Colorado Mesa University is once again holding its annual Holocaust Awareness Series, which kicked off Sunday, and Monday morning, with its Field of Flags dedication.

Different flag colors represent the groups of people who were targeted or killed during the Holocaust. The three largest groups were Jews (yellow), Soviet citizens (blue) and Poles (orange).

It’s a striking visual that communicates the horrible scale of the crimes committed by Nazi Germany. The Holocaust Awareness Series was started in 2004 by Associate Professor of History Vincent V. Patarino Jr.

“I invite everyone to stand in front of our Field of Flags, which details all the various groups targeted by the Nazi regime and connect it to actions that continue to occur in the present – challenging us all to consider how we could best answer, as individuals and communities, the clarion call, ‘never again,’ ” Patarino told CMU Now.

That phrase, “never again,” is often used when discussing the Holocaust because we recognize the monstrous nature of systematically killing an entire class of people. But we know it is an aspirational phrase because we are seeing images coming from Bucha, Ukraine, right now, that evoke the horrors of World War II.

There have been men with their hands bound behind their backs and shot. Soldiers threw grenades into homes of sheltering civilians. Bodies were left in the streets, others were piled into mass graves.

The acts of the Russian army are sickening and President Biden was right to call for Putin to be put on trial for war crimes. We’re sure more atrocities will be discovered as Russia pulls back from around Kyiv.

This isn’t to say the acts in Ukraine are on the same scale as the Holocaust, but to show that these things are happening again and have happened in the past. What China is doing to Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang is certainly horrifying and we’ve seen other examples like in Rwanda in the 1990s.

In the case of Ukraine, these images make us want to do more, while also preventing the conflict from widening. We’ll certainly send more weapons to Ukraine and increase sanctions on Russia. Patarino, through the Holocaust series, has another positive response to these genocides.

“My goal has always been to bring to light the issues surrounding modern genocide: its origins, causes and effects on human societies. At base, the series is an example of the central mission of a university to serve as a beacon for discourse and education to the local communities and counties that we serve,” Patarino said.

He’s right. We can watch and witness the events in Ukraine and educate ourselves about modern genocides. By not burying these crimes, exposing them to the light, and making everyone in the world aware of the horror there may be a day when it will truly never happen again.

Grand Junction Daily Sentinel editorial board