The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir

by Samantha Power

He talked about the range of factors that made the Holocaust possible, including “the willingness of those who are neither perpetrators nor victims to accept the assigned role of bystander, believing . . . the fiction that we do not have a choice.” I was struck by how strained Obama already looked just three months into the job. A key part of his message had always been that one individual could change lives. Now he was the leader of the free world. With a pen-stroke, he could pardon a person on death row, send American soldiers into battle, or right a historic wrong. He asked, as one does on such occasions, “How do we ensure that ‘never again’ isn’t an empty slogan or merely an aspiration, but also a call to action?” And he answered, inconveniently in light of the Armenian Remembrance statement that the White House would issue the next day, “I believe we start by doing what we are doing today—by bearing witness, by fighting the silence that is evil’s greatest co-conspirator.”