c. 1998 Religion News Service
Poll: Many Americans confused about the Holocaust
(RNS) More than one-third of Americans are confused about when the Holocaust occurred, according to a new poll.
The survey, commissioned by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, found that 38 percent of those polled did not know or were unsure whether the Nazi effort to eradicate European Jewry took place during World War II.
Twenty-one percent also said they did not know or were unsure that the Nazis used gas chambers to murder Jews during the Holocaust. In addition, 71 percent mistakenly believe the United States offered refuge to all European Jews who could escape.
Sarah Bloomfield, the museum’s acting director, said the survey showed”we have a valid mission and a whole lot of work to do.” Still, Bloomfield said she was encouraged by other poll findings, which were released Thursday (April 23) on Yom Hashoah, a day on which Jews remember their 6-million co-religionists murdered in the Holocaust.
Among those findings: 83 percent said the Holocaust should continue to be discussed and 80 percent listed the Holocaust among history’s most important lessons.
Bloomfield told the Associated Press that such findings showed”the Holocaust isn’t just a tale about what the Nazis did to Jews, but it’s about what some human beings did to other human beings. There’s a lesson for everyone in that.” The museum commissioned the survey to mark its fifth anniversary. Some 10 million people have visited the Holocaust Museum since its opening, making it one of Washington’s most popular museums _ despite the sometimes graphic nature of its exhibits.
The poll surveyed 1,641 adults between Nov. 10-15, 1997, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percent.
Pope urges Rwanda to halt executions
(RNS) Pope John Paul II, in a telegram to Rwandan President Pasteur Bizimungu, urged Rwanda to stop the planned executions of more than 20 people convicted for participating in genocide.
On Friday (April 24), Rwanda plans to execute the first prisoners convicted for their involvement in the slaughter of some 800,000 people during the nations’ bloody 1994 civil war between Hutus and Tutsis.”I beg your excellence to suspend judgment with an act of clemency which would favor the process of reconciliation,”the pope wrote to Bizimungu.”Indeed, these executions can only deepen the serious divisions which are still tearing apart Rwandan society.” Rwandan Justice Minister Faustin Nteziryayo said the executions will be carried out in public by firing squad in a soccer stadium in the capital of Kigali and in four provincial towns, Reuters reported.
Last week, Rwandan state radio reported that two Roman Catholic priests, the Revs. Jean Francois Kayiranga and Edouard Nkurikiye, had been sentenced to death for crimes against humanity. However, it is unclear whether the pair are scheduled for execution Friday because the names of the prisoners to be executed have not been released, Reuters reported.
Roman Catholic teaching opposes the death penalty in all but extreme cases and teaches that instances in which it can be justified are”virtually non-existent”in the contemporary world.
The head of Amnesty International, the London-based human rights organization, also voiced concern Thursday over the pending executions in Rwanda.
Pierre Sane told Reuters he had questions whether the condemned had been treated justly.”We … have concerns with the fairness of the trials, which certainly did not meet international standards, Sane said.”And we believe that the international community should mobilize to prevent these executions.”
Baptist missionary in Colombia, Adventist worker in Burundi killed
(RNS) Underscoring the ongoing dangers of missionary and humanitarian work in the world’s trouble spots, a Southern Baptist missionary in Colombia and an Seventh-day Adventist relief worker in Burundi were murdered this week.
Southern Baptist missionary Charles W. Hood Jr. was shot dead in front of his home in Bogota, Colombia, Tuesday (April 21), reported Baptist Press, the official news agency of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Hood, 44, was on his way to the bank in mid-afternoon when his wife heard the gunshot from inside the house. She saw two men speeding away from the scene on a motorcycle.
Dickie Nelson, an official with the Southern Baptist International Mission Board in Colombia, said the motive for the killing was unclear.
Colombia has the world’s highest murder rate with 81 deaths per 100,000, nine times higher than the United States.
Hood was the 14 Southern Baptist missionary to be murdered in the field since the International Mission Board was founded in 1845.
On Wednesday (April 22), Bent Moeller Nielsen, head of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency for Burundi, was murdered.
Nielsen had just dropped off a colleague when he was shot dead by a group of armed bandits as he drove through the streets of the capital Bujumbura. The vehicle was stolen and was found in another part of town, according to reports.”This assassination of a much-appreciated aid worker is a total tragedy,”Cisshaka Dieudonne, an official with the church in Burundi, told the Adventist News Network, the official news agency of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.”Such a motiveless killing by one of the warring groups is another brutal event in Burundi’s civil war.”
Poll: 6 percent of doctors have aided patients end lives with drugs
(RNS) In what is described as the first national poll of doctor involvement in assisted suicide, the New England Journal of Medicine reported Thursday (April 23) that 6 percent of”front-line”physicians responding said they had hastened patients’ deaths with lethal injections or prescriptions.
The survey was conducted by Dr. Diane E. Meier of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. In 1996 _ the year before Oregon became the first state in the nation to legalize physician-assisted suicide _ Meier sent questionnaires to 3,102 doctors and 1,902 responded.
Among those responding, Meier said, 18 percent said they had received requests from patients for help in speeding death, 5 percent they had given at least one lethal injection and 3 percent said they had written a prescription, the Associated Press reported.”This is really not happening very often. That’s the most important finding,”said Meier, adding that doctor-assisted suicide is”a rare event.”
Update: Salvadoran army says murder of U.S. nuns is `closed case’
(RNS) The Salvadoran army said Wednesday (April 22) the 1980 slaying of three American nuns and a lay church worker is a”closed case”despite reports in the U.S. media the killers had said they were acting on orders of people higher up in the military.”There was a jury, which reached a conclusion, declared a sentence and for us the case is close,”Defense Minister Gen. Jaime Guzman told reporters in San Salvador.”We exercised our sovereignty, our authorities judged them and it’s up to our authorities to decide whether to leave the case closed or whether to reopen it,”he added.
Guzman’s comments were the first response from top Salvadoran government officials since a story in The New York Times earlier this month quoted the soldiers found guilty of the 1980 killings as saying they had been following orders.
The killings _ the church workers were kidnapped, raped and shot _ came when the United States was beginning a decade-long, $7 billion effort to prop up the Salvadoran government against a combination of leftist reformers and guerrillas.
Because the nuns worked with the poor, Salvadoran officials and some U.S. government supporters of the Salvadoran government said they were cooperating with the guerrilla movement.
Supporters of the women, as well as human rights groups, have maintained the killings were ordered, approved and directed by the military. The Times story has generated new calls for reopening the investigation.
The four Salvadoran national guardsmen have served 17 years of the 30-year sentences they received for the killings. On Wednesday, a highly placed Salvadoran court official told Reuters the men might soon win parole.
Quote of the day: Southern Baptist ethicist Barrett Duke
(RNS)”All that needle-exchange programs are accomplishing is helping to keep the addicts disease-free while they slowly kill themselves with drugs. The result will be the same _ death. … The addict’s best hope is Jesus Christ. The church must bring this hope to him and then provide him with the love and support that will enable him to leave his old lifestyle for good.” _ Barrett Duke, an ethics specialist with the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, commenting April 22 on the Clinton administration’s endorsement of needle-exchange programs as means of combating the spread of AIDS among drug addicts.
DEA END RNS
