Memoirs

Anne Frank is the best known of these two people, far more than Romeo Dallaire. Her struggle for survival and her eventual plight of death in a concentration camp have awed the world for the last sixty years. Just a young girl who had the rest of her life to look forward to and her youthful plans for that life that were snuffed short by a war machine and the hatred of a man she would never see, Adolph Hitler. Hitler’s madness and his intricate hatred for followers of the Jewish faith subsequently brought a halt to millions of lives of people that had never seen him, known him or would have ever harmed him. His fanatical crusade for the â€Å"Arian† race to populate the world and do an ethnic cleansing of any other race, creed or religion created one of the most horrendous and infamous atrocities in world history, the Holocaust. Everyone who has ever read Diary of a Young Girl could not help but be moved by Anne Frank’s courage and optimism during her enforced hiding with her family and the other residents in that attic as she tried to maintain hope in the ominous face of an adverse society that had invaded her native country. It is truly amazing how she managed to maintain her sanity and her outlook on life through such a horrific ordeal. Just fifteen years old with very little experience at life, she seemed to possess a profound ability to see things as they â€Å"really were† and not as she or the others would have wished them to be. Yet, it did not seem to quell her belief that there was good in people and that only a few were responsible for the misery that is often imposed upon others simply because of another’s beliefs or policies. It has to make one wonder if it were not partly because it was a more innocent time in the world when children were not constantly besieged by violence, crime or prejudice. Though probably one of the world’s most famous victims of prejudice, Anne Frank maintained that innocence through her whole life. She was a child caught in a nightmare not of her own making and she along with millions of others suffered because of that nightmare. Romeo Dallaire was a military man that by choice involved him in these types of matters. A Canadian Major General, Dallaire, headed a small United Nations peacekeeping force, UNAMIR, in Rwanda, Africa. Horrible atrocities became evident to him and he set out to appeal for help in these murders that were so ethnic in nature. It involved a conflict that the ruling regime, the Hutu, had begun mass massacres of the Tutsis, a different sect within the country. It was totally classified as ethnic in policy. When Dallaire faxed for advice in 1994, his fax was treated with little or no attention. The United Nations refused to acknowledge it as genocide and would not allow Dallaire to do anything beyond the regular rules that his small military unit was allowed to pursue. Dallaire had to sit back helplessly and watch this atrocity go unchecked. Unlike Anne Frank, he was not a personal victim but he was just as helpless in changing the effect of what was happening. In his writings later, Shake Hands With The Devil, Dallaire expounded on the ineffectualness of Genocide Committees, such as the UN had, when it was doubtful if a particular action within a country can be termed as ethnic genocide. Time has proven constantly that other countries or even the United Nations in these more modern times are extremely hesitant to act despite sometimes often insurmountable proof that ethnic cleansing is occurring and it should be stopped immediately. So what similarities would be between Anne Frank and Romeo Dallaire? They both wrote important works on the results and after effects of ethnic cleansing and genocidal war. Anne Frank’s viewpoint came from an innocent bystander. Her only crime? She was a Jew. She had led a quiet gentle life within a loving family structure and she was only aware of the persecution of the Jewish population by what was happening around her. Once in seclusion, her writings intensified as she grew more and more aware of the plight of other people and of her childhood friends and their families either frantically trying to escape or captured by the Nazis and sent to the concentration camps where most of them never returned. Her diary, which she referred to as â€Å"Kitty†, was begun before she and her family were forced into hiding. It shows all the normal qualities of a young girl her age. Her young hopes and dreams and the beginnings of puberty. Her delightful and expectant views of what life would be like when she was grown were the strongest proof of her innocence. She was a friendly, astute and open person and those qualities did stand her in good stead while she remained in hiding for two years. She managed to maintain a very mature calm while some of the older adults around her were literally â€Å"falling to pieces.† She seemed to rise above the petty squabbles and accusations that formed when so many people are crammed into such close quarters for so long. She tried not to dwell on the lack of food, fresh air, or miserable living conditions that she existed in but instead took a very philosophical point of view of what was happening around her and to her. Her incredible courage has inspired people constantly through the years since her untimely death and the publication of her diary. She very clearly knew the difference between right and wrong. Through her diary, she made a world wake up to how quickly one group can impose its values on another and if the imposed group refused those values, then violence and mass death could erupt from it. To quote the old phrase â€Å"Out of the mouths of babes†, whether trite or not, in this instance, a child taught an adult world what was wrong with prejudice, stupidity and the aggressiveness of war. Romeo Dallaire’s own writings have been a good source for endless purposes as far as a teaching and informative guide to how not to miss the very clear signs of ethnic war. Because Dallaire’s hands were tied in the military sense and the United Nations’ refusal to act upon his advice from the situation that eventually escalated into a full scale war. Dallaire is often quoted by writers on war and genocide because his graphic description of how the massacring of the Tutsis people in Rwanda should have been clear warning signs of what was going to happen. It is one thing to set of councils against genocide but to refuse to act upon situations that fall under the jurisdiction of these councils is almost as heinous as the very acts of war themselves. In an odd comparison, Anne Frank and Romeo Dallaire were exactly alike as they were both witnesses to these atrocities and they were both completely helpless to do anything to stop them outside of writing about them. It is perhaps some comfort that through both of their written observations, we, as a world, are better able to see the fallacy in these types of confrontations and hopefully in the future, take more steps to insure that they never happen again. Works Cited/ References: 1.How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen by John G. Heindenrich, Praeger Publishing, 2001 2. The Door of Opportunity: Creating a Permanent Peacekeeping Force:   Journal Article by Lionel Rosenblatt, Larry Thompson, World Policy Journal, Vol. 15, 1998 3. Understanding Anne Frank’s the Diary of A Young Girl, A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents by Hedda   Rosner Kopf, Greenwood Press, 1998 4. Anne Frank: The Biography: Magazine Article by Martyn Bedford; New Statesman, Vol. 129, April 2, 1999