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Analysis Of A Fate Worse Than Dying: The Inhumanity Of Genocides

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The Inhumanity of Genocides

There are important context about history that many people should be aware of and how they should acknowledge the results in order to prevent the same error again. Genocides is one of the main topics in history to talk about because it is a representation of how humans are capable of suppressing other humans based on their differences. In the book, “’A Fate Worse Than Dying’: Sexual Violence during the Armenian Genocide” by Matthias Bjornlund, she elaborated on the massacre and extreme violence that the Armenians had gone through under the control of the Ottoman government in World War I. In the reading “Camp Brothels: Forced Sex Labour in Nazi Concentration Camps” by Robert Sommer, he talked about the Holocaust …show more content…

The Armenian people were seen as traitors because Ottoman military officers feared that they might join the enemy and join them to fight back the government. In the book “’A Fate Worse Than Dying’: Sexual Violence during the Armenian Genocide” by Matthias Bjornlund, she said, “Organized, gender-selective mass killing – sometimes termed gendercide – is a common feature of war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, and has in such situation of conflict primarily targeted men through history, especially younger ‘battle-age’ men.6”(Pg.17) This shows how the Ottoman empire had an agenda to eliminate a specific population that interferes their way of thinking because if any of these population oppose to any of their ideas then their would be an issue overcoming it. In this case since men were seen as ma much stronger and bold gender, they were considered as a threat because they had the possibility to join the army and fight alongside with the enemy. In this book, Matthias Bjornlund said, “They, in turn, were followed by those of the remaining men and older boys who had not managed to hide or escape and were massacred as prelude to, or in the early stages of, the deportation – the death marches.”(Pg.18) This represents the Ottoman military tactics by looking and executing Christian men throughout their territory. Although executing all the …show more content…

In the Nazi concentration camps women that were not Jewish had the opportunity to work as a prostitute. In the reading, the author says, “When another prisoner asked why she had done it, she answered: ‘Winter is coming and I work in the fields!’24 She knew that she would have never survived another winter in Auschwitz and preferred forced sex labour to the crematory”(Pg.173) This shows how women within the concentration camps had to live and the only option they had for this survival was forced sex labour. This kind of act was tortuous toward these women because the Nazi soldiers saw them critically vulnerable and observed how they were willing to do anything to live. Sommer also mention about how both genders were treated inhumanly as possible. Sommer says, “After surviving these shocks, some prisoners were able to adapt to the reality of the camp while many others died. In the process of adaptation, reconquering a sexual identity becomes a major strategy of survival.”(Pg.182) What the author meant is that some of the prisoners of the concentration camps lost grip of reality because of their sexual identity being torn away from them. Women and men in these concentration camps were stripped off from their sexual identity in order for them to feel worthless human

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