Genocide is a horrific act that has occurred throughout history and continues to occur today. It is defined as the systematic extermination of a racial, ethnic, religious, or national group. The term was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer who fled the Nazi occupation of Poland and later became a United States citizen.
There have been numerous genocides throughout history, and it is important to compare and contrast them in order to better understand the causes and consequences of such acts of violence.
One example of a genocide is the Holocaust, which occurred during World War II and was perpetrated by the Nazi regime in Germany. The Holocaust targeted Jews, as well as other minority groups such as homosexuals, Romani people, and individuals with disabilities. Approximately six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, which represented about two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe at the time.
Another example of a genocide is the Armenian Genocide, which occurred during World War I and was perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire. The Armenian Genocide targeted the Armenian population living in the Ottoman Empire, resulting in the death of approximately 1.5 million Armenians. The Armenian Genocide is controversial, as it is not recognized as such by the government of Turkey, which successor state to the Ottoman Empire.
A more recent example of a genocide is the Rwandan Genocide, which occurred in 1994 and was perpetrated by the Hutu majority against the Tutsi minority in Rwanda. The Rwandan Genocide resulted in the death of approximately 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu.
When comparing these genocides, it is clear that they were all motivated by a desire to eliminate a particular group of people based on their identity. The Holocaust targeted Jews due to the anti-Semitic beliefs of the Nazi regime, the Armenian Genocide targeted Armenians due to their perceived threat to the Ottoman Empire, and the Rwandan Genocide targeted Tutsis due to longstanding ethnic tensions between the two groups.
Another commonality among these genocides is the use of propaganda to justify the extermination of the targeted group. The Nazi regime used propaganda to portray Jews as a threat to the German people, while the Ottoman Empire used propaganda to portray Armenians as a threat to the stability of the empire. In Rwanda, propaganda was used to portray Tutsis as the oppressors of the Hutu majority.
It is also important to note that these genocides were not carried out in isolation, but rather were facilitated by the political and social conditions of the time. The Holocaust occurred during a time of political instability and economic turmoil in Europe, while the Armenian Genocide occurred during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The Rwandan Genocide occurred during a time of political unrest and civil war in Rwanda.
In conclusion, genocides are horrific acts of violence that have occurred throughout history and continue to occur today. They are motivated by a desire to eliminate a particular group of people based on their identity, and are facilitated by the political and social conditions of the time. It is important to compare and contrast genocides in order to better understand the causes and consequences of such acts of violence and to work towards preventing them from occurring in the future.
[PDF] Comparing genocides: ‘numbers games’ and ‘holocausts’ at Jasenovac and Bleiburg
As mentioned, deportation was an effective way to exterminate the Greeks. Likewise, as readers and listeners, our own emotions of sympathy, shock, disbelief, horror, and hope for redemption in these stories are universal. A genocide is when one ethnic, racial, or religious group tries to destroy and eliminate another. Footnotes in source identify numbers as June 2012. Few perpetrators, with the notable exception of the Nazi regime, have left explicit plans detailing their intentions to eradicate groups. Reitlinger's early 1953 but carefully argued estimate of between 4,194,000 and 4,581,000 Jewish deaths is certainly the lowest ever offered by a serious historian; Hilberg's more recent, but even more carefully argued estimate of 5,100,000.
It may be that in order to combat the trivializers and the relativizers, some scholars have insisted on the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Understanding the impact of diverse memorial cultures, however, also raises the question of how they integrate or refuse to integrate into American master-narratives and if they offer redemptive conclusions on the prevention of future atrocities. In 1950, the Jewish population of Europe was about 3. China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. We strive to foster a discussion centered on comparisons to the Holocaust and between genocides, as the concept has been adopted both as an analytical category and a political idiom. Tens of thousands of Jews were exterminated each day in this manner.
A Comparison Of The Cambodian, And Rwandan Genocide
This can be most clearly observed in the comparative treatment of the Holocaust wherein two fallacies often occur. Our academic experts are ready and waiting to assist with any writing project you may have. Forcibly transferring children To qualify as genocide, the actions must be done with intent to eliminate an entire group of people. Civilians as well as local representatives helped capturing Tutsis and all those who stood in their way. Comparing these various forms of testimony necessitates engaging with a range of compositional contexts, in addition to a multiplicity of memory cultures and styles of memoriography. Although Genocide is relatively a newer term the act itself is hundreds and thousands of years old. Retrieved 2022-02-28— via Google Books.
It was carried out by Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Soviet state security and secret police, acting on behalf of Joseph Stalin. Towards the end of the war, when the Germans realised their defeat, they transported prisoners back into Germany and destroyed the concentration camps, in order to hide evidence of their existence. He who kills even one unbeliever of those who rule over us, whether he does it secretly or openly, shall be rewarded by God. Rwanda, in contrast, is located in sub-Saharan Africa, the most economically underdeveloped region of the world. We have developed a model that seeks to be mindful of both this range of source material as well as the practical limitations of historical pedagogy in high school classrooms. The Sentinelese people, for example, live on a remote Indian island, and have had no contact with the outside world for thousands of years, minus a few incidences of attempted outreach.
Comparing And Contrasting Two Examples Of Genocide History Essay
If we assume that Berzhe's middle figure of 50,000 was close to the number who survived to settle in the lowlands, then between 95 percent and 97 percent of all Circassians were killed outright, died during Evdokimov's campaign, or were deported. Cosmos Philly, a web-site with Greek-American news from Philadelphia, published a small but important analysis that sheds light to the Genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor by the Ottoman Turks. Stalin's hostility to the Ukrainians and their attempts to maintain their form of 'home rule' as well as his anger that Ukrainian peasants resisted collectivization fueled the killer famine. Other deaths occurred in ghettos and other labour camps. It lasted for 3 years from 1864 — 1867 claiming more than 1.
What’s the difference between genocide and ethnic cleansing?
Retrieved August 13, 2016. Fine, The Story of Reo Joe: Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown, U. Explain the Impact This Change Has Made on Our Lives and Why It Is an Important Change. However, the method of killing was different. I have estimated between 491,000 and 522,000 Tutsi, nearly two thirds of Rwanda's pre-genocide Tutsi population, were killed between 6 April and 19 July 1994. Concentration Camps and Ghettos: While Jews had been living in ghettos for centuries in Europe, the Nazis enforced a ghetto system for the Jews in order to isolate them for the purpose of persecution. What factors and methods allow for this implicit comparison between the Holocaust and other cases of mass violence? As we have noted, comparison between disparate atrocities bears several underlying complications.
Without suggesting a taxonomy or succession of these categories, we feel that most genocides include common themes that we discuss below , and our work relies on translating the emotions and events expressed in the testimony to these categories to allow for comparison. On the other hand, Germany was a highly educated society. Although the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has faced criticism for its failure to address crimes committed by the RPF, community courts have tried hundreds of thousands of genocide suspects in the past decade in a historically unprecedented grassroots effort at reconciliation. Notes 1 "What is Genocide," United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed August 18, 2015, 2 Turkey's denial of the category "genocide" to the mass violence committed against the Armenians in its history is the clearest example of such an occurrence, see for example Caleb Lauer, "For Turkey the denying an Armenian genocide is a question of identity," Al Jazeera America, last modified April 24, 2015, 3 Brenda Melendy, "World History Analysis and the Comparative Study of Genocide," World History Connected 9, no. According to the American Jewish Yearbook, the Jewish population of Europe was about 9.
This removal may come in many forms but it usually involves mass killing of innocent people. Perspectives on Comparative Genocide Philadelphia: Westview Press, 2009 , 247. Some estimates of the democide i. Rubenstein is the Northeast regional director of The Unknown Black Book: The Holocaust in the German-Occupied Soviet Territories. Take them and kill them whenever you find them. They were one of the ten ethnicities who were encompassed by Stalin's policy of population transfer in the Soviet Union.
Why the Holocaust is different than other genocides
The death toll in these battalions was as high as 90%, as men were sent into the interior of Asia Minor and made to do back breaking work with little food or water. This intersection raises important questions on how Holocaust language and research can be utilized to analyze other instances of mass violence and their memory without imposition. However, for Bosnia we found the opposite: a negative correlation between foreign aid and growth. This did not please the Hutu. Twenty years after Bosnia and Rwanda, it is clear that political choices matter.