RonPrice
Chieftain
It's time I posted something here after 4 years. I was unable to find a record of my posts. Here is a new item. Life is busy at this end. Here is a "happy" subject about which I've written recently.-Ron
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GENOCIDE AND ME
Ben Kiernan tells us that “genocide” is a very new word, invented in 1944 by a Polish Jew named Raphael Lemkin in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, and given legal definition by the United Nations in 1948 through The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. That convention defines the crime of genocide as “an attempt at extermination through acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial, ethnical, or religious group.”
My life beginning, as it did, in that same year 1944 has seen many an example of genocide which I won’t list here or cite in any detail, but there is one group with whom I have been personally associated and this simple prose-poem deals with that group.–Ron Price with thanks to Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur by Ben Kiernan, Yale University Press, 2008.
I will say, though, that
the religion I have now
been associated with for
nearly 60 years has also
been associated with the
word genocide in the land
of its birth and it has been
this fierce opposition and
hatred that has been the
chief instrument for the
spread of its organization
form to every corner of the
planet. I have seen this in my
lifetime since the beginning of
the second century of the Baha’i
Era while I have lived and had my
Being-& the story is far from over!
Ron Price
20 November 2011
------------------------
GENOCIDE AND ME
Ben Kiernan tells us that “genocide” is a very new word, invented in 1944 by a Polish Jew named Raphael Lemkin in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, and given legal definition by the United Nations in 1948 through The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. That convention defines the crime of genocide as “an attempt at extermination through acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial, ethnical, or religious group.”
My life beginning, as it did, in that same year 1944 has seen many an example of genocide which I won’t list here or cite in any detail, but there is one group with whom I have been personally associated and this simple prose-poem deals with that group.–Ron Price with thanks to Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur by Ben Kiernan, Yale University Press, 2008.
I will say, though, that
the religion I have now
been associated with for
nearly 60 years has also
been associated with the
word genocide in the land
of its birth and it has been
this fierce opposition and
hatred that has been the
chief instrument for the
spread of its organization
form to every corner of the
planet. I have seen this in my
lifetime since the beginning of
the second century of the Baha’i
Era while I have lived and had my
Being-& the story is far from over!
Ron Price
20 November 2011
