MACLEANS
by
Terry Glavin
Jan 27, 2020
The world’s ‘never again’ vow on genocide became a cliché of broken promises. But a recent decision at the International Court of Justice could be a turning point
Left to right: Yasmin Ullah, a Canadian Rohingya activist; with Hamida Khatun, Hasina Begum, Yousuf Ali (Rohingya refugees); and Payam Akhavan, a McGill University law professor. The photo was taken just before Akhavan presented the case (Photo: Payam Akhavan)
On Jan. 27, 1945, a scouting party from a column of Soviet Red Army soldiers who were marching through Poland on their way to Krakow happened upon a strange, half-destroyed industrial complex just outside the town of Oświęcim, better known as Auschwitz. There were corpse heaps, and great mounds of ash, and from behind barbed wire fences roughly 7,000 Jews, reduced to human skeletons, staggered towards them.
