Genocides Of The Twentieth Century Essay
Name
Mr. McCann
Honors World History 22 March 2014
Genocides of the Twentieth Century
Genocide is defined in Article 2 of the Convention of the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide (1948) as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in a whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group; as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part: imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” (un.org) Two factors that are necessary for genocide are, difficult …show more content…
times and a need for a psychological coping mechanism. Cultures that institute a policy of genocide normally do so in an effort to emerge from difficult times. The people within the culture blame the problems on a fraction of the population. The majority forms a belief that by eliminating this fraction they can reduce their problems. (www.discovery.com) These kinds of beliefs have lead to many genocides, most popular the Armenian Genocide of 1915, The Holocaust of WWII, The Cambodian Genocide of the 1970’s, and the Rwandan Genocide of the 1990’s.
After the arrival of Christianity, Armenia became the first nation to accept it as the state religion. An era of peace and prosperity followed; this caused the invention of a distinct alphabet, the prosper of literature, art ,commerce, and a unique style of architecture. By the tenth century the Armenians had established a new capital at Ani, known as the “city of a thousand and one churches.” In the eleventh century, the first Turkish invasion of the Armenian homeland occurred, beginning several hundred years of rule by Muslim Turks. By the sixteenth century, Armenia had been added to the vast, and mighty, Ottoman Empire. By the nineteenth century the once powerful Ottoman Empire was in a serious decline.As the empire gradually ended, formally subject people, including the Greeks, Serbs and Romanians achieved their long-awaited independence. Only the Armenians and the Arabs of the Middle East remained stuck in the backward and nearly bankrupt empire, now under the autocratic rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid. (United Human Rights Council)
By the 1890s, young Armenians, educated in the universities of Europe began to press for political reforms in the Ottoman Empire, calling for a constitutional government, the right to vote and an end to discriminatory practices such as special taxes levied only against them because they were Christians. The despotic Turkish Sultan responded to their pleas with brutal persecutions and massacres. Between 1894 and 1896 over 100,000 inhabitants of Armenian villages were slaughtered during widespread pogroms conducted by the Sultan’s special regiments. In July 1908, reform-minded Turkish nationalists known as ‘Young Turks’ forced the Sultan to allow a constitutional government and guarantee basic rights. The Young Turks were ambitious junior officers in the Turkish Army who hoped to halt their country’s steady decline. Armenians in Turkey were delighted with this sudden turn of events and its prospects for a brighter future. Both Turks and Armenians held jubilant public rallies attended with banners held high calling for freedom, equality and justice. ( United Human Rights Council)
However, their hopes were dashed when three of the Young Turks seized full control of the government via a coup in 1913. This new empire however, would have to come at the expense of the Armenian people, whose traditional historic homeland lay right in the path of the Young Turks’ plans to expand eastward. And on that land was a large population of Christian Armenians totaling some two million persons, making up about 10 percent of the Empire’s overall population. Along with the Young Turk’s newfound ‘Turanism’ there was a dramatic rise in Islamic fundamentalist agitation throughout Turkey. Young Islamic extremists, sometimes leading to violence, staged anti-Armenian demonstrations. ( United Human Rights Council)
When World War I began in 1914, leaders of the Young Turk regime sided with the Central Powers, Austria-Hungary and Germany. This war would be the perfect time to solve the ‘Armenian question’ for the Young Turks. All around the world, eyes would be on the battlegrounds of Europe, were hundreds of thousands were falling, so nobody would think unusual measures involving civilian population to be too out of the ordinary. As a precaution, the Turks disarmed the entire Armenian population, saying that they were naturally sympathetic towards Christian Russia. Every weapon was forcibly taken, and those who failed to turn in their weapons were severely punished. Many Armenian men, who did not own weapons, actually bought some, out of fear, from local Turks, at very high prices, to have something to turn in.
During this time, around forty thousand Armenian men were serving in the war. In 1914, their weapons were also seized and they were either put to work in slave labor, or were used as“human pack animals”, due to these brutal conditions they suffered very high death rates. Those who did survive were later shot, as the genocide began.
The initial decision to end the entire Armenian population was made by the Young Turks. The extermination orders were sent to all the political governors in coded telegrams.on April 24, 1915, the armed round ups began; three hundred Armenian political leaders, educators, writers, clergy and dignitaries in Costantinople were taken, jailed, tortured, and then killed. After this there were many mass arrest of Armenian men throughout the country. The men were tied together in small groups, taken to the outskirts of their town then killed by death squads, though many times local Turks and Kurds with knifes and sticks joined the killings. Then it was the Armenian women, children, and elderly. They were ordered to pack a few belongings and then left their homes, under the false pretext that they were being moved to a non-military zone for safety. In reality however, they were being sent on death marches towards the Syrian dessert. Their deserted homes were quickly occupied by Muslim Turks; many times these Turks spared young Armenian children by taking them from their families, convincing them to convert to Islam, and changing their names. Those who weren 't so lucky were escorted in large caravans consisting of thousands of Armenians.
Over a million Armenians, who covered hundreds of miles for moths, were involved in the death marches. Indirect routes were deliberately taken to prolong the ordeal, the were denied food and water once they ran out, and those who could no longer keep up were shot. Many times they were forced to march in the nude until they dropped dead from dehydration. Others were drowned in rivers, thrown off of cliffs, crucified, or burned alive. Criminals known as the “Special Organization” were allowed to attack the defenseless people, killing anyone they pleased. Kurdish bandits were also encouraged to raid the caravans. Those who had it the worst were most limey the women, there was an extraordinary amount of sexual abuse and rape at the hands of the Special Organization and Kurdish bandits, many young women were kidnapped for a life of slavery.
The Ottoman Empire collapsed on October 30, 1918; the violence however continued until 1923, when almost all of the Armenians had been eliminated. Scholars estimate that as many as 1.5 million Armenians were killed, and tens of thousands displaced, due to the genocide. (“Armenian Genocide| World Without Genocide”) Less than a year later the Armenian genocide influenced Adolf hitlers request to eliminate the Jews.
After World War I the Germans resented the world; they were forced to sign the Treat of Versailles. this treaty stripped the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire) of substantial territories and imposed significant reparation payments. Germany was specifically targeted and was forced to concede territories to Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. The treaty demanded demilitarization and occupation of the Rhineland, and special status for the Saarland under French control. Plebiscites were to determine the future of areas in northern Schleswig on the Danish-German frontier and parts of Upper Silesia on the border with Poland. The most humiliating portion of the treaty was the “War Guilt Clause,” which forced Germany to accept complete responsibility for causing World War I. Then German army was to be limited to 100,000 men, and conscription proscribed; the treatyrestricted the Navy to vessels under 100,000 tons, with a ban on the acquisition or maintenance of a submarine fleet. (“Treaty of Versailles, 1919”)
In the early 1930’s the worldwide economic depression had hit the already struggling country hard , and millions were out of work. Still fresh in their kids was the humiliating defeat of Germany years earlier, and the German population was looking for a new strong leader. Thus the rise of Adolf Hitler, and his party. The party’s rise to power was rapid, in 1933 Hitler was appointed the Chancellor of Germany. (“Hitler Comes to Power”) Soon Hitler started to blame the Jewish population for all of Germany’s misfortunes; the German population believed him, as they all wanted someone to blame. (historylearningsite.co)
In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. By 1945, the Germans and their allies killed nearly two thirds of the European Jewish population, as part of the “Final Solution”. Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly Germans, living in institutional settings, were murdered. (ushmm.org)
During the Holocaust many inhuman things occurred. In the beginning of the war, while the concentration camps were being built, thousands of Jews were forced into ghettos. Life in the ghettos was usually unbearable, overcrowding was common. Contagious diseases spread rapidly in such cramped, unsanitary housing. (ushmm.org) To differentiate between Jews and non-Jews, the Nazis forced the Jews to wear Star of David bands on their coat sleeves. A death penalty was enforced on any Jew caught trying to escape the ghetto, or any non-Jew who tried to help Jews in any way. Although there were Jews who tried to fight against the Nazis, they quickly ran out of supplies, they were swiftly caught and punished, killed or taken to prison. (www.holocaustcenterpgh.org)
Soon after the concentration camps were built Jews in the ghettos were transported to them. These trips often took days, eighty people were crammed into cattle cars, with no openings, and they were only given a small amount of bread and water, whose bucket ask doubled as a place for human waste. Thirteen year old, Polish Jew David described his experience, “There is no room to sit. In order to make room we are forced to stand with our hands above our heads.... Suddenly, the door is slammed shut and sealed. A water bucket is tossed into the car for use as a disposal container for human waste.” By the time they arrived at the camps many would have already died in the cars, due to inhumane conditions. (www.theholocaustexplained.org)
Camps were an essential part of the Nazis’ systematic oppression and mass murder of Jews, political adversaries, and other considered socially and racially undesirable. There were multiple types of camps: concentration camps, forced labor camps, extermination or death camps, transit camps, and prisoner-of-war camps. All camps however had brutal living conditions. Upon arrival at the camps,men, women , and children were separated; they were then registered and given numbers before their hair was cut off, they were cleaned with gasoline, and given stripped uniforms to wear. The daily routines inside the camps were all designed to reduce the number of prisoners.After an early wake-up, daily concentration camp routines would begin with the Appells, the daily roll call. During the Appell prisoners had to stand in rows, completely still, for hours at a time, and in all weathers. Long lists of orders and instructions would be read out. The number of prisoners would be counted. Often, the Kappos would announce that the total number of prisoners in a block was inaccurate, leading to a recount at the whim of the SS. After waking and before roll call, up to 2,000 prisoners at a time would have to share toilet facilities. The toilet would be a concrete or wooden board with often 100 holes for seats. No privacy and no real sanitation was provided. Prisoners would have to wash in dirty water, without soap and with no change of clothes for weeks or months on end.After eating a meagre ration of watery soup, a piece of bread and some imitation coffee, a prisoner’s day would follow with work details. (theholocaustexplained.org)
The Holocaust lasted for 12 years, until 1945. Starting as early as 1944, the Allies were advancing on the Germans finally and they began taking over their camps. In July 1944, Maidanek, a camp in Poland, was liberated by the Soviets. This was followed by many more liberations and takeovers as the Americans and other Allies slowly removed Hitler from power. In January 1945, Auschwitz was liberated. This was the biggest camp in the Nazi territory and it was also the one where the most deaths occurred. The liberation of this camp was a major milestone in the end of the Holocaust.(hitlerschildren.com)
By the end of the war, there were some 50,000 to 100,000 survivors that were living in occupied Europe. Within just a year after the removal of Adolf Hitler from power, that number quickly climbed to over 200,000 survivors. Camps were built for Jewish displaced persons, who couldn 't return to their homes because of the horror and threats of danger from lingering anti- Semitic residents of the countries. They were emigrated to Israel, Palestine, and the United States primarily, while some went to other countries. These camps were in existence until 1957 when all the DPs (displaced persons) had been re-homed.(hitlerschildren.com)
 The next genocide of the century was the Cambodian genocide, which occurred between in the 1970’s. Between the years of 1975 and 1979the khmer Rouge, under the control of Pol Pot’s, overthrew the government and seized power of Cambodia.Civil war had existed in Cambodia since 1970. Between 1970 and 1973, during the Vietnam War, the United States bombed much of the countryside of Cambodia and manipulated Cambodian politics to support the rise of pro-West Lon Nol as the leader of Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge used the United States’ actions to recruit followers and as an excuse for the brutal policies they exercised when in power. The Khmer Rouge’s polices were guided by its belief that the citizens of Cambodia had been tainted by exposure to outside ideas, especially by the capitalist West. The Khmer Rouge persecuted the educated: doctors, lawyers, and current or former military and police. Christian, Buddhist and Muslim citizens also were specifically targeted. In an effort to create a society without competition, in which people worked for the common good, the Khmer Rouge placed people in collective living arrangements and enacted “re-education” programs to encourage the commune lifestyle. People were divided into categories that reflected the trust that the Khmer Rouge had for them; the most trustworthy were called “old citizens.” The pro-West and city dwellers began as “new citizens” and could move up to “deportees,” then “candidates” and finally “full rights citizens”; however, most citizens never moved up. Those who refused re- education were killed in the fields surrounding the commune or at the infamous prison camp Tuol Sleng Centre, known as S-21. (www.hmh.org)
The population must, they believed, be made to work as labourers in one huge federation of collective farms. All political and civil rights were abolished. Children were taken from their parents and placed in separate forced labour camps.Religion was banned, all leading Buddhist monks were killed and almost all temples destroyed. Music and radio sets were also banned. It was possible for people to be shot simply for knowing a foreign language, wearing glasses, laughing, or crying. People who escaped murder became unpaid labourers, working on minimum rations and for impossibly long hours. They slept and ate in uncomfortable communes deliberately chosen to be as far as possible from their old homes. Over four years, the Khmer Rouge killed more than 1.7 million people through work, starvation and torture. (www.ppu.org)
On December 25, 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia seeking to end Khmer Rouge border attacks. On January 7, 1979, Phnom Penh fell and Pol Pot was deposed. The Vietnamese then installed a puppet government consisting of Khmer Rouge defectors. Pol Pot retreated into Thailand with the remnants of his Khmer Rouge army and began a guerrilla war against a succession of Cambodian governments lasting over the next 17 years. After a series of internal power struggles in the 1990s, he finally lost control of the Khmer Rouge. In April 1998, 73-year-old Pol Pot died of an apparent heart attack following his arrest, before he could be brought to trial by an international tribunal for the events of 1975-79. (www.historyplace.com)
On April 6 1994 the plane carrying Rwanda 's president was shot down, almost certainly the work of an extremist. This was the trigger needed for the Hutus ' planned 'Final Solution ' to go into operation. The Tutsis were accused of killing the president, and Hutu civilians were told, by radio and word of mouth, that it was their duty to wipe the Tutsis out. First, though, moderate Hutus who weren 't anti-Tutsi should be killed. So should Tutsi wives or husbands.(www.ppu.org)
Almost one million people died before the RPF ( Rwandan Patriotic Front) was able to take full control. Unlike the instigators of previous genocides nobody tried to keep the Rwanda genocide a secret. In-fact journalist and television cameras reported what they saw, and what they found after the genocide was over. There was even a UN force in place, monitoring the ceasefire and had to watch as people were killed in the streets by grenades, guns, and machetes. The genocide organizers were conscious of the risks of international scrutiny: over the radio the killers were constantly incited to continue, but 'No more corpses on the roads, please '. Corpses in the countryside were covered with banana leaves to screen them from aerial photography. (www.ppu.org)
Although on a large scale, this genocide was carried out entirely by hand, often using machetes and clubs. The men who 'd been trained to massacre were members of civilian death squads, the Interahamwe ( 'those who fight together '). Transport and fuel supplies were laid on for the Interahamwe - even remote areas were catered for. Where the killers encountered opposition, the Army backed them up with manpower and weapons. The State provided Hutu Power 's supporting organisation; politicians, officials, intellectuals and professional soldiers deliberately incited (and where necessary bribed) the killers to do their work. Local officials assisted in rounding up victims.The victims, in their last moments alive, were also faced by another appalling fact: their cold-blooded killers were people they knew, neighbors, coworkers, former friends, sometimes even relatives through marriage.(www.ppu.org)
There 'd been at least 10 clear warnings to the UN of the 'Hutu power ' action, including an anxious telegram from the UNAMIR commander to the then UN Secretary- General (Boutros Boutros Ghali) three months before the event. The UN Security Council met in secret after the start of the violence. At this meeting Britain urged that UNAMIR should pull out, and later blocked an American proposal to send in a fact-finding mission when the death toll had reached six figures. Council members resisted admitting 'that the mass murder being pursued in front of the global media was in fact genocide ': genocide involved action no-one wanted to take. Once it was inescapably clear that genocide was indeed going on, it was too late. (www.ppu.org)
The Armenian Genocide of 1915, The Holocaust of WWII, The Cambodian Genocide of the 1970’s, and the Rwandan Genocide of the 1990’s were all caused because of two main factors that caused a single belief by the majority, that by eliminating the minority their problems would be reduced. Genocide is a terrible, atrocious, inexcusable act and should never be allowed to occur, and if it does occur then it should be ended by other nations as soon as possible.
Word Count: 3,437
Works Cited
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Mr. McCann
Honors World History 22 March 2014
Genocides of the Twentieth Century
Genocide is defined in Article 2 of the Convention of the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide (1948) as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in a whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group; as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part: imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” (un.org) Two factors that are necessary for genocide are, difficult …show more content…
times and a need for a psychological coping mechanism. Cultures that institute a policy of genocide normally do so in an effort to emerge from difficult times. The people within the culture blame the problems on a fraction of the population. The majority forms a belief that by eliminating this fraction they can reduce their problems. (www.discovery.com) These kinds of beliefs have lead to many genocides, most popular the Armenian Genocide of 1915, The Holocaust of WWII, The Cambodian Genocide of the 1970’s, and the Rwandan Genocide of the 1990’s.
After the arrival of Christianity, Armenia became the first nation to accept it as the state religion. An era of peace and prosperity followed; this caused the invention of a distinct alphabet, the prosper of literature, art ,commerce, and a unique style of architecture. By the tenth century the Armenians had established a new capital at Ani, known as the “city of a thousand and one churches.” In the eleventh century, the first Turkish invasion of the Armenian homeland occurred, beginning several hundred years of rule by Muslim Turks. By the sixteenth century, Armenia had been added to the vast, and mighty, Ottoman Empire. By the nineteenth century the once powerful Ottoman Empire was in a serious decline.As the empire gradually ended, formally subject people, including the Greeks, Serbs and Romanians achieved their long-awaited independence. Only the Armenians and the Arabs of the Middle East remained stuck in the backward and nearly bankrupt empire, now under the autocratic rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid. (United Human Rights Council)
By the 1890s, young Armenians, educated in the universities of Europe began to press for political reforms in the Ottoman Empire, calling for a constitutional government, the right to vote and an end to discriminatory practices such as special taxes levied only against them because they were Christians. The despotic Turkish Sultan responded to their pleas with brutal persecutions and massacres. Between 1894 and 1896 over 100,000 inhabitants of Armenian villages were slaughtered during widespread pogroms conducted by the Sultan’s special regiments. In July 1908, reform-minded Turkish nationalists known as ‘Young Turks’ forced the Sultan to allow a constitutional government and guarantee basic rights. The Young Turks were ambitious junior officers in the Turkish Army who hoped to halt their country’s steady decline. Armenians in Turkey were delighted with this sudden turn of events and its prospects for a brighter future. Both Turks and Armenians held jubilant public rallies attended with banners held high calling for freedom, equality and justice. ( United Human Rights Council)
However, their hopes were dashed when three of the Young Turks seized full control of the government via a coup in 1913. This new empire however, would have to come at the expense of the Armenian people, whose traditional historic homeland lay right in the path of the Young Turks’ plans to expand eastward. And on that land was a large population of Christian Armenians totaling some two million persons, making up about 10 percent of the Empire’s overall population. Along with the Young Turk’s newfound ‘Turanism’ there was a dramatic rise in Islamic fundamentalist agitation throughout Turkey. Young Islamic extremists, sometimes leading to violence, staged anti-Armenian demonstrations. ( United Human Rights Council)
When World War I began in 1914, leaders of the Young Turk regime sided with the Central Powers, Austria-Hungary and Germany. This war would be the perfect time to solve the ‘Armenian question’ for the Young Turks. All around the world, eyes would be on the battlegrounds of Europe, were hundreds of thousands were falling, so nobody would think unusual measures involving civilian population to be too out of the ordinary. As a precaution, the Turks disarmed the entire Armenian population, saying that they were naturally sympathetic towards Christian Russia. Every weapon was forcibly taken, and those who failed to turn in their weapons were severely punished. Many Armenian men, who did not own weapons, actually bought some, out of fear, from local Turks, at very high prices, to have something to turn in.
During this time, around forty thousand Armenian men were serving in the war. In 1914, their weapons were also seized and they were either put to work in slave labor, or were used as“human pack animals”, due to these brutal conditions they suffered very high death rates. Those who did survive were later shot, as the genocide began.
The initial decision to end the entire Armenian population was made by the Young Turks. The extermination orders were sent to all the political governors in coded telegrams.on April 24, 1915, the armed round ups began; three hundred Armenian political leaders, educators, writers, clergy and dignitaries in Costantinople were taken, jailed, tortured, and then killed. After this there were many mass arrest of Armenian men throughout the country. The men were tied together in small groups, taken to the outskirts of their town then killed by death squads, though many times local Turks and Kurds with knifes and sticks joined the killings. Then it was the Armenian women, children, and elderly. They were ordered to pack a few belongings and then left their homes, under the false pretext that they were being moved to a non-military zone for safety. In reality however, they were being sent on death marches towards the Syrian dessert. Their deserted homes were quickly occupied by Muslim Turks; many times these Turks spared young Armenian children by taking them from their families, convincing them to convert to Islam, and changing their names. Those who weren 't so lucky were escorted in large caravans consisting of thousands of Armenians.
Over a million Armenians, who covered hundreds of miles for moths, were involved in the death marches. Indirect routes were deliberately taken to prolong the ordeal, the were denied food and water once they ran out, and those who could no longer keep up were shot. Many times they were forced to march in the nude until they dropped dead from dehydration. Others were drowned in rivers, thrown off of cliffs, crucified, or burned alive. Criminals known as the “Special Organization” were allowed to attack the defenseless people, killing anyone they pleased. Kurdish bandits were also encouraged to raid the caravans. Those who had it the worst were most limey the women, there was an extraordinary amount of sexual abuse and rape at the hands of the Special Organization and Kurdish bandits, many young women were kidnapped for a life of slavery.
The Ottoman Empire collapsed on October 30, 1918; the violence however continued until 1923, when almost all of the Armenians had been eliminated. Scholars estimate that as many as 1.5 million Armenians were killed, and tens of thousands displaced, due to the genocide. (“Armenian Genocide| World Without Genocide”) Less than a year later the Armenian genocide influenced Adolf hitlers request to eliminate the Jews.
After World War I the Germans resented the world; they were forced to sign the Treat of Versailles. this treaty stripped the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire) of substantial territories and imposed significant reparation payments. Germany was specifically targeted and was forced to concede territories to Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. The treaty demanded demilitarization and occupation of the Rhineland, and special status for the Saarland under French control. Plebiscites were to determine the future of areas in northern Schleswig on the Danish-German frontier and parts of Upper Silesia on the border with Poland. The most humiliating portion of the treaty was the “War Guilt Clause,” which forced Germany to accept complete responsibility for causing World War I. Then German army was to be limited to 100,000 men, and conscription proscribed; the treatyrestricted the Navy to vessels under 100,000 tons, with a ban on the acquisition or maintenance of a submarine fleet. (“Treaty of Versailles, 1919”)
In the early 1930’s the worldwide economic depression had hit the already struggling country hard , and millions were out of work. Still fresh in their kids was the humiliating defeat of Germany years earlier, and the German population was looking for a new strong leader. Thus the rise of Adolf Hitler, and his party. The party’s rise to power was rapid, in 1933 Hitler was appointed the Chancellor of Germany. (“Hitler Comes to Power”) Soon Hitler started to blame the Jewish population for all of Germany’s misfortunes; the German population believed him, as they all wanted someone to blame. (historylearningsite.co)
In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. By 1945, the Germans and their allies killed nearly two thirds of the European Jewish population, as part of the “Final Solution”. Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly Germans, living in institutional settings, were murdered. (ushmm.org)
During the Holocaust many inhuman things occurred. In the beginning of the war, while the concentration camps were being built, thousands of Jews were forced into ghettos. Life in the ghettos was usually unbearable, overcrowding was common. Contagious diseases spread rapidly in such cramped, unsanitary housing. (ushmm.org) To differentiate between Jews and non-Jews, the Nazis forced the Jews to wear Star of David bands on their coat sleeves. A death penalty was enforced on any Jew caught trying to escape the ghetto, or any non-Jew who tried to help Jews in any way. Although there were Jews who tried to fight against the Nazis, they quickly ran out of supplies, they were swiftly caught and punished, killed or taken to prison. (www.holocaustcenterpgh.org)
Soon after the concentration camps were built Jews in the ghettos were transported to them. These trips often took days, eighty people were crammed into cattle cars, with no openings, and they were only given a small amount of bread and water, whose bucket ask doubled as a place for human waste. Thirteen year old, Polish Jew David described his experience, “There is no room to sit. In order to make room we are forced to stand with our hands above our heads.... Suddenly, the door is slammed shut and sealed. A water bucket is tossed into the car for use as a disposal container for human waste.” By the time they arrived at the camps many would have already died in the cars, due to inhumane conditions. (www.theholocaustexplained.org)
Camps were an essential part of the Nazis’ systematic oppression and mass murder of Jews, political adversaries, and other considered socially and racially undesirable. There were multiple types of camps: concentration camps, forced labor camps, extermination or death camps, transit camps, and prisoner-of-war camps. All camps however had brutal living conditions. Upon arrival at the camps,men, women , and children were separated; they were then registered and given numbers before their hair was cut off, they were cleaned with gasoline, and given stripped uniforms to wear. The daily routines inside the camps were all designed to reduce the number of prisoners.After an early wake-up, daily concentration camp routines would begin with the Appells, the daily roll call. During the Appell prisoners had to stand in rows, completely still, for hours at a time, and in all weathers. Long lists of orders and instructions would be read out. The number of prisoners would be counted. Often, the Kappos would announce that the total number of prisoners in a block was inaccurate, leading to a recount at the whim of the SS. After waking and before roll call, up to 2,000 prisoners at a time would have to share toilet facilities. The toilet would be a concrete or wooden board with often 100 holes for seats. No privacy and no real sanitation was provided. Prisoners would have to wash in dirty water, without soap and with no change of clothes for weeks or months on end.After eating a meagre ration of watery soup, a piece of bread and some imitation coffee, a prisoner’s day would follow with work details. (theholocaustexplained.org)
The Holocaust lasted for 12 years, until 1945. Starting as early as 1944, the Allies were advancing on the Germans finally and they began taking over their camps. In July 1944, Maidanek, a camp in Poland, was liberated by the Soviets. This was followed by many more liberations and takeovers as the Americans and other Allies slowly removed Hitler from power. In January 1945, Auschwitz was liberated. This was the biggest camp in the Nazi territory and it was also the one where the most deaths occurred. The liberation of this camp was a major milestone in the end of the Holocaust.(hitlerschildren.com)
By the end of the war, there were some 50,000 to 100,000 survivors that were living in occupied Europe. Within just a year after the removal of Adolf Hitler from power, that number quickly climbed to over 200,000 survivors. Camps were built for Jewish displaced persons, who couldn 't return to their homes because of the horror and threats of danger from lingering anti- Semitic residents of the countries. They were emigrated to Israel, Palestine, and the United States primarily, while some went to other countries. These camps were in existence until 1957 when all the DPs (displaced persons) had been re-homed.(hitlerschildren.com)
 The next genocide of the century was the Cambodian genocide, which occurred between in the 1970’s. Between the years of 1975 and 1979the khmer Rouge, under the control of Pol Pot’s, overthrew the government and seized power of Cambodia.Civil war had existed in Cambodia since 1970. Between 1970 and 1973, during the Vietnam War, the United States bombed much of the countryside of Cambodia and manipulated Cambodian politics to support the rise of pro-West Lon Nol as the leader of Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge used the United States’ actions to recruit followers and as an excuse for the brutal policies they exercised when in power. The Khmer Rouge’s polices were guided by its belief that the citizens of Cambodia had been tainted by exposure to outside ideas, especially by the capitalist West. The Khmer Rouge persecuted the educated: doctors, lawyers, and current or former military and police. Christian, Buddhist and Muslim citizens also were specifically targeted. In an effort to create a society without competition, in which people worked for the common good, the Khmer Rouge placed people in collective living arrangements and enacted “re-education” programs to encourage the commune lifestyle. People were divided into categories that reflected the trust that the Khmer Rouge had for them; the most trustworthy were called “old citizens.” The pro-West and city dwellers began as “new citizens” and could move up to “deportees,” then “candidates” and finally “full rights citizens”; however, most citizens never moved up. Those who refused re- education were killed in the fields surrounding the commune or at the infamous prison camp Tuol Sleng Centre, known as S-21. (www.hmh.org)
The population must, they believed, be made to work as labourers in one huge federation of collective farms. All political and civil rights were abolished. Children were taken from their parents and placed in separate forced labour camps.Religion was banned, all leading Buddhist monks were killed and almost all temples destroyed. Music and radio sets were also banned. It was possible for people to be shot simply for knowing a foreign language, wearing glasses, laughing, or crying. People who escaped murder became unpaid labourers, working on minimum rations and for impossibly long hours. They slept and ate in uncomfortable communes deliberately chosen to be as far as possible from their old homes. Over four years, the Khmer Rouge killed more than 1.7 million people through work, starvation and torture. (www.ppu.org)
On December 25, 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia seeking to end Khmer Rouge border attacks. On January 7, 1979, Phnom Penh fell and Pol Pot was deposed. The Vietnamese then installed a puppet government consisting of Khmer Rouge defectors. Pol Pot retreated into Thailand with the remnants of his Khmer Rouge army and began a guerrilla war against a succession of Cambodian governments lasting over the next 17 years. After a series of internal power struggles in the 1990s, he finally lost control of the Khmer Rouge. In April 1998, 73-year-old Pol Pot died of an apparent heart attack following his arrest, before he could be brought to trial by an international tribunal for the events of 1975-79. (www.historyplace.com)
On April 6 1994 the plane carrying Rwanda 's president was shot down, almost certainly the work of an extremist. This was the trigger needed for the Hutus ' planned 'Final Solution ' to go into operation. The Tutsis were accused of killing the president, and Hutu civilians were told, by radio and word of mouth, that it was their duty to wipe the Tutsis out. First, though, moderate Hutus who weren 't anti-Tutsi should be killed. So should Tutsi wives or husbands.(www.ppu.org)
Almost one million people died before the RPF ( Rwandan Patriotic Front) was able to take full control. Unlike the instigators of previous genocides nobody tried to keep the Rwanda genocide a secret. In-fact journalist and television cameras reported what they saw, and what they found after the genocide was over. There was even a UN force in place, monitoring the ceasefire and had to watch as people were killed in the streets by grenades, guns, and machetes. The genocide organizers were conscious of the risks of international scrutiny: over the radio the killers were constantly incited to continue, but 'No more corpses on the roads, please '. Corpses in the countryside were covered with banana leaves to screen them from aerial photography. (www.ppu.org)
Although on a large scale, this genocide was carried out entirely by hand, often using machetes and clubs. The men who 'd been trained to massacre were members of civilian death squads, the Interahamwe ( 'those who fight together '). Transport and fuel supplies were laid on for the Interahamwe - even remote areas were catered for. Where the killers encountered opposition, the Army backed them up with manpower and weapons. The State provided Hutu Power 's supporting organisation; politicians, officials, intellectuals and professional soldiers deliberately incited (and where necessary bribed) the killers to do their work. Local officials assisted in rounding up victims.The victims, in their last moments alive, were also faced by another appalling fact: their cold-blooded killers were people they knew, neighbors, coworkers, former friends, sometimes even relatives through marriage.(www.ppu.org)
There 'd been at least 10 clear warnings to the UN of the 'Hutu power ' action, including an anxious telegram from the UNAMIR commander to the then UN Secretary- General (Boutros Boutros Ghali) three months before the event. The UN Security Council met in secret after the start of the violence. At this meeting Britain urged that UNAMIR should pull out, and later blocked an American proposal to send in a fact-finding mission when the death toll had reached six figures. Council members resisted admitting 'that the mass murder being pursued in front of the global media was in fact genocide ': genocide involved action no-one wanted to take. Once it was inescapably clear that genocide was indeed going on, it was too late. (www.ppu.org)
The Armenian Genocide of 1915, The Holocaust of WWII, The Cambodian Genocide of the 1970’s, and the Rwandan Genocide of the 1990’s were all caused because of two main factors that caused a single belief by the majority, that by eliminating the minority their problems would be reduced. Genocide is a terrible, atrocious, inexcusable act and should never be allowed to occur, and if it does occur then it should be ended by other nations as soon as possible.
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