Genocides Past and Present Essay

“Why is the killing of 1 million a lesser crime then the killing of one

Ian Kershaw empathetically states that “The Holocaust was the systematic, extermination of six million Jews by the Nazi government and their allies during World War II.” He further add that it wasn’t until after Adolph Hitler “became Chancellor of the German government, he began targeting the Jews as racially inferior to the German people (Kershaw, 1985).

For years, Rwanda has been a hotbed of racial tension. The majority of the Rwandan population is made up of Hutu's, with Tutsi's making up the rest of it. Ever since European colonial powers entered the country and favoured the Tutsi ethnic group over the Hutu by putting Tutsi people in all important positions in society, there has been a decisive political divide between the two groups. This favouring of the Tutsi over the Hutu, and the Hutu subjugation as an ethnic lower class resulted in the civil war and revolution of 1959, where the Hutu overthrew the Tutsi dominated government, and resulted in Rwanda gaining their independence in 1962.

The holocaust was the mass murder of 6 million European Jews by the German Nazi regime during World War 2. Adolf Hitler hated the Jews and blamed them for Germany losing World War I. He considered Jewish people to be less than human. Hitler also believed in the superiority of the Aryan race. Once he became chancellor of Germany, Hitler took away all of the Jews rights as human beings. Hitler forced the Jews to live in ghettos. The Jews would be transferred to concentration camps, where they would do hard labor. The Jews died in the concentration camps by diseases, starvation, or the cold. Some camps had gas

According to Daniel Goldhagen, genocides are constantly being underestimated, which causes the never ending realities of the past repeating itself. From high officials to ordinary citizens, people often overlook the pattern and causes of these systematic killings. One of these includes the UN, which was created to prevent another World War, and to protect the rights of sovereignty of member states. This organization serves to solve international issues, but has failed and continues to fail to prevent genocides. Even though this group signed in 1948 a UN document, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which punished and still punishes people guilty of genocide, not one life was ever saved from that declaration. The reason is because most at first want to deny that these extreme situations could happen ever again. Sadly,

6 million exterminated. That number rolls off of our tongues as we sit and learn history in the 6th grade, or we write a paper on WW1. How about 800,000 murdered in 100 days, while Americans attempted to keep our troops of the conflict yet watched the bloody images daily on CNN. Genocide in our world is something that is impossible to justify or embrace, but we must attempt to understand it. It is only through this understanding will we be able to prevent or stop one of the most horrific acts man can do in the future. Genocide, in both the Holocaust and in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, is grounded in self-reification and the external reification of others. This then, when put into certain contexts, can manifest itself in a

The holocaust was the systematic, state-organized persecution and murder of at least six million jews. 100 days after Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Nazis began having book burnings to get rid of un-German writings proclaiming the death of Jewish intellectualism. This was one of the first acts that foreshadowed the destruction Hitler would have in Germany. Since Hitler and the Nazis felt that all Jewish peoples made Germany impure, their goal was to put an end to the existence of all Jews. Nazis required the elimination of Jews from German life. Their first nationwide action against

Darfur is the western region of the African country of Sudan. Currently, the people of Darfur have been continually attacked by the Sudanese army and by proxy-militia controlled by the Sudanese government. Families are being uprooted and starved, children tormented and murdered by the thousands and women raped without punishment. Innocent civilians in Darfur continue to be victims of unthinkable brutality. Many people have become homeless and seek protection in refugee camps in Chad. Yet despite its outward appearance, Darfur has a vast ethnic diversity and a complex, ancient system of resolving conflict. Genocide has occurred in several places around the world, but in Darfur there are certain reasons why it

Genocide, it is not just murder, it is extermination. The world has lost an abounding amount of lives due to the vicious acts of genocide. There have been many ‘preventive’ measures being performed such as the conference in Montreal held in 2007. At said conference the United Nations (officials) not only spoke about preventing genocide, they also listened to 75 year-old, Marika Nene. Nene experienced the anti-gypsy massacres that occurred during World War II. “I had no choice. I had to give myself up to the soldiers (...) they violated me. I still have nightmares about it.” Genocide has affected millions of lives and Marika Nene is just one of them. Many have often inquired the following question, ‘can the world resolve the problem of genocide?’

In recent times, the media has highlighted the genocide that has been occurring in Darfur, Sudan. Darfur, Sudan is a country roughly the size of the state of Texas (Darfur Scores, n.d.). Genocide is the systematic killing of an entire ethnic group of people from a national, ethnic, or religious group, or an attempt to do away with them all (Darfur Scores, n.d.). Beginning around 2003, according to Darfur Scores (n.d.), “the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia have used rape, displacement, organized starvation, threats against aid workers and mass murder. Violence, disease, and displacement continue to kill thousands of innocent Darfurians every month.”

Propaganda was an elaborate and essential tool used extensively by Hitler and the Nazi's as well as the Hutu's during their terrorizing reign of Germany and throughout Europe and the Hutu's horrific acts of genocide that happened because of a culmination of deep ethnic tensions brewing over a century and intense political corruption. Not only was it used to promote and endorse the party and its leader's extreme racist values but also to mask the horrifying truths of what was to become known as the Holocaust and the Rwanda Genocides.

The crime of genocide is one of the most devastating human tragedies throughout the history. And the word genocide refers to an organised destruction to a specific group of people who belongs to the same culture, ethnic, racial, religious, or national group often in a war situation. Similar to mass killing, where anyone who is related to the particular group regardless their age, gender and ethnic background becomes the killing targets, genocide involves in more depth towards destroying people’s identity and it usually consists a fine thorough plan prearranged in order to demolish the unwanted group due to political reasons mostly. While the term genocide had only been created recently in 1943 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish legal

males to be precious and more prestigious than the females. The birth of a boy

The Holocaust was an ultimate abomination of Nazi racism that occurred between 1938 and 1945. The word Holocaust derived from the Greek word holokauston, which stands for a burnt sacrifice that is offered whole to God. The word was chosen for this occurrence because of the amount of dead bodies that were cremated in open fires by Nazis. The Holocaust was known for the mass murders of European Jews that took place during the Second World War. European Jews were the fundamental victims during the Holocaust and seemed to be the most targeted. In 1933, approximately nine million Jews lived in Europe and settle in 21 different countries. It eventually would be seized by Germany during the Second World War. By 1945, around five or six million European Jews had been brutally murdered. A majority of them died in concentration camps that were build primarily for Jews. However, Jews were not the only victims that were persecuted by Hitler’s and his Nazi regime. A half million Gypsies, mentally or physically disabled persons, and Soviet prisoners from war were also discriminated victims to Hitler’s Nazi genocide. Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals were also persecuted in Europe.

Genocide is “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, ethnic, political, or cultural group”. In Rwanda for example, the Hutu-led government embraced a new program that called for the country’s Hutu people to murder anyone that was a Tutsi (Gourevitch, 6). This new policy of one ethnic group (Hutu) that was called upon to murder another ethnic group (Tutsi) occurred during April through June of 1994 and resulted in the genocide of approximately 800,000 innocent people that even included women and children of all ages. In this paper I will first analyze the origins/historical context regarding the discontent amongst the Hutu and Tutsi people as well as the historical context as to why major players in the international