"Who will see? Who will do something?"

Those are the questions that Washington Post writer David Montgomery says are posed by images of the genocide in Darfur. The pictures are being displayed on a facade of the US Holocaust Museum, facing the Tidal Basin.

After the Jews, the Cambodians, the Bosnians, the Rwandans, the people of Darfur are the victims of systematic rape, murder, pillage and displacement.

In a three-year-old war between ethnic African rebels and the Arab-led central government, more than 400,000 people have died. The Holocaust Museum was one of the first institutions in the world to call the Darfur tragedy "genocide." The U.S. government followed suit.

Leaders of the museum, who consider it part of their mission to address contemporary cases of genocide, deliberately picked the week of Thanksgiving to thrust Darfur in Washington's face. The display runs from 5:30 p.m. to midnight through Sunday.

"During Thanksgiving week, a time of reflection and gratitude, we are lending the museum's moral stature to alert the public to the urgency of stopping the human catastrophe in Darfur," said Fred Zeidman, chairman of the Holocaust Memorial Council. The idea was that as commuters and pedestrians hurry by in a fog of preoccupation, they might be jolted to consider other dilemmas beyond free-range or Butterball? Mashed or sweet? Store-bought or baked?

If the pictures "stir some sort of curiosity in the average person as they go by and see it, then the job is done," said Omer Ismail, a refugee from Darfur who was on hand last night. "They will go out and ask, Why?"

Read the whole thing. This is a holocaust actually happening as I tap out these letters on the keyboard. When will we stir ourselves to take the substantive steps to bring it to an end?

[See more about the Holocaust Museum photo display on Darfur here.]