could model similar meetings, organizers said.
Calling the remembrance a “heavy burden from which we must find the will and the determination to bring about a future without genocide,” Vicken Aykazian, president of the National Council of Churches USA, said the united front encouraged him.
“The new alliance to abolish genocide will serve as a bright light in the defense of human rights and as a defense of the truth,” he said in his opening remarks. “Together we stand united and speak with one voice. Together we will defeat the scourge of genocide and the ongoing consequences of genocide denial. Together we will create a genocide-free future.”
First coined in 1943 by the Polish-Jewish scholar Raphael Lemkin, the term “genocide” means the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic, religious or national group. The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted its legal definition in 1948.
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