Every year, thousands of people gather in Poland to walk from the concentration camp known as Auschwitz to another called Birkenau. The March of the Living draws a shrinking number of holocaust survivors, their families, religious and political leaders. For the last four years, it’s also been the centerpiece of a program for leaders of law enforcement organized by Rutgers and the University of Virginia’s Center for Public Safety.
“We bring a group of law enforcement executives each year to march between Auschwitz and Birkenau to learn about the mass atrocities that occurred, law enforcement’s role in those initiatives and to make a commitment to ensure those type of atrocities never occur again," says Ben Haiman, a former executive with DC’s police force.
He now heads the program that invites law enforcement leaders to explore and debate the role of police in a democracy.
“I think individual participants saw remarkable parallels to a variety of different rhetoric and political context that happens in the U.S. and around the world, but that’s not the point. The point is the understanding of how police can be used to carry out atrocities, and some of our educational programs will dive into atrocities that occurred in Cambodia or Rwanda.”
By studying history, he adds, leaders of police around the world can think deeply about the issues that could confront them today.
“What happens when you get an order that’s illegal? What happens when you get an order that you view as unethical? Those conversations are very raw and quite unfiltered about how to navigate these challenges. We keep the politics out of it. We ground it in history. Officers did not wake up one day and say, ‘We’re going to deport and shoot randomly at Jewish people. ’There was a whole process that led to that.”
Last spring, 130 chiefs of police and sheriffs took part in the program and led the march.
“The VIP ceremony the night before the march, the moderator on the stage recognizes the men and women in law enforcement --asks them to please stand, and then the survivors stood, and then the whole audience stood for about two minutes, and for many of the police officers, as they were hearing this applause, many of them said, ‘I’ve never been appreciated like that.’”
And some were featured in a documentary made by the center.
“Policing professionals hold a responsibility unlike any other – not just to enforce the law but to protect the dignity, rights and humanity of the people they serve," says the film's narrator. "In a democracy, police are a pillar of freedom. Those engaged in democratic policing are entrusted with the duty to protect, not to dominate. Democracy depends on this distinction – on democratic policing that is ethical, accountable and independent, but when police are misused – when they become pawns of oppression or tools of tyrants, the foundation of democracy begins to erode.”
Most officers pay their own way to visit Berlin and Krakau. Some – Haiman says – return year after year and take part in other classes. The law enforcement training program is called Operationalizing Never Again – Not On Our Watch.
