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A Genocide Forgotten
During his stay at the Crown Hotel’s Sailor Reading Room in Norwich, the mysterious protagonist in W.G. Sebald’s Rings of Saturn was quietly leafing through Independent on Sunday newspaper; he came across an article that stirred his memory. This article dealt with “so-called cleansing operations” undertaken by Croats, Germans and Austrians which took place during WW2 in Bosnia d, where a souvenir photograph taken by the Utashi showed “fellow militiamen in the best of spirits, some of them striking heroic poses, are sawing the head off a Serb” (96). Sebald’s protagonist goes on to reveal more historical information with graphic details and in the process is bewildered by the lack of outrage and knowledge of these atrocities. The culmination of the ignorance was the election of an unnamed “young Viennese lawyer (99)” who was involved in the planning of deportations in the Balkans later became the UN Secretary General and the voice of Voyager II. Consequently, in his novel, Rings of Saturn, W.G. retold the tragedy and horror of the Balkan Holocaust and Kurt Waldheim’s ascension in world politics in order to underscore the ironies inherent in historical amnesia.
In order to fully comprehend the significance of Sebald’s revelations, one must review the historical background surrounding these atrocities. Following, World War One, the signing of the Treaty of Versailles the ended of the rule of the Hapsburg dynasty, the multiethnic Astro-Hungarian Empire crumbled. In its place independent states of Austrian and Hungary, but also another multiethnic kingdom of Yugoslavia, which contained Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Jews were established.1 While Orthodox Serbs were an overall majority, Catholic Croats were in m...
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...ng war criminals?” Human
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Balkan Holocaust.” Journal of Genocide Research. 1 (1999) 81-90
Sebald, W.G. The Rings of Saturn. Trans. Michael Hulse. London: Harvill, 1998.
Schindley, Wanda. “Hidden History: the Horror of Jasenovac.” Ratsko.org. (2005).
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Since Burundi’s independence in 1962, there have been two instances of genocide: the 1972 mass killings of Hutus by the Tutsi-dominated government, and the 1993 mass killings of the Tutsis by the Hutu populace. Both of these events in Burundi received different levels of attention by the international community and the western media due to a lack of foreign governmental interest, political distraction, and an unwillingness to acknowledge the severity of these atrocities in Burundi. Interestingly, events of genocide occurring at times without these distractions received more foreign attention than those ignored due to these factors. Because of this, much of the western world is unaware of the Burundian genocide and events similar to it.
It is my belief that the author presents a very controversial view of the causes and implementation of the Holocaust. The root of the controversy is his contention that the German people, as a society, are responsible for the attempted extermination of the Jews. According to Mr. Goldhagen, in the eyes of the Germans, the Jews as nothing more than a cancer that must be removed in order to cure the ills of their nation. In the book Mr. Goldhagen has gone to great extents to prove his views. However, “…his theories will probably remain a point of contention with historians for years to come.”4 The brutality and horror that is described throughout the book is, at times, overwhelming. To realize that one group of people can treat their fellow man with such heartlessness and savagery in what we call a civilized world is almost beyond comprehension.
Yugoslavia was a very diverse, ethnic, and peaceful place under communist rule ("Genocide in Bosnia--1992-1995"). For 40 years it stayed this way ("Genocide in Bosnia--1992-1995"). Provinces declared...
The biggest war the world has ever seen was World War II. What was one factor that led to such a quick escalation? Genocide. Over 45 million people were murdered during this tragic time. The question is: was it the allies responsibility to intervene? The answer: No. The Global Community has no responsibility to intervene in states committing genocide.
Problems have and will continue to exsist all over the world. Throughout history, global problems have posed major challenges for nations and regions. There are many causes to the global problems expirenced in the world just as there are many effects. Both genocide and environmental pollution have posed major challenges for nations and regions of the world.
The genocides of the 20th century which occurred in Rwanda and Germany had striking similarities, something that should have alerted the world to stop them. At the core of these two massacres, patterns existed that outlined how similar thinking and reasoning could lead to something as horrible as these two events. One can see how both groups used their command of knowledge as a way to control the people, how the rest of the world refused to step up to stop the killings, and how the people were thought of as less than humans to provide a just cause for such terrible acts.
Many innocent lives were taken during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Philip Gourevitch’s “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families,” explains why the genocide that occurred in Rwanda should not be written off in history as just another tribal disagreement. This book entails the stories of Gourevitch and the people he interviewed when he went to Rwanda. These stories express what people went through during the genocide, the loss they saw, the mass killings they tried to hide from, and the history of what led to the Rwandan genocide. Rwanda’s colonial past did influence the development of the genocide in Rwanda. The hatred between the Hutus and the Tutsis had been going on for many years before the genocide.
After Elie Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, he gave an acceptance speech reflecting upon the true meaning of his novel and reflecting upon the crimes in our history. He revealed how “silence encourages the tormentor” while “indifference [is] the most insidious danger of all.” I find a lot of truth in these words and I agree with his assertion. Individuals tend to get overwhelmed by desperation, a sense of helplessness and fear in the face of acts, such as oppression and genocide. During these times, it is the responsibility of the world community to step in. This is proved to be true by the novel Night, the movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and by the article called “A Secret Life.”
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 scholar, from the ancient Greek word “genos” meaning race and the Latin word “cide” meaning killing , there are many examples of genocide like events that occurred before the twentieth century. And this new term brings up the question as whether genocide is a contemporary description defined through current perspectives towards the crime act or is it just a part of the inevitable human evolutionary progress caused by modernity.
Brenda Katten who is the chairman of the Zionist Federation said that, “As Jews, we are quite horrified at what is going on: we lost a lot of our people in the 1930s because the gates were closed on us- What is sad, is that we don’t learn from our history.” (3) This seems to be the recurring theme about genocides: They happen and are an immense tragedy but yet they continue to happen throughout time and all over the world. In the Bosnian genocide in 1992-1998, another group was was exterminate by a group for specific reasons. In this case, an estimated 200,000 Bosnian civilians were killed (2) by Serbians. But all of this conflict can be traced back to the resolutions which transpired at the end of the second world war. (1) After Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, and Croatia became apart of Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, when the Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito died in 1980, the union between the several countries under the Yugoslav power seemed to be threatened to separate. When a Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic provoked a dissatisfaction between Serbians in Bosnia and Croatia and their Bosnian and Croatian neighbors, lead to an insuming war. When Milosevic was elected president of the republic of Serbia in 1989, an oncoming movement violent uprisings of several Serb nationalist political parties in neighboring Croatia. These events frightened the other members of Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, which lead to their uncertainty towards the future of the republic that had just recently been established. As fears engulfed many civilians, a large population of non Bosnian Serbians began to not only boycott the voting of Milosevic, but urge others to take similar measures in March of 1992. These actions lead to the sec...
Paldiel, Mordecai. "Holocaust Essays and Poems." The Holocaust, Crimes, Heroes and Villains. Louis Bülow. Web. 07 Dec. 2011. .
It’s amazing how a small spark of hatred can grow and grow only to become a wildfire causing mass destruction. The horrific acts of humanity, now universally dubbed as genocide, occurred to frequently throughout history, and action for complete and absolute prevention should be taken at all times.
In the article, “Columbus’s Legacy: Genocide in the America’s,” by David E. Stannard, the theme can be identified as contrary to popular belief that the millions of native peoples of the Americas that perished in the sixteenth century died not only from disease brought over by the Europeans, but also as a result of mass murder, as well as death due to working them to death.
When 1937 arrived, Japanese soldiers raided China’s capital of Nanking and began to mass murder citizens. A sole leader of the Japanese Imperial Army was non-existent. There were many of people in power such as generals who allowed these behaviors to occur. Baron Koki Hirota, Foreign minister at the time, proceeded to do nothing while being well aware of the Japanese’s persecution of the Chinese. These unsympathetic murders of those who were thought to be Chinese soldiers as well as woman, children and elderly. This massacre lasted between the 1937 and 1938. Within this time 300,000 Chinese citizens were viciously killed. This genocide is called Rape of Nanking because of raping the woman before killing them. Most likely this group was selected because the second world war happened in Asia. This was significant because a country was able to kill half the population of another. I believe the reason of this Genocide was for Japan to take advantage of China while expand Japan. Most likely the Japanese wished to exterminate China’s entire population.
Wouldn’t it be scary if someone suddenly decided that you should disappear because he thinks you do not have the right to live because of your race or religion? Scary yes, but definitely possible. The word genocide, which is also known as ethnic cleansing, is certainly not uncommon to anyone living in this not so perfect world, full of violence, hatred and discrimination. Throughout the decades, genocide has taken place in more than one occasion, causing wars, slaughters and mass destruction of cities and towns. I think that genocide is by far the worst crime in humanity. Hatred, superiority and personal memories are all behind genocide.