Associate Editor

At least 200 protesters, including a healthy contingent of Jews, converged on a small park in Northwest D.C. on Monday afternoon to demonstrate that the battle cry "never again" still resonates.

Their focus was the ongoing genocide in Darfur that, they contend, is effectively being subsidized by the People's Republic of China. Hence, the demonstration was held across the street from the Chinese embassy on Connecticut Avenue.

The event, which coincided with International Human Rights Day, was the culmination of an international torch relay that began in early August in the African country of Chad, which borders Sudan, the site of the Darfurian killing fields. That torch ‹ now represented by seven flaming offspring nationally ‹ has made scores of stops internationally, including some 60 in the United States.

The Washington leg of the relay, which featured five torches, began Monday morning across the street from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, stopped at the White House and then at the Sudanese embassy before continuing to the park.

Among the local torchbearers was Richard Young, co-coordinator of the Greater Washington Jewish Task Force on Darfur. "As a Jew, I cannot sit idly by while genocide is going on the world, considering that we ourselves had been the victim of genocide," said Potomac resident Young, 66, a member of Washington Hebrew Congregation. "You never know which voice will be heard and when."

Another torchbearer was task force co-coordinator Marcia Bernbaum, 59, a resident of the District and a member of Machar, The Washington Congregation for Secular Humanistic Judaism. Noting that Monday was International Human Rights Day, Bernbaum said, "All people have a right to life. We have to do everything we can to bring an end to the horrible genocide in Darfur."

China, which is hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics, is in a position to pressure Sudan into ending the onslaught because it is a close financial, military and diplomatic ally of that African country, according to protest organizers, who conceded that the rate of progress in Darfur has been agonizingly slow.

"It's very frustrating," said Bernbaum. "At times, you want to say forget it, but you realize that you've got to keep on pushing. As a Jew and a human being, it would be impossible to think about giving up, because it's such an important cause."

Also carrying a torch for Darfur was Laura Cutler, a member of both Conservative Adas Israel Congregation in the District and Conservative Congregation Beth El of Montgomery County, located in Bethesda.

"I've been captured by the Darfur issue in a way that no other political issue has captured me and I've tried to do what I could over the past couple years," said the Bethesda resident, 52.

It's important to make a statement, she added, noting "On this issue, when the world should not be standing idly by, I was counted as someone who tried to wake up the political powers to change something."

Although she was not a torchbearer, Judy Beltz, 73, of Potomac was also on hand Monday in a show of solidarity.

"You can't give up; look at how many years it took people to wake up" about the Holocaust, said Beltz, a member of Adas, as well as the District-based Fabrangen community and Am Kolel Sanctuary and Renewal Center in Beallsville.

Am Kolel's founder and executive director, Rabbi David Shneyer, was mingling nearby. He had brought a box of kosher jelly doughnuts, sufganiyot, in honor of Chanukah.

"People are suffering in Darfur, and my own history calls me to be here," Shneyer said. "It would feel irresponsible not being an active witness to these crimes against humanity."

The speakers at Monday's rally included Holocaust survivor and Silver Spring resident Nesse Godin and David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, which is headquartered in the District.

Godin, 79, told the listeners that she was at the podium because she had promised those who perished in the Holocaust that "I would speak up whenever I see a wrong happening." Simply repeating the "never again" mantra "is not enough," she added. "We have to stop this genocide right now."

Unless that happens promptly, said Saperstein, well-intentioned people will have committed "the most tragic political sin" imaginable ‹ "we will have been too late."

As a result, Saperstein said he has a recurring nightmare that eventually a "museum of the Darfurian genocide" will be erected, and that those who visit it will ask why humanity didn't act earlier.

Other speakers included Olympic athletes, survivors of other genocides, and actress and activist Mia Farrow, who stated flatly that "China is underwriting the genocide in Darfur," and should therefore be prevented from basking on the world stage at the same time. "Don't let this be a genocide Olympics," she implored the protesters.