The Persecution of Man throughout History
Since the beginning of written history, man has witnessed persecution in many forms. The most infamous example of persecution is the Holocaust. During the Holocaust, a systematic killing of Jews killed 6 million in 10 years. It has been over 50 years since the Holocaust ended and yet again we see much of the same thing, albeit on a smaller scale, in Kosovo. Kosovo is located in a historically turbulent and violent part of the planet. The Balkans have caused many wars and skirmishes, the most notable being World War I after the assignation of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. This, coupled with the Balkans already fragile ethnic mixing, has left the Balkans a bomb ready to explode.
Since February of 1998, President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia has conducted a military campaign against the people of Kosovo, which is a province of Serbia. It is here where the Balkans already strained ethnic mix boils over. The majority of Serbia is Greek Orthodox Christian while the majority of Kosovo is Muslim. This ethnic mix has always been strained and Milosevic has ordered his army to conduct an ethnic cleansing campaign to drive out the Kosovo Muslims and kill those who don’t leave. This campaign of terror is designed to destroy an entire culture and it has come very close to doing just that. In a little over a year, over 650,000 refugees have fled Kosovo telling stories of murder, rape, robbery, and torture. This is essentially what the Nazi’s did to the Jews, Gypsies, and Homosexuals at the beginning of the Holocaust. After the Holocaust, the world community said never again, yet little more than 50 years later we have turned a deaf ear on the plight of the Kosovo Muslims.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization consists of 19 countries. All of these nations have condemned Milosevic’s actions in Kosovo and have just in the last month, launched air strikes against Serbia. The airstrikes were initiated with the notion that Serbia would quickly collapse just like Iraq. This conclusion was reached without looking at some key facts. Serbia has a much more extensive network of radars, SAM’s, AAA, and bunkers than Iraq could dream of. The principle difference however is terrain and weather. Iraq is flat and dry, Serbia is very mountainous and rainy. This means it is much more difficult to find and destroy targets.
The Holocaust or the Ha-Shoah in Hebrew meaning ‘the day of the Holocaust and heroism’ refers to the period of time from approximately January 30,1933, when Adolf Hitler became the legal official of Germany, to May 8,1945. After the war was over in Europe, the Jews in Europe were being forced to endure the horrifying persecution that ultimately led to the slaughter of over 6 million Jews with about 1.5 million of them being children as well as the demolition of 5,000 Jewish communities.
International organizations such as NATO and the UN are essential not only for global peace, but also as a place where middle powers can exert their influence. It is understandable that since the inception of such organizations that many crises have been averted, resolved, or dealt with in some way thro...
Jews have been persecuted throughout all of history. A deep seated hatred has existed in many nations against them. Throughout history Jews could not find a resting place for long before they are thrown out of over 80 countries including England, France, Austria and Germany (Ungurean, 2015). Deicide is one of the reasons why Jews are hated. It is said that Jews are the responsible party for the killing of Jesus. The gospels describe Jews delivering Jesus to Roman authorities while demanding that he be crucified and his blood be on their children (Schiffman, n.d.). As a result Jews are held accountable for the death of Jesus and they are hated by many.
People are often afraid of what they do not know. The Salem Witch Trials and the Holocaust were both times when fear overwhelmed the world; hysteria played a major role because it caused most of the horrific events to occur. During the times of the Salem Witch Trials and the Holocaust, fear drove people to act rashly based on fear of the unknown.
Prejudice and the Holocaust Prejudice was the main factor that led to the holocaust. For some, resisting these forms of oppression was survival. Considering the dehumanizing the Nazis had forced upon the Jews, people took whatever courage and strength they had to get through this period of time. I believe luck also had a part to play in survival.
History provides several horrible periods of violence, fear and murder. Such horrible acts against humanity have been committed in the name of religion, colonization, and racial superiority. The Holocaust, was one of the most catastrophic and saddest events in history, where about 11 million people, including Jewish children, families, and political dissenters were mass murdered. However, there exists another mournful and cruel period that marked the lives of many Sephardic Jews with secrecy and fear. One hardly hears about the harassment, rejection and humiliation of Sephardic Jewry in Spain, Portugal, and countries like Mexico, at the hands of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, which began in 1492. Due to these events, Sephardic Jews found themselves facing one of the most complex decisions of their lives and those of future generations; conversion, expulsion or death. The reasons for conversion are complex, as many converted by force and others for social or political reasons. As a result, converts became known as Conversos and “marranos /chuetas, and the latter are derogatory terms, as the names imply “swine” (Hordes 6). Another important term is Anusim, referring to those "whose conversion was prompted by violence and fear not sincerity” (Hordes 6). Marranos, were secretive people often, “keeping their children from their Jewish identity, until they reached an age where discretion could be trusted "(Telushkin 195). All of these events, have led to the complex phenomena, of the crypto-Jews in the new world, including Mexico and the American Southwest. Thus, sparking new areas of interest and research of their practices, customs, authenticity, and identification.
All the Jews had to wear all the same clothing so that they could be
Although Milosevic was a key figure during this period whose actions undoubtedly influenced the chain of events that unfolded, I believe his power-seeking motives were not unique to him; his actions in the former Yugoslavia could have been committed by a number of others who had the same desire for power driving them. Nevertheless, as he was president of Serbia and essentially commander-in-chief of Serb forces who carried out unconscionable acts of cruelty against Muslims and other non-Serb civilians, particularly in the attempt to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina, he bears responsibility for his actions as an authority figure. Though his main goal seemed to be focused on territorial expansion of the Serbian state, he led military forces to deport and murder non-Serb civilians in massive numbers and therefore was in vi...
The Balkan Peninsula has long been known as the “tinderbox of Europe” because it has been an area of conflict and political unrest for centuries. The countries and people that occupy the peninsula are constantly in chaos and at war with each other. This trend continues today with the problems in Bosnia and the recent international crisis in Kosovo. Throughout history, small local incidents in the Balkan Peninsula have escalated into large international crises. World War I is a perfect example of what started as a regional conflict and grew into an all-out European war. A small local European struggle between Austria-Hungary and Serbia over the territory of Bosnia erupted into a full-blown worldwide conflict after the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand.
Beginning in 1933, Hitler and his Nazi party targeted not only those of the Jewish religion but many other sets. Hitler was motivated by religion and nationalism to eradicate any threats to his state. It was Hitler’s ideology that his Aryan race was superior to any other. Hitler’s goal was to create a “master race” by eliminating the chance for “inferiors” to reproduce. Besides the Jews the other victims of the genocide include the Roma (Gypsies), African-Germans, the mentally disabled, handicapped, Poles, Slavs, Anti-Nazi political parties, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Homosexuals. In Hitler’s eyes all of these groups needed to be eliminated in order for his master race to be a success.
The last two decades of the twentieth century gave rise to turbulent times for constituent republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, eventually leading them to split apart. There were a number of damaging aspects of past history and of the political and economic circumstances that contributed to the breakup and eventually caused the situation to snowball into a deadly series of inter-ethnic conflicts. Yugoslavia was reunified at the end of the war when the communist forces of Josip Broz Tito liberated the country. Under Tito, Yugoslavia adopted a relatively liberal form of government in comparison to other East European communist states at the time and experienced a period of relative economic and political stability until Tito’s death in 1980. In addition to internal power struggles following the loss of their longtime leader, Yugoslavia faced an unprecedented economic crisis in the 1980’s. As other communist states began to fall in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, some former Communist leaders abandoned communism and founded or supported ethno-national parties, blaming the economic suffering on the flaws of communism and other ethnic groups. The ethnic violence that followed would not have been possible without the willingness of politicians from every side to promote ethno-nationalist symbols and myths through media blitzes, which were especially effective due to low levels of education in the former Yugoslavia. Shadows of the events of World War II gave these politicians, especially the Serbs, an opportunity to encourage the discussion and exaggeration of past atrocities later in the century. The ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia can be traced back to a series of linked damaging factors such as the de...
Gagnon, V. P. (2004). The myth of ethnic war: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
... has been providing a military there to ensure safety, trying to return displaced persons to their homes, and making an effort to reconcile the armed forces of Bosnia-Croat Federation and the Republika Srpska. NATO also created the Security Cooperation Program (SCP) which helps strengthen stability and promotes reconciliation in the Bosnian community, like the UN,. NATO has also been involved with the complications in Kosovo. In October of 1998, NATO threatened air strikes to force the Milosevic regime in Kosovo to withdraw their forces, help bring an end to the violence, and to let the refugees return to their homes. President Milosevic agreed. The next year, after months of continued threats NATO began to bomb Yugoslavia on March 24th 1999, because Milosevic refused to make peace. The war in Kosovo has killed more than two thousand people and forced more than four hundred thousand from their homes.
Most war victims during the Kosovo War were considered victims of ethnic cleansing, which is the internationally condemned practice of driving out members of other nationalities from territories that had been part of the SFRY (Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) . All of this began with the presidency of Slobodan Milosevic in 1988 who was president of the Serbian League of Communists and also Serbia a year later. He began a campaign to reassert communist dominance as well as Serb dominance. He purged into countries such as Croatia and transformed its army from one that wanted to preserve Yugoslavia to one that wanted unification of all Serb populated territories and eventually create a Greater Serbia. A way that Milosevic felt he could achieve that task was through a strategy of ethnic cleansing and the expulsion and massacres of the non-Serbs.
To develop this investigation, I will look at a variety of sources including biographies of Slobodan Milosevic, research books on the conflict in Kosovo, and internet sources on Kosovo nationalism.