Showing papers in "Journal of Genocide Research in 2003"
TL;DR: In this paper, the partition of India and retributive genocide in the Punjab, 1946-47: Means, methods, and purposes is discussed, with a focus on the Punjab.
Abstract: (2003). The partition of India and retributive genocide in the Punjab, 1946-47: Means, methods, and purposes 1. Journal of Genocide Research: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 71-101.
96 citations
TL;DR: An analysis of the idea of prevention in genocide studies, along with some theoretical and empirical reflections on the problems and prospects of the prevention of genocide in the early twenty-first century.
Abstract: Preventionism in genocide studies Since World War II, the field of genocide studies has evolved as an interdisciplinary and scholarly field in its own right. As an autonomous intellectual field, genocide studies has reached a point where it is necessary to develop models for the analysis of the field itself. In addition to studying the phenomenon of genocide, one needs also to study the study of genocide. The guiding theoretical spirit of such a task comes from the sociology of knowledge, which sees knowledge of genocide as a cultural production of various scholars with particular world-views, biographies, ideological dispositions, and material interests, networks of attachment, all which shape and influence the structure of what is known about genocide. This is not to say, of course, that genocide is a social construction. It is all too real, which is the very raison d'etre for genocide studies in the first place. The production of knowledge, however, about it is fundamentally a social process. Genocide ...
40 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a vocabulary of massacre and genocide is defined and discussed, with a focus on the use of the word "genocide" as a synonym for "massacre".
Abstract: (2003). Toward a vocabulary of massacre and genocide. Journal of Genocide Research: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 193-210.
28 citations
TL;DR: A broader coalition of deniers, including not only perpetrators and bigots, but many other people who are drawn to denials because they serve their self-interests in one or more ways as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Gross denials of the Holocaust are increasing; a dramatic reflection of these was the notorious suit brought by David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt over her major work in London. This chapter presents the classification which addresses a broader coalition of deniers, which includes not only perpetrators and bigots, but many other people who are drawn to denials because they serve their self-interests in one or more ways. Denials of bona fide genocides naturally attract fascists, such as neo-Nazis, virulent antisemites, "skinheads" and bigots of all kinds who hate other peoples and ethnicities, who utilize denials of genocide to celebrate violence and death to human life. Denials of genocidal events by perpetrator governments and/or perpetrators. The continuing denial of the Armenian Genocide by the Turkish government is probably the outstanding and most persistent case of denial by non-perpetrators. Incredible energies have been expended by academicians on battles over competing definitions of genocide.
27 citations
TL;DR: The General Picture The Variety o f Methods o f Liquidation o f Children Trabzon: A Microcosm o f Multi-Level Child-killings The Drowning Operations and Serial Rapes
Abstract: (2003). Children as victims of genocide: the Armenian case. Journal of Genocide Research: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 421-437.
21 citations
TL;DR: How New Zealand Maori have been drawn into an emerging comparative genocide debate is examined, one where historically marginalized groups have used the Jewish Holocaust, its imagery and vocabulary as a means of articulating their own experiences of victimization, in the quest for some form of justice, restitution, and healing.
Abstract: (2003). Daring to compare: the debate about a Maori “holocaust” in New Zealand”1. Journal of Genocide Research: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 383-403.
19 citations
TL;DR: The King, the Cardinal and the Pope: Leopold II's genocide in the Congo and the Vatican as discussed by the authors is a seminal work in the field of genocide research, focusing on the role of the cardinal and the pope.
Abstract: (2003). The King, the Cardinal and the Pope: Leopold II's genocide in the Congo and the Vatican. Journal of Genocide Research: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 35-45.
18 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the contemporary legal status of the international regime on genocide has been examined on an article-by-article basis and the evolution of the regime is examined in order to assess its current status.
Abstract: Andreopoulos (1994, p 1) notes that no crime matches genocide in the moral opprobrium that it generates. Constituting a criminal intent to destroy or cripple permanently a human group, acts of genocide shock the collective conscience of the world’s community perhaps like no other act. While the commission of genocide dates to antiquity, it is in response to the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany during World War II that the international community undertook the development of international laws designed to both prevent and punish acts of genocide. Over the course of the past quarter-century, genocide has come under increasing scrutiny from legal experts, scholars, statespersons, and citizens for a variety of reasons. Acts of genocide in a number of states, including Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda, have captured international attention. Legal developments, principally in the form of the establishment of two ad hoc tribunals, three genocide cases brought before the International Court of Justice, and the establishment of the International Criminal Court with jurisdiction over cases involving the crime of genocide, have encouraged scholars to revisit the provisions codified in the 1948 Genocide Convention. Efforts by Spain to secure the extradition of Augusto Pinochet, the former head of state of Chile, on charges of genocide and the prosecution of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on numerous counts, including genocide, further elevated the debate on the issues of immunity, jurisdiction and extradition as they relate to the adjudication of the crime of genocide. At the same time, these events along with fundamental changes in the international system associated with the end of the Cold War have resulted in greater expectations from the international community that the legal regime on genocide will succeed in its ambitious aims of both preventing and punishing acts of genocide. Thus, it is within an atmosphere of renewed optimism and unparalleled expectations that studies of genocide and the legal prohibitions against it have been undertaken. The focus of this article is the contemporary legal status of the international regime on genocide. In order to assess its current status, the evolution of the regime is examined. Central to the regime’s current status are the provisions codified in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which are analyzed on an article-by-article basis. While the
15 citations
TL;DR: In the years 1943-1945, a thorough investigation of the crimes committed by the Germans during their occupation of the Soviet areas was conducted within the framework of the Extraordinary State Commission on Reporting and Investigating the Atrocities of the German Fascist Occupants and their Henchmen and the Damages inflicted by them to Citizens, Kolkhozes, Public Organizations, State Enterprises (henceforth ESC, or the Commission) as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In the years 1943–1945 a thorough investigation of the crimes committed by the Germans during their occupation of the Soviet areas was conducted within the framework of the Extraordinary State Commission on Reporting and Investigating the Atrocities of the German Fascist Occupants and their Henchmen and the Damages inflicted by them to Citizens, Kolkhozes, Public Organizations, State Enterprises (henceforth ESC, or the Commission). The Commission collected a considerable number of findings demonstrating that the Germans perpetrated atrocities against civilian population and caused tremendous damage to the economy in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union. Numerous findings pertaining to the Holocaust of the Soviet Jews were also gleaned. The Commission represented only the tip of the iceberg in the ramified network of Soviet investigation activities. Many Soviet agencies and individuals got involved in this work. However, only a tiny part of the ESC findings were made public in the Soviet Union. For the m...
14 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the "victimized group" concept in the Genocide Convention and the development of international humanitarian law through the practice of ad hoc tribunals is discussed, and a discussion of the role of ad-hoc tribunes is presented.
Abstract: (2003). The 'victimized group' concept in the Genocide Convention and the development of international humanitarian law through the practice of ad hoc tribunals 1. Journal of Genocide Research: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 211-224.
14 citations
TL;DR: Can one assume that an individual’s or group of individuals’ intent begins a genocide?
Abstract: (2003). Genocide and the modern mind: intention and structure. Journal of Genocide Research: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 405-420.
TL;DR: The war triggered the Holocaust, and without it, the Final Solution to the Jewish problem would not have been implemented as discussed by the authors, but the war was treated as background noise instead of the single necessary condition for the worst genocide of the past century.
Abstract: Scholarship on the Holocaust too often treats the subject as if it occurred in a vacuum, as an event to be reckoned with and analyzed on its own. World War II, when mentioned at all, often seems to be treated as background noise instead of as the single necessary condition for the worst genocide of the past century. Yet the two events cannot be separated, for the war triggered the Holocaust— without it, the Final Solution to the Jewish problem would not have been implemented. This article intends both to rescue the war from the periphery of the discourse about the Holocaust, placing it back in the center of one’s understanding of the event, and indeed of genocide itself. World War II and the Holocaust must be understood together, because for the victims, the perpetrators and the bystanders, they were never separate. Atrocities occur during war. Rules regarding civility in warfare wax and wane, making civilian populations acceptable targets for attacking armies at many times throughout history. Should one be surprised that the most destructive war in history was accompanied by one of the most dramatic instances of violence against civilians? The Final Solution was but the most incomprehensible portion of a greater tragedy—if one brings the war to the center of the discourse on the Holocaust, then perhaps the actions of the German leaders, soldiers, and people become somewhat easier to grasp. The irreconcilable question of the Holocaust is not how the Germans slaughtered the Jewish people, because for that there is an answer: there was a war on. Rather, one ought to be asking how the Germans, a post-enlightenment rational European people, could have come to the conclusion that the Jews were their enemy.
TL;DR: It is argued that mass ethnic violence as manifested in expulsion and genocide is a neglected area in ethnic studies and represents an important though neglected and underdeveloped problem in social understanding of the relationship between citizenship and violation of human rights.
Abstract: This article argues that mass ethnic violence as manifested in expulsion and genocide is a neglected area in ethnic studies. The omission of the violence question in ethnic studies is particularly apparent with regard to domesticated ethnic minorities such as Jews, Armenians, Chinese and Indians (among others). These are the so-called middleman minorities. Such omission of attention to the question of violence, the neglect of the racialization processes that characterized these events, and the disregard of state involvement in the perpetration of violence seem to emanate from a prevalent minority-centered premises in ethnic studies. Such assumptions relegate to a secondary consideration the majority’s political dynamics, the nature of the host regime and the oppression it perpetrated. These are the aspects highlighted in this article. In the historical cases investigated, ethnocentric violence emerged as a concomitant phenomenon to processes of formal equalization of status. In the past, status equalization took place in large scale religious conversion. In modern times, status equalization takes place as part of the institutionalization of citizenship as a civic right. In other words, mass ethnic violence was part of the modern phenomenon of citizenship and nation-state formation. Therefore, mass violence, expulsion and murder are seen as human rights violations of citizens’ rights. Two crucial factors generally missing in the minority-centered analyses are elaborated. The first is the timing of racialization; the second is the combustive intensity with which racial movements were characterized. Hence neither racialization processes nor the deadly nature of such conflicts are satisfactorily addressed in minority-centered ethnic studies. The violence question in ethnicity studies represents an important though neglected and underdeveloped problem in social understanding of the relationship between citizenship and violation of human rights.
TL;DR: The intention is to begin with an examination of the historiography on the subject to date before dealing with the context of rescue and rescue activities in all three countries, based primarily on detailed work carried out on the Netherlands.
Abstract: The term “rescue,” when applied to the Jews in Nazi-occupied Western Europe, has come to include a whole range of disparate activities, including helping people escape from Nazi-controlled areas to the safety of neutral or Allied territory and also the various external initiatives to negotiate with the Nazis to exchange or “buy” Jews and transport them to safety. However, the intention here is to restrict discussion to the groups and individuals who helped to shelter Jews within occupied Western Europe, either for the duration of the war, or until they could be moved elsewhere. This will include some comments on Jewish self-help but will focus primarily on the motivation behind non-Jewish (indigenous) help for Jewish adults and children in hiding. For reasons of brevity, the extent of the comparison has been limited. The analysis presented here is based primarily on detailed work carried out on the Netherlands and, where possible, comparisons and contrasts have been drawn with Belgium and France. The intention, therefore, is to begin with an examination of the historiography on the subject to date before dealing with the context of rescue and rescue activities in all three countries. While the comparison between these neighbouring states may seem relatively straightforward, it is nonetheless important to recognise some important differences: in the nature of German rule; the nature of the victims; and in the specific circumstances in each country. It is also important to bear in mind that these states experienced widely differing levels of Jewish mortality. The Jews in the Netherlands suffered more than 75% mortality, while the figure for Belgium was around 40% and for France approximately 25%. Thus, although the extent of rescue activities may not have been a definitive factor, it may nonetheless have had some impact on these differing levels of Jewish survival.
TL;DR: In 2001 two events at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at the Hague put the subject of genocide in the former Yugoslavia back on the front pages of newspapers as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In 2001 two events at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at the Hague put the subject of genocide in the former Yugoslavia back on the front pages of newspapers. First, Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic was convicted of genocide against the Muslim population of the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, the first conviction at the ICTY for this gravest of crimes. Second and more spectacularly, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was indicted and put on trial for genocide against the Muslim and Croat populations of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a whole. These events at the ICTY inflamed the bitter controversies that have raged over this conflict since it broke out in 1991. Internationally, political opinion has been divided into two camps divided by their conflicting analyses of the crisis and view of the correct international response. On the one side were those who viewed the war as a result of Serbian aggression and expansionism and generally advocated military intervention by...
TL;DR: The violence of the Zulu kings was very real, and not nearly enough has been done to examine the causes and consequences of that violence.
Abstract: (2003). The Zulu kingdom as a genocidal and post-genocidal society, c. 1810 to the present 1. Journal of Genocide Research: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 251-268.
TL;DR: The West, especially the United States, has colluded by not referring to the massacres in the United Nations, ignoring memorial ceremonies, and surrendering to Turkish pressure in NATO and other strategic arenas of cooperation.
Abstract: (2003). The signal facts surrounding the Armenian genocide and the Turkish denial syndrome. Journal of Genocide Research: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 269-279.
TL;DR: In the second half of the twentieth century and in the new millennium the Enlightenment has been indicted for initiating, providing, and lending its authority to the conceptual underpinnings of the Holocaust.
Abstract: (2003). The enlightenment, genocide, postmodernity. Journal of Genocide Research: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 339-360.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors proposed that the crime of total genocide has occurred three times, with the genocide of the Armenians by the Turks during World War I, the Holocaust of the European Jews and Gypsies by the Nazis in World War II, and the Tutsi by the Hutu majority in Rwanda in 1994.
Abstract: The twentieth century has been called “an age of politically sanctioned mass murder... intended to serve the ends of the state” (Smith, 1987, p 22). It was a century that witnessed the deaths of tens of millions of men, women and children throughout the world due to war, forced starvation, and genocide, in addition to a host of other acts of mass violence committed on a lesser scale. In the twentieth century, it has been suggested that the crime of total genocide has occurred three times, with the genocide of the Armenians by the Turks during World War I, the genocide of the European Jews and Gypsies by the Nazis during World War II, and the genocide of the Tutsi by the Hutu majority in Rwanda in 1994. Due to the gravity of the crime a number of studies and investigations have sought to determine the “warning signs” or causes of total genocide. This study constitutes a further step in this direction and expands the work of past authors in an effort to increase the general understanding of (1) the types of...
TL;DR: ... human beings do not perceive things whole; the authors are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable of only fractured perceptions, Partial beings in all the senses of that phrase.
Abstract: ... human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable of only fractured perceptions. Partial beings in all the senses of that phrase. Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to the death. (Salman Rushdie, “Imaginary homelands: Essays and Criticism”, 1981–1991. London: Granta Books, 1992, p. 12)
TL;DR: Before the Soviet–German War, the population of Belorussia was 10,528,000, or 9,200,000 within the modern borders of the country, and the Jews numbered about a million, and may be tentatively classified into several categories.
Abstract: Before the Soviet–German War, the population of Belorussia was 10,528,000, or 9,200,000 within the modern borders of the country. The Jews numbered about a million, and may be tentatively classified into several categories. One of them was comprised of the Jews who lived in Eastern Belorussia. It was part of the former Pale of Settlement and consisted of the Homel, Minsk and Mohilev oblasts (regions), which were traditional places of compact Jewish settlement. According to the January 1939 Soviet census, 375,000 Jews resided there. On the basis of the annual population growth, it may be concluded that Eastern Belorussia had about 405,000 Jews in the first half of 1941. In the Soviet Union, Judaism was persecuted, synagogues were closed, and Zionism was considered the worst manifestation of Jewish nationalism. Yiddish schools were closed down, the circulation of Yiddish publications was considerably reduced, the activity of writers’ and artists’ organizations restricted, the Jewish kolkhozes (agricultural communes) disbanded and national administrative districts abolished. Despite all this, the compact Jewish population preserved remnants of the traditional Jewish style of life. There the Minsk, Homel and Mohilev dialects of Yiddish were still being spoken. During the 1939 census, 55% of Belorussian Jews named Yiddish their native language (37.4% named Russian and 7.6% Belorussian). Jewish folklore, customs, dietary customs, and the feeling of belonging to a group was not yet extinguished among Jews. Still, young people were being more actively involved in the Soviet reality and distanced from Jewry. Many saw in the community a remnant of the past, which ought to be dealt with in order to build a free society in the workers’ and peasants’ state. Many were trying to adjust to the new reality as fast as possible and moved to big cities in the republic, or in Russia and Ukraine. Life in urban centers deepened their remove from the Jewish traditions. Many deliberately renounced Yiddish in favor of Russian, many received vocational training and higher education and began to occupy responsible positions in state administrative bodies, in cultural, scientific and medical institutions and served in the army. The percentage of mixed marriages increased significantly, and the Jewish shtetl, where they left their relatives and parents, was becoming more and more a symbol of a vanishing world. The second category was comprised of the Jews of former Eastern Poland,
TL;DR: One of the most interesting folks with whom I was in contact was Rabbi Stephen Wise, the founder and head of the Jewish Institute of Religion, who often would relate off-the-record accounts of his high-level activities, including meetings with President Franklin Roosevelt, who I believe took advantage of Wise.
Abstract: (2003). Conflicts between American Jewish leaders and dissidents over responding to news of the Holocaust: three episodes from 1942 to 1943. Journal of Genocide Research: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 439-450.
TL;DR: The nameless hero: Rudolf Vrba as mentioned in this paper, one of only five Jews who succeeded in escaping from Auschwitz (Kulka, 1968/1975), is a remarkable Holocaust hero, who was expelled from the High School of Bratislava at the age of 15 under the Slovak State's version of the Nuremberg anti-Jewish laws.
Abstract: The nameless hero: the Auschwitz escapee “We speak so much of memory because there is little of it left,” said the renowned Pier Nora (1989, p 7). This statement is certainly true in the case of Rudolf Vrba, a remarkable Holocaust hero, one of only five Jews who succeeded in escaping from Auschwitz (Kulka, 1968/1975). Born as Walter Rosenberg in Topolcany, Czechoslovakia, in 1924, Vrba was expelled from the High School of Bratislava at the age of 15 under the Slovak State's version of the Nuremberg anti-Jewish laws in 1939. Early in March 1942, in rebellion against the deportation laws, the 17-year-old Vrba ripped the yellow Star of David off his shoulder and left his Czechoslovakian home, in a taxi, and headed for England via Hungary. Intercepted and beaten by frontier guards, he was sent first to the Novaky transition camp in Slovakia. On June 14, 1942, he was then sent to the Majdanek death camp and, two weeks later, on June 30, to Auschwitz. Upon arriving in Auschwitz his first sentence to his friend,...
TL;DR: In this paper, the Encyclopaedia Brittanica was used to depict the Armenian Genocide as portrayed in the Encyclaedia of the World Wide Web (EWCW).
Abstract: (2003). The Armenian Genocide as portrayed in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Journal of Genocide Research: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 103-115.
TL;DR: David, Mike as discussed by the authors argues that the focus of the study of twentieth century genocide has been part of a landscape wherein political culture points to Nazism and communism as the twin engines of the greatest genocidal carnage in our time.
Abstract: David, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts (London and New York: Verso, 2001). 457 pp, $35.00, hardcover; (2002) $20.00, paperback. The study of twentieth century genocide has been part of a landscape wherein political culture points to Nazism and communism as the twin engines of the greatest genocidal carnage in our time. That focus has a number of effects. Our Zeitgeist has become profoundly pessimistic about the possibility of positive social and political change as our read of genocide's path is that the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions. In the words of Hans Schoots: “There will always be obstacles, if necessary millions, who will have to go because they do not want to march to the beckoning salvation and, therefore, they endanger the beautiful future. Terror then is not a derailment, but an integral part of political utopism.” There is wariness about the ambitions of ideology because we are charred into the notion that substantial societal transformation cannot be achieved in any manner ...
TL;DR: Allcock, John, Milivojevic, Marko and Horton, John J., eds, Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia: An Encyclopedia (Denver, Santa Barbara and Oxford, UK: ABC-CLIO, 1998).
Abstract: Cigar, Norman. Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of “Ethnic Cleansing” (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1995). 247 pp, cloth. Udovicki, Jasminka, and Ridgeway, James, eds. Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997). 337 pp, paper. Allcock, John. B, Milivojevic, Marko and Horton, John J., eds. Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia: An Encyclopedia (Denver, Santa Barbara and Oxford, UK: ABC-CLIO, 1998). 405 pp, cloth. Sudetic, Chuck. Blood and Vengeance: One Family's Story of the War in Bosnia (New York, London: W.W. Norton &Company, 1998). 392 pp, cloth. Thomas, Robert. The Politics of Serbia in the 1990s (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). 443 pp, paper. Burg, Steven L., and Shoup, Paul S. The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention (Armonk, NY and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1999). 497 pp, cloth.