Dear March of the Living Friend,

One of the most important goals of the March of the Living is not only to remember what happened in the Holocaust, but also to try as much as possible – if at all possible - to make sense of this event spiritually, historically, personally. To this end, one of the questions we frequently ask is why it was that the world remained silent and simply watched as millions of Jews were being slaughtered.

While it is easy for us to ask this question about the rest of the world, we must also ask ourselves how we think we would have reacted had we been the witnesses to the Holocaust as it unfolded over 60 years ago. Sadly, this question is not theoretical. We all know how several years ago the world allowed the genocide in Rwanda to take place. We were part of that silent majority. And now it seems to be happening again. We are all hearing the news reports that at least 400,000 people have been murdered in Darfur in a wave of ethnic cleansing that is ongoing.

Here is but one excerpt from a recent eyewitness report in Dafur:

“Every day we surveyed evidence of killings: men castrated and left to bleed to death, huts set on fire with people locked inside, children with their faces smashed in, men with their ears cut off and eyes plucked out, and the corpses of people who had been executed with gunshots to the head. We spoke with thousands of witnesses -- women who had been gang-raped and families that had lost fathers, people who plainly and soberly gave us their accounts of the slaughter.”

In total, more people have been murdered in the genocide in Sudan than the entire number who perished during the South East Asia Tsunami! But the latter was a natural disaster, the former was a totally avoidable act of genocide inflicted by human beings on their fellow members of the human family.

If we - participants and supporters of the March of the Living - truly believe in the motto "Never Again," then surely this must apply to the innocent people in Darfur.

If we choose to remain silent while yet another genocide is taking place, how can we say that we have learned anything from the Holocaust, or that we are any better than all the citizens of the world 60 years ago who turned a blind eye?

Therefore, please take a moment to consider the following initiative. On the links below, you will find copies of a letter of petition imploring world leaders to take immediate and definitive action to stop the genocide in Darfur. One letter is addressed to the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The second is addressed to Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of
the United Nations.

Please take the time to send this letter (or a letter of your own choosing) to our government and to the United Nations.

Sincerely,
March of the Living Canada