GenocideHolocaust

History of Genocide and the Holocaust

• Eight (8) Stages of Genocide• Classification

• Us vs. Them.• Symbolization

• 1. Jewish star.• Dehumanization

• Derogatory remarks.• Considered outcasts of society.• Stripped of their dignity and citizenship.

• Organization• Hate groups.• Propaganda.• S.A. (Brown Shirts)

• Polarization• Kept separate from society• Ghettoes.

• Preparation• Identification: Red “J” on identity cards.• Expropriation: Deprived of ownership of property, take away property and

give to another.• Concentration: To direct or draw people to one central location.• Transportation: Taken to a specific place/concentration camp.

• Extermination• Concentration camps.• Labor camps.• Death camps.• Work camps.• Transit camps.

• Denial: Genocide or Holocaust never took place.

Introduction• Genocide• Genocide: is the systematic, planned annihilation of a racial,

religious, or cultural group.• First introduced by Raphael Lamkin in 1933.

• Submitted a proposal to the League of Nations for an international convention on barbaric crime and vandalism.

• Lemkin was responding to the Turkish massacre of Armenians during World War 1.

• Convention request denied.• Limkin persisted and took another war (WW2) to gain worldwide

support for his proposal.

• Genocide Convention• Came into being because of the Nazi atrocities.• Convention was designed to overcome the claims of Nazi war criminals

that they violated no .law.• Convention forbids:

• Killing of persons belonging to a group.• Causing grievous bodily or spiritual harm to members of a group.• Deliberately enforcing upon the group living conditions which could lead to

a complete or partial extermination.• Enforcing measures not to prevent births from among the groups.• Forcibly removing children from the group and transferring them to another

group.• Each of these provisions applies to a different stage or deed associated

with the holocaust.

• Provisions in detail.• The killing of persons belonging to another group.

• Refers to the “Final Solution”.• The plan to murder all Jews.• Refers to the killing of Gypsies and all human beings.

• Causing grievous bodily harm.• Refers to concentration camps, death camps, and labor camps.

• Deliberately enforcing on the group living specific living area and conditions.• Refers to ghettoization

• Enforcing measures to prevent births.• Refers to sterilization as a tool.• Medical experiments.

• Removing children.• Refers to the Nazi policy of kidnapping polish children and removing them

to Germany to be raised as “Aryans”.

• U.S. Involvement in the Genocide Convention.• Played a major role in creating it in 1948.• Initially did not sign it do to opposition in the senate.

• McCarthyism was in play at the time (Communist influence/Red Scare).• Senate needed 2/3 majority to ratify convention.• Conservatives argued that by ratifying it, the United States would limit its

national sovereignty.• Thousands of speeches were made on behalf of the treaty.• Every president from Harry Truman to Jimmy Carter advocated its

ratification.• None could muster the 2/3 vote needed.• President Ronald Reagan was non-committal.• President Reagan was pressed to put his personal prestige behind the drive

to ratify the treaty.• November 4, 1988, President Reagan signed the ratifying legislation.

• United States becomes the 98th nation to ratify the convention.

• Genocide• Is not a crime restricted to the 20th century.• There have been many other genocides in the past.• World War 1- Armenians:

• Were subjected to systematic slaughter by the Turks.• Turks feared an Armenian –Russian alliance on there eastern border.• Turks deported many Armenians from there homes.• Turks subjected them to:• Starvation• Disease• Attacks• Massacres

• There are links between the slaughter of the Armenians in WW1 and the annihilation of Jews a quarter century later.

• Armenian was a non-Muslim element in Muslim Turkey.• Armenians were:• Peasants• Craftsman• Middleman

• There economic status and social position resembled that of the Jews of Poland and Russia.

• They were subjected to a declining empire.

• The Ottoman Empire had experienced:• The emancipation of Greece• Independence of Romania• Independence of Serbia• Self-rule of the Bulgarians• Turks forced out of all of Europe.

• Assault against the Armenians occurred during World War 1 when the tide of victories turned against Germany and their Turkish allies.

• Slaughter of Armenians was limited to the provinces.• Those Armenians who lived a distance from Russia or lived in the

West part of the Empire were not subjected to genocide.• Murder of Armenians was not considered essential to Turkish

national salvation verses the murder of Jews was essential to Germany’s national salvation.

Century of Genocide -1997-listred 14 events of genocide in the 20th century

• Passive Genocide – 1933-Ukraine state sponsored acts led to mass starvation and massive deaths among the native population.• Several million Ukrainian peasants were starved to death when the Soviet

government seized their crops and agricultural goods.• Soviets denied it until post communist period when they blamed it on Joseph

Stalin and his associates.• Other genocides or genocide like events resulted from:

• Colonialism• Imperialism

• Displacement of 1 population by another.• Bangladesh – 1971• Seeks independence from Pakistan.• 30 million Bengalis are displaced by the army• 10 million Bengalis seek refuge in India• Women and girls are raped• 3 million natives are murdered• Villages are plundered

• Indonesia – 1975• Invade Portuguese colony of East Timor• Forced integration reached genocidal proportions resulting in

substantial decline in the native population.• From October 1965 to march 1966, 1 million people who were

communists were killed in a series of massacres in Indonesia.• Yugoslavia• Struggles for independence between Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians.

• Cambodia – 1975• Khmer Rouge takes control of the country.• Schools are closed.• Factories deserted.• Monasteries emptied.• Libraries scattered.• Money and wages abolished• Everything disappeared for 4 years.• 8 million Cambodians imprisoned by their own leaders.• Estimates of up to 5 million killed.• Movie: “The Killing Fields” depicts this atrocity.

• Rwanda-1994• April to July 1994, slaughter of massive numbers of Tutsi’s by the Hutu tribe.• Precipitating event for the genocide was the shooting down of the Air Force plane

carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Brundis.• President had long exercised authoritarian rule.• Hutu used this as an excuse to eliminate the Tutsi tribe.• Approximately 500,000 to 1 million were killed.• Majority by a machete.• Military forces from Belgium and France evacuated their own troops only and

non-governmental organizations engaged in humanitarian relief efforts, unarmed volunteers remained.

• Leaders of Non-governmental organizations (NGO) were young people, collage students, and post- graduate students.

• UNICEF, Care, Save the Children, Doctors without borders remained to rescue, to relieve and to alleviate pain and suffering.

• Soldiers who were trained for combat were called home by their governments which were fearful of political repercussions that would result if some harm befell them.

• Western countries feared losing the lives of heavily armed volunteer soldiers and thus turned and ran when the 1st signs of massive murders were perceived.

• American soldiers came in only to get Americans out.• Movie: “Hotel Rwanda” depicts this incident.

The Holocaust and Genocide –The Holocaust as Genocide.

• Characteristics• The Holocaust was a paradigmatic event.

• Paradigmatic: an example that serves as a model or pattern.• Holocaust occurred in a modern, culturally advanced industrial

society.• Holocaust was initiated in then heart of Western Europe.• Holocaust was the most extreme and intense manifestation of

genocide.• Holocaust although a unique event, can only be understood in the

context of other genocides and other instances of massive inhumanity.• Holocaust was unique for several reasons.• Holocaust was intentional and premeditate.

• Unlike other state police which resulted in death of entire populations such as:• Australian treatment of the Aborigines.• British treatment of Irish peasants.• The murder of the Jews was the goal of the Nazi policy from at least 1941

onward.

• Holocaust served no political or territorial purpose.• Unlike Native Americans who were crushed and put on reservations, the Jews

posed no territorial threat to the Nazis.• Jews murder led to no geographical or political benefit.• It yielded no territorial gain.• Killing Jews was not the means to an end but a fundamental goal in and of itself.• Holocaust was a total and all-encompassing.• Unlike Turkish campaign against the Armenians, those living in western Turkey

were safe, while those living in the east near Russian border were killed; every Jew in Europe was targeted by the Nazis.

• At the Wannsee Conference, Reinhard Heydrich noted the “Final Solution” would have to deal with 11 million Jews including those in Britain and Ireland.

• Goal of exterminating all Jews was nothing less than a major realignment of the human species.

• Holocaust was different from all previous anti-Jewish violence.• Past attacks on Jews were:

• Episodic (happen now and then).• Confined to isolated geographic areas.• Were illegal in that the anti-Semitic outbursts were often not formally sanctioned by

law.• Throughout history anti-Jewish violence was based on religion, not biology (race).

• Jews were killed for what they believed and practiced • Conversion and emigration were possible.

• Nazism• Nazism was unrelenting.• Nazis persecuted Jews for 12 years.• Destruction of Jewish people was a national priority, even at the cost of national

policy.• Characteristics

• Jewish workers were killed in spite of labor shortages.• Railroad trains were made available to carry Jews to death camps instead of supplying

German armies at there front with needed supplies.• Jews were hunted down throughout Europe from central Russia to the Spanish border.• Policy of extermination was sanctioned by:

• Law.• Decrees.• Official directives.

• Legal system itself served as the instrument of oppression and death.• 1942-Jusitce Hierack turned over jurisdiction of the following people to

Heinrich Himmler, head of the gestopo and secret police: • Jews• Gypsies• Russians• Poles• Ukrainians• Czechs

• Germany – 1933• German Parliament gave over to Adolf Hitler emergency power

to enact legislation as he saw fit.• Next 12 years, Hitler’s decrees had the force of law.• Laws were enforced by judges who took an oath of allegiance to

Hitler not to the constitution or the state.• 15 years after the defeat of Germanys Major Adolf Eichmann is

captured by the is areal Masad and tried. He stated that the “German government was elected by a majority and I was only following the orders of my superiors”. He was found guilty and hung.

• Nazi Germany became a genocidal state.

• Goal of annihilation called for participation by every arm of the government.

• Policy of extermination involved every level of German society and the entire apparatus of the German bureaucracy.• Parish Churches and Ministry• Supplied birth records that defined and isolated Jews.• Post Office

• Delivered the notification of:• Definition• Expropriation• Denaturalization• Deportation

• Finance ministry• Confiscated Jewish wealth and property.

• Universities refused to admit Jewish students.• Denied degrees to those already enrolled.• Dismissed Jewish faculty.

• German Industrial and Commercial Firms• Fired Jewish workers, officers and board members.• Disfranchised Jewish stockholders

• Government Transportation Bureau• Handled billing arrangements with railroads for trains that carried Jews

to their death.• Medical Profession• Doctors enforced so called “euthanasia program”.• Participated in murder of handicapped Germans.• Signed false death certificates.• Supervised the selection process at the death camps.• Chose who would live or die.• In concentration camps, exploited victims for vicious medical

experimentation.

• Location and operation of camps was based on the calculation of accessibility and cost effectiveness.

• Pharmaceutical firms tested drugs on camp inmates without any regard for toxic side affects.

• Companies bid for contracts to build ovens and supply gas used for exterminations.

• German engineers working for Topf & Sons supplied 1 camp with 46 ovens, capable of burning 500 bodies per

hour.• Kristallnacht (Night of broken Glass- 1938)• Murder process escalated.• Murder by mass shooting by mobile killing units.

• The “Final Solution” to the Jewish problem was Germany’s greatest achievement.

• t. The Holocaust was the perverse perfection.• Auschwitz III or Monowitz(located next to Auschwitz I/Berkenau)

housed the industrial operation of I.G. Auschwitz II, a division of the giant conglomerate, I.G. Farban, the maker of Zyklon B gas.

• The vast petrochemical complex reduced human beings to consumable raw materials.

• Every part of the human body was recycled to serve the Nazi war economy:• Gold teeth went to the treasury.• Hair was used to stuff mattresses.• Ashes from incinerated corpses became fertilizer.

• Final Solution was a managerial triumph.• There was no budget for the program.• Nazi bureaucratic and German industry cooperated to run the entire

operation in the black.• Holocaust represented a quasi-apocalyptic triumph for Nazi

ideology.• In the Nazi world view, the annihilation of the Jews was essential to

the survival and salvation of the German state.

• Conclusion• Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, legally.• They used power to undermine democracy and facilitate a

dictatorship of 1 man, Adolf Hitler.• Used violence and terror to achieve their goals at home and

abroad.• Came to power with an ideology that was racist, believing in a:

• Hierarchy of race.• Innate inequality of peoples.• Superiority of their own race which they called the “Aryan Race”.• Inferiority of many races.• The “Demonic” role of 1 people whom they called the Jewish race.

20th Century Genocide Atrocities• Algeria – 1962• Occupied by France for 130 years.• French-Algerians accuse each other of atrocities during the war for

liberation (1954-1962).• Over 30,000 people who collaborated with the French were killed.

• Angola - 1975-1995 & 1998-2002• Occupied by Portugal.• 3 rival independent movements formed:

• MPLA.• UNTA.• FNLA.

• Angola’s rich natural resources, include diamonds and oil, interested several foreign nations.

• These nations back 1 of the 3 groups.• Over 600,000 people killed.

• Argentina – 1976-1980• Military coup occurs.• Fighting starts and over 20,000 people were killed or disappeared.• 1998, 98 junta members indicted on human rights violations.• Democracy is restored in 1983.

• Bosnia- 1992- 1995(Yugoslavia)• Bosnia-Herzegovina declares independence from Yugoslavia.• Fighting breaks out between the Serbs who wanted to stay with

Yugoslavia, the Croats who wanted to join Croatia.• Over 225,000 died.• China – 1949-1975• 29 years rule of Mae Zedong is responsible for the death of at least

30,000,000 people.• Land reform caused massive famines.• Purges claimed millions in the 1940’s and 1950’s.• Cultural Revolution of 1966-1975 created violence against the

Tibetans.

• . El Salvador• Military grabs power.• Village of El Mozote wiped out.• Government death squads committed 85% to 90% of human-rights

abuses.• Leftist guerrilla fighters, the Faiabundo Marti National Liberation

Front (FMLN), were responsible for the balance of 60,000 deaths.• Equatorial New Guinea – 1969-1979• Ruled by a dictator.• Neglected every aspect of government duty except internal

security which led to a reign of terror.• Over 50,000 people killed.

• Ethiopia – 1975-1979• The Derg, a communist military junta over throws Emperor Haile

Selassie.• The Derg regime fights the insurgents with the help from Cuba and

east European socialist bloc countries.• 10,000 people killed.

• Germany – 1933- 1945• Adolf Hitler sets out to murder the:

• Jews.• Poles.• Slavs.• Russian prisoners of war.• Gypsies.• Homosexuals.• Political Opponents.• Clerical personal.• Religious personal.• Mentally Handicapped.• Physically disabled.• Socially inferior people.• Jehovah Witnesses.• Criminals.• Estimated 5 to 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust (Shoah).• Total amount of people killed 11 – 12 million.

• Guatemala – 1979-1990• War breaks out between the landowners (Mestyo) and the

Mayan villages.• Government sides with the landowners and undertake a

campaign of Genocide in 1980, killing over 200,000 people.• India – 1947• Britain relinquishes colonial rule to India.• India is partitioned into 2 independent countries:

• India.• Pakistan.

• Hindus and Sikh people move into India and Muslims move into Pakistan.

• Fights break out between both groups causing the death of 1 million people.

• Indonesia – 1965 and 1975 – 1993• 1960 the Dictator kills 500,000 people because they were

suspected of being Communists.• Indonesia invades East Timor because of its rich natural

resources.• Approximately 1,200,000 are killed.

• Iran – 1981-1992• 1979-revolution brings down monarchy of Shah Mohammed

Pahlavi.• Religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini takes over.• He cracks down on all opposition parties.• Approximately 20,000 people are killed.

• N. Iraq – 1965-1975 and 1987-1992• Kurdish minority are persecuted.• Iraqis conduct genocide against the Kurds.• 1991-1992-Iraq kills 40,000 Shiite Muslims.• 1990-invasion of Kuwait.• Approximately 240,000 people died during Saddam Hussein's

rule.

• Japan – 1937 – 1945• 1937- Japan invades China and the city of Nanjing.• 300,000 people killed in the city which became known as the

“Rape of Nanking”.• Japanese infamous military unit 731, conducted medical

experiments in biological and chemical warfare on prisoners of war.

• By end of war, over 10,000,000 of the following people and soldiers were killed:• Chinese• Indonesians • Koreans • Filipinos • Vietnamese • Burmese • Allied

• Namibia – 1904• Germany’s colonization efforts in east Africa caused the

destruction of over 75,000 people of the Herero tribe people.• Germans poisoned the water wills and starved them.

• Nigeria – 1967-1970• Ilbo tribe breaks away from Nigeria to form the country of the

Republic of Biafra.• Country is short lived; Nigerian government attacks Ilbo people,

over 75,000 killed.

• Pakistan – 1971 and 1973-1977• Pakistan military leaders feeling threatened by East Pakistan, set

out to destroy their economy and decimate their population.• East Pakistan declares its independence and is backed by India.• East Pakistan renames itself Bangladesh.

• Philippines- 1972-1976• Under Ferdinand Marco’s repressive rules, the Moros organize

themselves into several resistance groups.• 1972- Marcos declares martial law, imprisoning his opponents.• Over 60,000 Moros were killed.

• Rwanda-1963 and 1994• Hutu armed forces attack the minority Tutsi Tribe.

• Somalia – 1989 and 1991• Civil war breaks out in 1991.• Warlords attack and hijack 80% of the food supplied by

international aid organizations.• Violence cost 50,000 civilians.

• South Vietnam – 1965-1975• North Vietnam invades South Vietnam.• U.S. backs South Vietnam.• War ends and over 500,000 South Vietnamese civilians are killed.• U.S. loses approximately 58,000 soldiers.

• Sri Lanka – 1990• Ethnic tension between Sinhala Buddhist majority and the Tamil

Hindu minority• Racial riots and terrorist attacks happen.• 30,000 people are killed.

• Sudan- 1950 to Present• Fighting breaks out between various religious groups.• The North based government, Janjaweed militia declared a “holy

war” on the non-Muslim southerners.• To date, approximately 2,850,000 civilians have been killed.

• Syria – 1982• Majority population are Sunni Muslims.• The Alewite minority only 11% of the population wielded power

for over 3 decades.• When the Ikhwan, a Sunni organization rose up against the

government, fighting broke out.• Over 20,000 people killed.

• Turkey – 1915• Ottoman Empire treats Armenians as 2nd class citizens.• Turks kill a large portion of the Armenians.• Approximately 1,500,000 are killed.

• Uganda- 1972-1979 and 1980 – 1986• Idi Amin seizes power in 1971 and overthrows President Obote.• He murders between 100,000 to 500,000 civilians including

ministers, judges, clergy, educators and ordinary people.• President Obote retakes the country and kills 4000,000 civilians.• Total killed between both dictators is approximately 900,000.

•

• USSR- 1942-1953• Dictator Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror killed an estimated

20,000,000 of hi own people.• Killings included:

• Russian Officers.• German prisoners of war.• Opponents.• Civilians.

• Yugoslavia- 1998• Albanian majority in Kosovo want greater independence from

Yugoslavia and Serbia.• Serb national leader General Slobodan Milosevic comes to power

revokes Kosovo’s autonomy and implements harsh procedures.• Albanians form the Kosovo Liberation Army.• General Milosevic retaliates by launching a brutal offensive

against them.• Estimated 10,000 civilians are killed by Serb forces.

• Zaire (Democratic Republic of the Congo)-1964-1965 and 1977-1983• Belgian Congo becomes independent in 1960.• 1965-rebals led by Col. Joseph Mobutu attack the Congolese.• He rules harshly for 30 years and changes the countries name and

currency to the “Zaire”.• Estimated 14,000 people killed.

• Total number of people killed: 83,237,000