Genocide+and+Mass+Atrocity+in+the+Modern+World

Image to the right shows the Genocide Memorial, National University, Huye, Rwanda

What is Genocide? United States Holocaust Museum

Background and Definition of the Crime, United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect

Past Genocides and Mass Atrocities Topics Covered: = = =The Armenian Genocide=
 * Armenian Genocide
 * The Holocaust
 * Cambodia
 * Rwanda
 * Bosnia
 * Dafur

The [|Armenian Genocide] began in 1915, when the Ottoman government began the systematic decimation of its Armenian population.
 * the Ottoman empire was ruled by Turks that practiced Islam
 * Armenians were a Christian minority group that lived as second class citizens
 * Armenians were forced to pay discriminatory taxes and could not participate in government
 * By 1914 the Ottoman Empire was weakening and Armenians were calling for more freedoms and government participation
 * in August 1914, the Ottoman Empire formed part of the Triple Alliance with the other Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary
 * Ottoman armies used every battle they fought to systematically destroy the Armenian population in each region
 * in 1915 Armenians in non-war zones were deported from their homes and sent into the Syrian desert
 * Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman forces had been disarmed and either worked to death in labor battalions or outright executed in small batches
 * A sizable portion of the deportees, including women and children, were killed in massacres along the deportation routes (often by sword)
 * the Ottoman government did not have any food provisions for the deportees and mass starvation ensued
 * estimated that up to a million and a half Armenians perished at the hands of Ottoman and Turkish military and paramilitary forces and through atrocities intentionally inflicted to eliminate the Armenian demographic presence in Turkey

Video on the Armenian Genocide: [|click here]

[|Photos] of Armenian Genocide (WARNING GRAPHIC)

=The Holocaust=

Hitler did not fear retribution for the Holocaust. Why? He didn’t think the world would care, asking as he prepared to invade Poland “Who today still speaks of the massacre of the Armenians?”

Overview of the [|Holocaust]

The Holocaust can be separated into four distinct periods of time:

1. 1933-1939
 * aim of Nazi's to cleanse Germany of its Jewish Population (Judenrein)
 * Germans tried to force Jewish emigration by making life as a Jew intolerable
 * Jewish citizens excluded from public life
 * Jews were fired from public and professional positions
 * Ostracized from the arts, humanities, and sciences
 * German anti-Jewish legislation seen in Nuremberg Laws of 1935
 * 1938 [|Kristallnacht] legitimized the taking of Jewish property and the killing of Jews
 * Annexation of Austria in 1938 subjected Austrian Jews to the same fate as German Jews

2. 1939-1941
 * emigration brought to a halt (was never very popular anyway due to lack of countries willing to accept Jews)
 * As German controlled land expanded during WWII more Jews (i.e. Jews of Poland, Ukraine, Italy, France, Belgium) were placed in concentration camps and compelled to do forced labor
 * [|Ghettos] were established in Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic States in order to segregate the Jewish population
 * Many Jews perished in the concentration camps and ghettos due to impossible living conditions, hard labor, starvation, or disease
 * Gestapo becomes a deadly weapon of the Nazi government

3. June 1941-fall 1943
 * Beginning of the Final Solution to the Jewish problem
 * Systematic genocide of Jewish people became Nazi policy after the Wannsee Conference
 * [|Einsatzgruppen]: special task force that would follow behind German army and exterminate Jews of newly conquered areas
 * Many concentration camps converted to death camps

4. 1943- May 1945
 * 1943 turning point in the war (gradual collapse of Third Reich)
 * Nazi's continue their destruction of Jewish population
 * as Soviet Union proceeds west, Nazi's hastened their killing of Jews
 * 1944, Nazi's evacuate Jews from camps that have Allied troops approaching them
 * These [|death marches] cause tens of thousands more deaths
 * surrender of Third Reich on May 7th, 1945

During the Holocaust, approximately 6 million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered.

Video on the Holocaust via Khan Academy: [|click here]

[|Photos] of the Jews during the Holocaust (WARNING GRAPHIC)