All crimes are not the same

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/12/2010 (5738 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has done — and is still doing — an exhaustive consultation with Canadians about the content and stories that will be featured in the new national institution when it opens in 2013.

It has always been clear, however, that the Holocaust and the aboriginal experience in Canada will have significant and permanent places in the museum. Other stories will be told — in fact, in a digital world there is almost no limit to the narratives that can be presented — but nothing will compare to the destruction of European Jewry during the Second World War and the cultural genocide of First Nations.

The aboriginal experience will be there because it is the most important Canadian human-rights story — and this is a Canadian museum — while the Holocaust stands out because of the pivotal role it played in the evolution of modern human rights.

Although these twin facts have been clear from the beginning, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress has continued to demand equal space for two of its stories: the famine-genocide of 1932-33 that could have killed 10 million in Ukraine, and the story of the internment of Ukrainian Canadians during the First World War.

These are important stories, too, and they will be available in the museum, along with hundreds of other accounts of what happens when the dignity of people is denied.

The Ukrainian organization, however, is not happy with what it considers second-class treatment. It is demanding that the famine be given equal space with the Holocaust, partly because more Ukrainians may have died at the hands of Stalin than Jews under Hitler.

This is an unfortunate demand that ignores the uniqueness of the Holocaust and its enormous value as a teaching tool. It could also reduce the museum to a grim chamber of horrors that emphasizes body counts over education.

The museum is not saying that individual Jews suffered more than Ukrainians, but it is saying that some crimes are more revealing and consequential than others.