It is a tool for comprehending the enormity of events of the Twentieth Century like the Holocaust.
One factor in our inability to understand these occurances is that we only dimly grasp the true horror of millions of deaths.
We can feel the loss when a family member dies, or a friend, or someone down the street, but as the numbers grow larger and the events more remote, we begin to lose touch with their reality.
This is what a thousand people look like:
To create your book, estimate the number of pages based on the thousands of people involved [a sample list is below, though it is hardly comprehensive; there have been other genocides, and there will be more in the future].Copy this image into your document and print that number of pages.
Be sure to display your book in a prominent place; a few million dead surely deserve it. Take it out at gatherings. Invite people to flip through it. Ask them to guess how many people it represents. Have a conversation about genocide. Try and prevent another one.
In order to create a book of appropriate size, use the chart below:
Genocide.............................Period...........Pages
North American Indians......1800s............1,000
Armenia .............................1917..............1,000
Stalinist purges in Russia.....1925-1950.....10,000
European Holocaust.............1938-1945.....8,000
Cambodia............................1975-1985.....1,000
Rwanda...............................1990s............800
World Trade Center...............2001.............3
All numbers are approximate; no one ever truly knows the enormity of genocide.
When you create a Holocaust Book, please let me know by emailing me.
I will keep a registry of all created books at this URL, for others to visit or correspond as you might wish.
