For as long as human history has existed, genocide as existed along with it. Even though the term itself was not coined until the 1940s by Raphael Lemkin in response to the Holocaust, the act of genocide has been occurring for millennia. In 146 BCE the first recorded act of genocide occurred with the Roman destruction of Carthage According to the Genocide Convention, genocide is defined as “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. Genocide happens for a multitude of reasons and is often a combination of circumstance that leads to its occurrence. The Rwandan genocide in the 1990s is a prime example of genocide and while it can be explained using several sociological theories, it most closely correlates with Marxism and Conflict Theories.
Rwanda is divided into main two ethnic groups: the Hutu and the Tutsi, with the overwhelming majority being Hutu. Ethnic tensions in Rwanda date back in the late 1800s when The Berlin Conference assigned the territory to Germany. European colonists who traveled to Rwanda displayed typical scientific racism tendencies of the time. Convinced the Tutsi had migrated to Rwanda from Ethiopia and were therefore more Caucasian than the Hutu, they enforced notions that the Tutsi were racially superior to the Hutu and racialized the two groups. This led to the Hutu becoming a pariah group in Rwanda. Strong prejudice and discriminatory patterns began to emerge ad Tutsi supremacy continued into the
The Holocaust was a mass murder of millions of individuals’ primary to and during World War II. “Only 54 percent of the people surveyed by the Anti- Defamation League (ADL) in a massive, global poll has ever heard of the Holocaust” (Wiener-Bronner). The Holocaust was from 1933-1945 and was run by German leader named Adolf Hitler. Hitler was a man who wanted to create his own race of people. Therefore to create this race, he wiped out anyone who did not have the specific descriptions that he wanted. For people to fit into his race, they had to have blue eyes and blond hair. This excluded the Jews and from then on Hitler slowly dehumanized them. In the concentration camp the first thing they had to pass was the selection test. The selection test was what the SS man (German soldiers) used to determine who was fit for work. Usually children, mothers, and elders were the first to die because they were not mentally fit for the work they were going to be given. People who passed the selection process either died of starvation, disease, fatigue, or assassination. It took twelve years before anyone intervened and by then it was too late for millions of people. Even though over twelve million people died during the Holocaust, genocides have still happened in Rwanda, Darfur and Cambodia.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a witty and well-written account of the realities of a “tired old town” (4) where there was “nothing to buy and nothing to buy it with” (4). Purposefully, it comes across not merely an innocently portrayed, yet eye-opening, story of a young girl start to grasp the inequalities of her society. Rather, it is accompanied by recollection of the unfortunate pillars of hate of the places Harper Lee matured in. We now perceive this account as an ‘archaic” and “ancient” recount of some historically frowned upon mindsets in an enthralling atmosphere upon which we pin historical quantities of prejudice, racism and most of all, bigotry. The unfortunate reality is that we look at history in a vacuum and ignore the occurrences of our own times. So although we, like Scout’s teachers teaching about the horrible acts of the Holocaust while being outspokenly racist, are able to analyze social inequalities in other places in time or the world yet refuse to open our eyes to the same prejudice, racism and bigotry today. To instance, when reading To Kill a Mockingbird , we often frown upon citizens for judging “folks” based on their family name and race, although, everyday, some member of our current society, such as police officers and employers, do the same thing and no one bats an eye. Alternatively, the issue which we definitely desperately desire to avoid, racism, is explicitly tackled in To Kill a Mockingbird to the point of viral awareness of the problem in
Genocide is the destruction of an ethnic, racial, or religious group. The most famous genocide, conducted by the Germans, is the extermination of the Jewish population known as the Holocaust. There are other genocides such as the Armenian or Darfur genocide, but the Holocaust is the one talked about and studied the most around the world today. Museums exist in Washington D.C, Los Angeles, and parts of Europe that focus primarily on this dark time in history. Vast amounts of books, movies, and documents concentrate on the Holocaust. Why is this chapter, between 1939 and 1945, discussed and examined? The answer lies within people who experienced the Holocaust such as Elie Wiesel, Jay Frankston, and Franks Shatz. These men have gone through hell and back, but they believe in one thing. That is, the notion of never again. The goal is to educate future generations on what really happened, so history does not repeat itself. Never again should people of any race, religion, or ethnicity, go through the horrific past of the Holocaust. In their writing, Wiesel, Frankston, and Shatz do a great job using pathos, logos, and ethos to convey their message of never again for future generations.
Prior to the holocaust, however, he exhibits none of these characteristics. He was kind, wealthy, and uncommonly resourceful, and his marriage to Anja was filled with compassion, intimacy, and love. Where now Vladek is now stubborn, irritable, and almost comically stingy with his money. His experiences in the Holocaust undoubtedly played a role in these dramatic personality changes. It wasn’t until the war started that Vladek got a little more precautious about a few things. Whenever a bad thing would happen, Vladek would remain hopeful and trusted that things would go well for him and his family in the long run. Even when Vladek had to fight in World War II and was put in a prisoner camp with the most terrible conditions he still seemed to keep faith. However, one can slowly notice how Vladek becomes cautious about food and any kind of valuable. It is natural because he couldn’t get much so he had to be very careful about wasting anything. At times, he was willing to share, but he quickly realized that he had to fight for himself to survive and that everyone was responsible for themselves. He became a little careful about who his real friends were. ---- need uote here
The atrocities of the Holocaust placed the German Jewish population in a quagmire of antisemitic persecution, but it also spread beyond Germany to affect Jews throughout Europe. Poland was such a country. The first nation invaded by Nazi Germany and the last to be liberated, the population of Polish Jews was nearly eradicated. How were the Nazis able to accomplish such a feat in a nation where antisemitism had not been as prevalent? Aside from forcibly introducing antisemitic policy into Poland, the Nazis relied on fear and self-interest to accomplish their goals. For the average Polish Catholic in 1943, a decision had to be made on where they stood regarding the “Jewish problem”. Should they sit idly by and do nothing, or perhaps even assist in the capture of the Jews? Or maybe they could risk everything by hiding and otherwise aiding the Polish Jews. If I were such a Polish Catholic citizen living in 1943 and the opportunity arose to help a Polish Jew, my conscience would prevent me from doing any less.
Treated like dirt through a majority of his life is all Shep Zitler knew, he was born into a religious family and a tough culture surrounding him, the Holocaust effected his life to the extreme but along with all his suffering and the tragedies in his life the Holocaust did not take him. He stuck by his believes and made it out alive.
The Holocaust, one of humanities most horrendous acts and a large topic in the history of World War II. Led by the German National Socialists, the Holocaust was an attack on innocent people for reasons of race, sexuality, nationality, and religion with their main target being the millions of European Jews who they saw as an ‘inferior race’. Hitler and his higher up stripped Jews of everything. He took their money, their homes, their jobs, their nationality, their dignity, and eventually he took their lives. In Peter Longerich’s Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Longerich takes an in depth look at Nazi politics and how it eventually led to their Final Solution of the Jewish Question. His research that began in the late 1990s, when he questioned both schools of Holocaust studies, the Intentionalists and the Structuralists. His studies in Europe led to a novel that that outlines the entire history of the Holocaust, the ideas of Judenfrage, and the implementation of Judenpolitik on the Jews of Europe from 1933 to 1945.
The Jewish Holocaust is often described as the largest, most gruesome holocaust in history. It began in 1933 with the rise of Adolf Hitler and lasted nearly twelve years until the Nazi Party were defeated by the Allied powers in 1945. The expression “Holocaust” originated from Greece which is translated to “sacrifice by fire”. This is a very proper name considering the slaughter and carnage of Jewish people inflicted by the Nazis. In addition to the Jewish, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexual, and physically and mentally disabled were targeted by the Nazis. Although the numbers are not exact, it is estimated that approximately eleven-million people were killed during the Holocaust. This includes about six-million Jews and one-million children. The persecution begins on April 1, 1933 when Nazis initiated the first action against Jews. It began with a boycott of all Jewish businesses and only became more extreme as time went on. In September of 1935 Jews were excluded from public life and stripped of citizenship and marriage rights. This was an unprecedented action that was enforced by the German government through the Nuremberg Laws. Several other anti-Jewish laws were established during the buildup of World War II. During these dismal years, countless Jews were sent to “camps”. These “camps” ranged from concentration camps, extermination camps, labor camps, to prisoner of war camps. Nevertheless, all of these camps treated Jews inhumanly. Dachau, Germany was the home of
The Holocaust genocide lasted for approximately 4,482 days. There were nearly twelve years of planning and organizing the extermination of Jews in Europe. For most of those years, nearly all surrounding countries did not partake in assisting the survival of these Jews. Why? Why was there such insufficient help from countries around the world while the Holocaust had been occurring? Had other countries stepped in sooner to provide safety and rescue for the Jews, how different would history be?
Most everyone reflects on and thinks of the Holocaust as a horrifying, heartless slaughter of the Jews. The Holocaust can be a very hard, depressing issue to discuss but it is a major part of history and cannot be ignored. The Holocaust affected countless numbers of people in the past and it continues to affect many to this day. The Jewish population was the population that most affected the most through the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler had way too much power and he used that position of excessive power to nearly destroy the Jews.
Genocide has been around for many centuries. One of the most known happened in 1915 when residents of the Ottoman Empire were told to leave upon orders from the government. Due to the long and harsh travels, there was an enormous amount of disease trapped in the concentration camps. With that alone, there was an estimated amount of one million Armenians killed. Another example of genocide is when the Khmer Rouge took control of the Cambodian government in 1975. Citizens who were suspected of receiving an education were tortured at the Tuol Sleng prison. In four years, approximately two million Cambodians died in the “Killing Fields.” A Civil War in Rwanda aroused tension between the Tutsi minority and Hutu minority. When the Rwandan president’s plane was shot down, there was no doubt that a war was about to break out. The two minorities found themselves in the center of the conflict; in the end, the “outbreak” claimed the lives of an estimated 100,000 people. About a decade ago, the Sudan government showed an act of genocide when they murdered 300,000 Darfuri citizens and displacing two million. In addition to that, Native Americans died from colonial conflict, disease, and discrimination devastated their population. Within this time period, over nine million Natives died
During 1933 through 1945 the Holocaust occurred that took place in Germany. The Holocaust is one of the world's most well-known topic of genocide in modern history. During the Holocaust many people lives were perished because of brutal acts by Nazi’s and Germans. Once Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, many Jews were endangered to be killed. Until May 8, 1945, when the war in Europe ended. During the war many Jews were persecuted and would be killed. By 1933 there was a population of more than 9 million Jews in Europe and a large portion of they were killed in Germany or countries operated by Germany. The Nazis were also known as the National Socialist Party, they also complied with orders from Hitler. These
The term “Genocide,” produced by combining geno-, from the Greek word for race or tribe, with -cide, derived from the Latin word for killing, was created by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin following the horrors of World War II. Although the term “genocide” itself may have only been in existence for the past seventy-one years, acts of genocide have been known to happen as early as the 13th century. At long last, the United Nations declared genocide as an international crime, laying out its definition clearly in Article Two of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. “Genocide” would later be applied to the heinous acts of violence committed during conflicts
In the 1990s, the Rwandan population was about 14% Tutsis and 85 % Hutus (XXXXXXXX). This ethnic composition has remained similar since biblical times. As with most civil wars, the aversion between opposing sides, that precipitates the war is usually deeply entrenched. The hate between the Tutsis and the Hutus dates back to the 16th century. The hunter-gatherer Hutus were the original settlers of the Rwanda area around 1000AD, then new farming settlers called Tutsi set up their republic. The Tutsis had status, wealth and controlled the politics. Germans favored the Tutsi when they took control of the territory in 1884. Tutsis garnered favor with the racist Germans because they were taller and had lighter-skin.
The Rwandan Genocide was the most quickly escalated genocide of all time killing over 800,000 Rwandans in the span of 100 days. Raphael Lemkin invented the word genocide as a term of incrimination and defines it as “the extermination of racial and religious groups … racial, or religious groups”(Sands 2016, 188) The goal of the genocide that was conducted by the Hutu militias and government was to exterminate ethnic Tutsis. (United Nations 2012) The Hutu used the Tutsi as a scapegoat for the country's political, ideological, and economical problems that eventually led to the genocide. In addition, the Rwandan Genocide is also known as the most preventable genocide. Due to the international community's failure to recognize early warning signs and failure to recognize the genocide. All in all, factors of ethnic division, hardship, ideology, and an authoritarian regime led to the preventable Rwandan Genocide.