Oppression In The Holocaust And The Rwandan Genocide

Genocides happen when ethnic divisions become apparent. Many times, these ethnic divisions were due to colonization from people of different race. These cases are especially true in Africa when Europeans colonized their territory, with clear racial divisions between them (Gavin). These genocides go on because of nations acting on ignorance and refusing to help out the nations in turmoil, allowing the genocides to continue, without wasting their own resources. These nations purposefully ignoring the slaughter of people cause the nations to also be guilty of the genocide underway (“The Heart”). The genocide occurred in Rwanda in Central Africa during 1994. The decades of Tutsi oppression of Hutus and the assassination of President Habyarimana in 1994 led to the genocide in Rwanda.

The blood of thousands of murdered Tutsi people ran through the streets of Rwanda on April 7, 1994. Until mid-July of 1994, Hutu supremacists eradicated thousands of Tutsi. Nearly fifty years prior, Nazis claimed the lives of millions of Jews. Within the years that followed, the Nazi forces slaughtered millions of Jewish citizens across Europe. Both massacred by people they once considered friends and coworkers, Tutsi and Jews faced great injustice, but those are not the only similarities between the two genocides. It is evident that during both the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide, the rest of society turned a blind eye to the horrors that both Tutsi and Jews were facing, only kept their best interest in mind, and that both groups faced

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.

“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think” (Hitler, Mein Kampf). As time passed, there has been many times in history where a genocide has occurred. A genocide is a one-sided massacre from one party toward an ethnic or different group of people. As genocides occurred, questions such as “Why do people kill?” and “How can people allow these atrocities to occur?” are asked. There have been many theories made up as people researched the reason behind genocides. Throughout different centuries in history, genocides such as the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and the Asian genocide, have occurred because of the negative psychological effects on the people caused by propaganda, corrupted leaders, and differences in ethnic groups.

Reification refers to the categorization of people based on those anxieties from fears around conceptions of self-worth and status. Anxiety, a basic component of humanity, is recognized by its feeling of dread rather than its causes. Reification of others is born out of reification of oneself (Weisband, “Social Groupings”). It reduces the freedom and choices available, and it assumes that one is too stagnated to change, especially in comparison to others. This denies that all human freedom is similar. In denying the situatedness of the human condition, people develop the desire to create the uncreatable, and thus they reify themselves to confront anxieties over their own situatedness. As the freedom they have is not what they want, this leads to self-reification, self-contempt, self-denial, and self-disgust (Weisband, “Reification”). It is the beginning of hatred. The reified “self” judges the self in discipline. Similarly, the logic of illogic starts with reification, which develops feelings of supremacism which lead to racism, then racialization, then, finally, spatialization (Weisband, “Rwanda and Nativism”). These reflect the different modes of cultural development that rationalize self-contempt, self-rejection, and denial of self-worth. It represents the beginning of doctrines that aim to explain stereotypes, prejudice, and other forms of hatred (Weisband, “Social Groupings”).

Rwanda is a country located in the middle of the African continent. The two ethnic groups present in the country lived in peace under their monarch until the arrival of Europeans. The Belgians arrival into Rwandan is what split the two ethnic groups of the Tutsi and Hutus, making them identify themselves with ID cards. This caused tension between the two groups as the Belgians favored the ethnic Tutsi, and made them the head of the government. Decade’s later Hutu extremists would take over the government and have revenge on the Tutsi. The new government would send out broadcasts calling on Hutus to kill their friends and neighbors. The Rwandan genocide would become the worst genocide to ever happen in Africa and one of the worst in the world. Today Rwanda’s recovery is surprisingly fast with the help of multiple nations and organizations. Rwanda’s recovery is nothing short of a miracle and is an amazing story of a war between two peoples.

Throughout the course of history, mankind has had a desire to become rich and powerful. Infamously, men have tried nearly every tactic to acquire such goals. Concentration camps, massacres, and famines are just simply some of the tactics used. As seen in both the Cambodian, and Rwandan Genocides, manual labor, along with malnutrition were primarily the cause of death amongst the captives.

Throughout human history, mass killings have occurred on groups of people purely based on false stereotypes or rumors, built up aggression, power dominance, or physical attributions such as race. In the past 150 years, there has been a spike in the number of genocides, despite the culture that the killing takes place in. Therefore, it is impossible whether to deem these monstrous acts are of natural human, cultural, or sociological nature. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the causes, processes, and effects of the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide in terms of reification when comparing and contrasting the two horrific events. Additionally, elements of the logic of illogic and a doctrine of false concreteness will be discussed in an in-depth effort to uncover the mindset of these horrific atrocities.

Imagine walking through a rusted metal fence, a lingering smell in the air that never really went away. You look to your left and see Nazi soldiers beating a man in a worn out striped suit. You look to your right and see a bulldozer moving piles of pale bodies from one building to another. This was nothing out of the ordinary during the troubling times of World War II, and with this, there came genocide. This horrifying act was shown through the Holocaust and concentration camps; one of the most notorious being Auschwitz. Genocide is the intent to terminate an entire race or religion. For example, Hitler had a plan of genocide towards the Jews. Not only were the people who were born from Jewish descent were tortured, but the people who also

From January 8th, 1933 to May 8th, 1945 one of the world’s largest genocides in history occurred. More than seventy years ago the lives of millions were taken by Dictator Adolf Hitler and his officers. More than six million European Jews as well as members from other groups such as the gypsies and homosexuals lives were taken. In 1933 the Jewish European population stood at over nine million people. And by 1945 the Nazi regimen had killed two out of every three Jews as a part of what they called “The solution” in order to get rid of the “inferior race.”

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 world’s history has been tainted by many instances of violence targeted at specific groups of people due to either their ethnicity or beliefs. This paper will discuss the characteristics of the Rwanda Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust. The Rwanda Genocide targeted the Tutsis because of their ethnicity, while the Holocaust targeted the Jews because of their ethnicity and religion.

Another issue that arose during the genocide that is important was the fact that during the genocide many women were raped while men were out on killing sprees. Many of those women who were raped contracted HIV/AIDS. The medicine to treat HIV/AIDS is too expensive for the people of Rwanda to afford, so many have died. Some of the women who were raped did not contract HIV/AIDS but still struggle due to having friends that contracted it or were impregnated and are now raising children of their rapists. Acquaro (2005) presents the example of Severa Mukakinani whose husband and seven children were murdered during the genocide. She was then raped and impregnated and is now raising a daughter named Marie Chantal Akimana meaning “child of God”. Even

Genocide is a powerful word. International law requires intervention if something is deemed genocide. There is no doubt that the Holocaust is the most famous and most studied case of genocide, although there have been numerous throughout history. One of the more recent is the Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 people were killed (United Human Rights). The two have several similarities and differences in their origins, exterminations and aftermath.

When someone deliberately commits any crime or act of hatred towards another group of people in the hopes of revenge or elimination, it is known as a crime against humanity. These crimes result in death, extinction, and years of pain and suffrage for people whom the act has been committed against. The cases of the Holocaust, Nanjing Massacre, and Rwandan Genocide all fall under this category. The question is, if an organization such as the UN would have stepped in during these times of crisis, would these devastating crimes against humanity have been stopped or prevented?