“We have the ability to put an end to it,” Father Vazken Movsesian said at the podium, speaking to a hundred-strong congregation including Clark students Celia Burstein and Andrew Hain and their families at the Glendale Interfaith Forum on Genocide held at Temple Sinai. Movsesian was one of five speakers, three of which suffered directly from genocide, who asked the audience to do their part to end genocide. “Everyone in this room has felt genocide one way or another,” Movsesian said, whose grandparents survived the Armenian Genocide and fled to America. “We have an obligation today. It’s happening in Darfur. We gotta end it, we gotta put a period on it. No more commas.” This message was repeated throughout the night by survivors of the Holocaust and genocide in Darfur, as well as by Congressman Adam Schiff of the 37th District and genocide education activist Naama Haviv of Jewish World Watch, a non-governmental human rights organization. “I go around to almost any school in the state, and we’ll talk about the Holocaust,” said Holocaust survivor Robert Germinder, who escaped from Nazi-occupied Germany and Poland, narrowly avoiding almost certain death to seek asylum in West Germany. “We want the young people to know, number one it was real, number one it happened, number one I saw it with my own eyes, and I can answer questions about it to the kids. So it’s primarily [teenagers] and younger [people] that I’m interested in talking to.” So intent was Germinder to educate that he left his engineering profession to teach math and science at Saint Mary’s Academy in Inglewood. He runs a website [www.germinder.us] on every page of which appears his personal mantra, Never Forget. “Because hopefully when you don’t forget,” Germinder says. “Maybe another Holocaust may not happen. Of course, unfortunately right now we have a holocaust going on in Darfur, and again, if I can educate enough kids to do something about it, maybe we can stop it before another million people get killed.” Mohamed Suleiman shares Germinder’s passion for educating young Americans to prevent genocides. A native of Darfur, Suleiman’s accent is almost unintelligible as he speaks in refined English of the atrocities still happening in his homeland. Besides speaking at forums like this one, he actively works to translate English news into Arabic for the Sudanese to read on his website and learn of the magnitude of the atrocities being committed by their own government. “The main goal of conducting an intensive campaign of educating the public in general and those who live in an African country in particular,” Suleiman says, “is to bring the words ‘NEVER AGAIN’ to their fullest meaning.” To the grassroots, the audience of the forum, he said, “everything is hanging on you,” as he went on to express the UN’s ineffectiveness at stopping the genocide. Naama Haviv, whose master’s degree is in Comparative Genocide, represented Jewish World Watch, a non-profit group that looks for violations of human rights in the world and provides aid and relief, at the temple forum. Haviv’s presence had a humbling effect as she told the audience of the 38 genocides that have occurred since the Holocaust, in the last 60 years. She advocated action not only in areas where genocide was occurring, but where it was likely to occur. She encouraged the students of the audience to participate by becoming youth advocates, and advises all to “never write a check without making a phone call. Our government moves because we ask it to. Often the government doesn’t hear what people want.” Of all the speakers, Haviv gave the audience the greatest number of options for ways they could help make a difference. She quoted the words of Mother Teresa: “If you can’t help 100 kids, help one kid.” “The louder we are and the more people we are,” Haviv said, “the quicker we get a response. It’s time we started looking at this preventatively and not just intervention.” She encouraged voters to visit askthecandidates.org to see how Obama or McCain would respond to Darfur if elected. “Vote where you see human rights,” Haviv said. Anyone can help advocate American intervention in Darfur by going to jewishworldwatch.org and sending a postcard that will be delivered to the new president on his first day in office. Jewish World Watch hopes to achieve one million postcards to show that America is serious about stopping genocide. Participation is easy, fast and free. “Sign it, send it, please,” Haviv said.