“For many Americans who visit the museum, it is the basic lesson of what happened in Cambodia,” Hudson told VOA. “But most importantly, it delivers a deeper message that genocide did not end with the Holocaust; that the Holocaust was not the only genocide to happen and that we continue to repeat the mistakes of the past.

The memorial project builds on the landmark work of French Catholic priest and Georgetown University adjunct professor Patrick Desbois, whose organization, Yahad — in Unum (which translates as Together — In One), has found more than 1,600 Jewish mass graves in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Poland, Romania, Moldova and Lithuania, and interviewed over 4,000 witnesses to the Holocaust.

Poland is one of the strongest supporters of Israel in the European Union and this is much appreciated in Tel Aviv.  I believe an important role can be played by the Museum of Polish Jews in Warsaw, whose permanent exhibition is to open at the end of October 2014.

Can learning about the opposing side’s suffering lead to reconciliation? Palestinian Professor Mohammed Dajani believes it can, prompting him to take a group of his students to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

On April 22, 1993, the opening ceremony of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum took place in Washington, D.C., in the presence of numerous dignitaries, including U.S. President Bill Clinton and Israel’s president, Chaim Herzog.

Professor Mohammed S. Dajani took 27 Palestinian college students to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland a few weeks ago as part of a project designed to teach empathy and tolerance.

In late March, both Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korean President Park Geun-hye visited Germany. While trade and investment were the main discussion topics, the remarkably coincidental visits of the two Asian powers are suggestive. In addition to new economic agreements, Germany may be offering something of even greater value to China and to South Korea: reconciliation with Japan.