Sudan: The silence is so deafening

There was no question that my conscience dictated my respon-sibility during the recent Days of Awe to speak about our silence while thousands in the Darfur Region of Sudan are raped, tortured, terrorized and murdered.

Just before Rosh Hashana I called my aunt in upstate New York to wish her a "Gut Yontiff" ("Happy Holiday"). When she asked me about my topics for my Rosh Hashana sermons, I told her I would speak about the genocide in Sudan and compare the silence of President George W. Bush with the silence of President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Holocaust.

I asked her why her generation was silent when it was common knowledge that Hitler was exterminating six million Jews and millions of others who were "different." I asked her why more wasn't done to lobby the Roosevelt administration to act quickly and respond to Hitler's "Final Solution."

She responded, "People just were not aware of all that was going on in Europe. There was no television, just radio and newspapers. It isn't like today with cable television and 24-hour news."

I told her that in my research, I had found many stories of the atrocities that were going on in Europe at that time, in the newspapers as well as reports on the radio. I told her that I just couldn't comprehend how the Jewish community and the rest of the world during that time could be silent.

As I read about and watch reports of genocide happening right now, I recall these haunting words:

"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me - and by that time no one was left to speak up."

Martin Niem”ller wrote those famous words. He was the son of a pastor, a World War I U-Boat captain and later a pastor in a comfortable Berlin suburb. Niem”ller did not start out as a great advocate for intellectual freedom. He initially supported Hitler but quickly grew dis-illusioned. Although arrested by the Gestapo in 1937 for his open opposition to Hitler and incar-cerated in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps, he nonetheless berated himself for not doing more.

In my community of Sacramento, under the aegis of the Jewish Community Relations Council, we have formed an emergency com-mittee, the Greater Sacramento Committee on Conscience. How sad that we need such a committee, but unlike some committees, this is a committee of action. The most important action right now is to educate the public with facts about the atrocities, like the stark reality that after girls and women are raped, they are immediately branded, like cattle.

This committee has welcomed all citizens of conscience and speci-fically invited members of the interfaith clergy to work hand-in-hand as one community as we begin raising funds for the 1.5 million (and growing by the day) hungry and homeless refugees, to put pressure on the U.S. government and the rest of the world to act to stop the genocide.

Every American and every citizen of our world can work stem the tides of silence and demand that action be taken to stop the genocide. Anything else, any other course of action will have our own children asking us: "Why did you not do anything about the atrocities?" We would be unable to answer: "Sorry, we did not know."

Reuven Taff is the rabbi and spiritual leader of Mosaic Law Congregation, Sacramento, Calif. He is a former cantor at Beth El Congregation in Phoenix. He can be reached at taff5@aol.com.

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