EXPLORING 20TH CENTURY GENOCIDES

MR.GAIJER HUMANITIES

The Age of Genocide

A crime without a name…

“The aggressor ... retaliates by the most frightful cruelties. As his Armies advance, whole districts are being exterminated. Scores of thousands - literally scores of thousands - of executions in cold blood are being perpetrated by the German Police-troops upon the Russian patriots who defend their native soil. Since the Mongol invasions of Europe in the Sixteenth Century, there has never been methodical, merciless butchery on such a scale, or approaching such a scale.

“And this is but the beginning. Famine and pestilence have yet to follow in the bloody ruts of Hitler's tanks.

“We are in the presence of a crime without a name.”

- Winston Churchill describing the brutality of the German forces occupying Russia, 1941.

Russian Children rounded up by Nazis

Russians murdered and buried in mass graves

Nazis before they move out…

•THE WORD GENOCIDE WAS COINED IN THE MIDST OF THE HOLOCAUST.

•DEFINITION:

•Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group

Genocidegeno – meaning racecide – meaning killing

Major genocides of the 20th century

The Herero Genocide, Namibia, 1904-05Death toll: 60,000 (3/4 of the population)

The Armenian Genocide, Ottoman Empire, 1915-23 Death toll: Up to 1.5 million

The Ukrainian Famine, 1932-1933Death toll: 7 million

The Nanking Massacre, 1937-1938Death toll: 300,000 (50% of the pop)

The World War II Holocaust, Europe, 1942-45 Death toll: 6 million

The Cambodian Genocide, 1975-79 Death toll: 2 million

Namibia, 1904-1905

Under German colonial rule, German Southwest Africa is modern day Namibia.

German Lieutenant-General Lothar von Trotha said, 'I wipe out rebellious tribes with streams of blood and streams of money. Only following this cleansing can something new emerge'.

On October 2, 1904, von Trotha issued his order to

exterminate the Herero from the region.

800,000 DIED.

The Armenian Genocide, 1915

U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau Sr., concluded a “race murder” was occurring. He cabled Washington and described the Turkish campaign:

”Persecution of Armenians assuming unprecedented proportions. Reports from widely scattered districts indicate systematic attempt to uproot peaceful Armenian populations and through arbitrary arrests, terrible tortures, whose-sale expulsions and deportations from one end of the Empire to the other accompanied by frequent instances of rape, pillage, and murder turning into massacre, to bring destruction and destitution on them.

What was the goal of Turkey???

To wipe out the Armenian people!The documentary, The Armenian Genocide aired on PBS in April, 2006.

The Armenian Controversy

To this day, the Turks deny that the Genocide occurred.

This is a VERY controversial issue to the Turks.

Turkey suspended its military ties with France in 2006 after the

French parliament's lower house adopted a bill that wouldhave made it a crime to deny that the Armenian killingsconstituted a genocide.

23 countries acknowledge the event was genocide

In early October 2007, the U.S. Congress opened debate onwhether or not to declare the Armenian event a genocide –

much to the dismay of the Turkish government.

The Ukrainian Famine 1932-1933

Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, set in motion events designed

to cause a famine in the Ukraine to destroy the people

Result: 7,000,000 persons perished

The Holocaust, 1939-1945

•The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

•"Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire”.

•The Nazis, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior“, were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.

•Result: 6,000,000 dead

Cambodia1975-1979

•The Killing Fields

•Number of sites in Cambodia where thousands of people were killed and buried by the Communist regime Khmer Rouge, which ruled the country from 1975-1979.

One Khmer slogan ran: 'To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss.'

The massacres ended in 1979, when Communist Vietnam invaded the country and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime.

Rwanda1994

800,000 Tutsis were murdered by Hutus in a 3 month period. The international community watched the event unfold and did nothing.

Darfur2003-present

Is it genocide? Debatable death toll stands between 100 and 500,000.

Why doesn’t the international community act?

Relatives mourn over the body of a one-year-old child who died of malnutrition in June 2004

GenocideWhat can you do?

Educate yourself on the issues

Demanding action from your government

Educate your community ~ raising awareness

Stop judging others…. It leads to bad things!