Bell Ringer: March 23 & 28

Please answer this prompt fully. This assignment will be graded in your journal.

Think of a time when you or one of your friends was targeted, judged, or ridiculed by another person/group of people.

• How did it make you or your friend feel?• What did you want to do to stop it?• Did you stop it?

Genocides in World History

What is Genocide?

GenocidePurposeful killing, torture, or enslavement of a racial, political, religious, or cultural group.

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

– Killing members of the group;– Causing serious bodily or mental harm to

members of the group;– Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions

of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

– Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

– Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Preventing Genocide

In 1948, an international promise was made to prevent and punish genocide.

President Reagan signed the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide in 1988.

Raphael Lemkin

First Conviction

On September 2, 1998, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda issued the first conviction for genocide after a trial, declaring Jean-Paul Akayesu guilty for acts he engaged in and oversaw as mayor of the Rwandan town of Taba.

The skulls of hundreds of victims rest at Ntarama memorial, one of dozens of churches where Tutsis gathered to seek protection during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Genocides in the 20th Century

1. Armenians by leaders of the Ottoman Empire2. Peasants, government and military leaders, and

members of the upper class in the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin

3. Educated people, artists, technicians, former government officials, monks, and minorities by Pol Pot in Cambodia

4. Tutsi minority by Hutu in Rwanda5. Muslims and Croats by Bosnian Serbs in the former

Yugoslavia6. Jews in eastern Europe by Nazis

Station Activity

For each of the 6 Genocides, you will work with your group to:– Analyze quotes/pictures– Take notes – dates, murderers, group killed,

number of people killed– Classify genocide according to type– Locate the genocide on a map (book work)

• Safari Montage: Genocide • As you watch the movie, add drawings and

words to the “Genocide Head” to illustrate the motives and events for each genocide.

• Turn this in at the end of the block!

ReflectionMartin Niemoller was a protestant who lived during World War II. He is well known for his quote below that describes the Holocaust.“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist; Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist; Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

What does the quote tell us about speaking up against injustices? What can be done about prejudice and hate so that history never again sees something horrible as the Holocaust?

Armenian Genocide• Murderer(s): Ottoman Turks• Location: Ottoman Empire• Group Killed: Armenian Christians• Year(s): 1915 – 1918• 1.5 - 2 million deaths

Armenian Genocide

• First Genocide of the 20th Century.• Armenian Christians living in Turkey were

forced to leave their historic homeland through forced deportation (death marches) and massacres

• Allied Powers warned Turkey to stop, but this warning had no effect

• Turks also destroyed architecture, including churches, schools, libraries, and old records.

“In many cases the men were (those of military age were nearly all in the army) bound tightly together with ropes or chains. Women with little children in their arms, or in the last days of pregnancy were driven along under the whip like cattle. Three different cases came under my knowledge where the woman was delivered on the road, and because her brutal driver hurried her along she died of hemorrhage. I also know of one case where the gendarme in charge was a humane man, and allowed the poor woman several hours rest and then procured a wagon for her to ride in. Some women became so completely worn out and hopeless that they left their infants beside the road. Many women and girls have been outraged. At one place the commander of the gendarmerie openly told the men to whom he consigned a large company, that they were at liberty to do what they choose with the women and girls.”

From a report received by the American Consul General at Beirut relative to what has been going on in the Zeitoon region of Asiatic Turkey.

Discussion Questions

1. What different things happened to Armenian women on the march?

2. Why do you think a mother would leave her baby beside the road?

The Holocaust• Murderer(s): Nazis• Location: Eastern Europe• Group Killed: Jews• Year(s): 1939-1945• 6 million deaths

When the Second World War began in September 1939, Krulik was 9 years old. Bombs began falling on his home town in Poland almost at once, and the family hid in the cellar. 'It was horrendous. People were sobbing, praying, calling out...' Schools were closed, and in October the town's Jewish families (24,000 people) were ordered to live, isolated from the rest of the Poles, in a 'ghetto' marked off for them.

Life was hard in the ghetto. For a time Krulik's father had no job. Being small, Krulik learned how to get in and out of the ghetto without being noticed. With some other boys, he smuggled in tobacco and cigarettes and sold them in the streets to make money. Once he was caught by six Gestapo men, who 'kicked me around like a football'.

Every Jew over the age of 12 had to wear an armband with the star of David on it.

Discussion Questions

The forced isolation of groups of people of the same nationality, race or religion is one of the many steps that can lead to genocide and war.

Do you think isolating a group, like the Jews during the 1930’s, would be easy to do? Why or Why not?

Stalin’s Great Purge

• Murderer(s): Joseph Stalin• Location: USSR• Group Killed: Peasants,

government and military leaders, and members of the upper class

• Year(s): 1930s

Stalin’s Great Purge

Approximately 20 million killed– 14.5 million starved to death

in forced famines– 1 million executed for

political offenses (“enemies of the people”)

– 9.5 million deported, exiled, or imprisoned in work camps (if sent to Gulag Archipelago you never returned alive)

Witness’ Statement:

'We had a communal farm in Ukraine attached to my regiment. Everything was fine until last year (1932). Then we began to get letters asking for food. We sent what we could, but I didn't discover what had happened until I went to the farm only a month ago (March 1933). My God, you wouldn't believe it. The people were starving. Their animals were dead. There wasn't even a cat or dog in the whole village, and that was no good sign. Instead of 250 families there were only 73, and all of them were half-starved. They told me their seed grain was taken away last spring. "The order came that our farm must deliver 500 tons of grain. We needed 400 tons to sow our fields, and we only had 600 tons. But we gave the grain as ordered." And remember, these folks weren't kulaks, weren't class enemies. They were our own people. I was horrified.'

Discussion Questions

1. What did the young soldier discover was happening to the seed grain?

2. Why would seed grain be important to peasants?

3. Why was the soldier so “horrified” by what he saw?

Cambodian Genocide

• Murderer(s): Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge• Location: Cambodia• Group Killed: Monks, educated people, artists,

government officials• Year(s): 1975-1979

Cambodian Genocide

• Approximately 2 million deaths • Leader Pol Pot tried to form a

Communist peasant farming society resulting in 25% of the country’s population dying from starvation, over work, or executions.

• Pol Pot tried to “purify” the country by getting rid of educated people, artists, technicians, former government officials, monks, and minorities.

A witness’ report:'I was a foreign journalist in Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge marched in victorious in April 17, 1975, their faces cold, a deadness in their eyes. They ordered the city evacuated. Everyone was to head for the countryside to join the revolution. They killed those who argued against leaving. The guerrilla soldiers even ordered the wounded - between five and ten thousand of them - out of overflowing hospitals where the casualties had been so heavy in the last days of the war that the floors were slick with blood. Most couldn't walk, so their relatives wheeled them out on their beds, with plasma and serum bags attached, and began rushing them along the streets. I watched many Cambodian friends being herded out of Phnom Penh. Most of them I never saw again. All of us felt like betrayers, like people who were protected and didn't do enough to save our friends. We felt shame. We still do.'

Discussion Questions

1. Why does this journalist feel guilty?

2. Do you think he could have done something to protect his Cambodian friends?

Rwandan Genocide• Murderer(s): Hutus• Location: Rwanda• Group Killed: Tutsi (minority)• Year(s): 1994

Rwandan GenocideApproximately 800,000 deaths• Rwanda was a colony of Belgium:

– Hutu (90%)—peasants of Rwanda– Tutsi (10%)—high class of Rwanda & used by Belgians to run the

colony• Rwanda became independent Belgium in 1962 & the Hutu majority seized

power • In 1994 Hutu extremists launched a plan to murder the country's entire

Tutsi minority & any others who opposed the government's policies. • Began, April 6, 1994 and lasted 100 days.• Tutsis were killed by the Hutu militia using clubs and machetes.• As many as 10,000 were killed each day.

A witness’ report:“Those victims who escaped death carry on as best they can, often not very well. What they say today is what they said yesterday and what they will go on saying: for them time came to a halt and they can find no peace of mind. They complain that they have been abandoned. They are the ones who have to face all the grievances, sometimes compassion, sometimes others' shame for what they have done.”

Discussion Questions

In Rwanda today Tutsi refugees have returned and now live along side their Hutu murderers.

1. How do you think the Hutu can make up for what they did?

2. How do you think the Tutsi are able to forgive?

Bosnian Serb Genocide

• Murderer(s): Bosnian Serbs• Location: former Yugoslavia• Group Killed: Croats and Muslims• Year(s): 1992 –

1995

Bosnian Serb Genocide Approximately 200,000 deaths; 1 million refugees• Yugoslavia was composed of ethnic and religious groups that

had been historical rivals, even bitter enemies, including the Serbs (Orthodox Christians), Croats (Catholics) and ethnic Albanians (Muslims).

• The Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina was created after the break up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

• The conflict between the three main ethnic groups (Serbs, Croats, Muslims), resulted in genocide committed by the Serbs against the Muslims (“ethnic cleansing”).– In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces killed as many as 8,000 Bosnians from

Srebrenica. It was the largest massacre in Europe since the Holocaust.

In 1995, NATO initiated air strikes against Bosnian Serbs to stop the attacks against Bosnian Muslims. Ultimately, U.S.-led negotiations in Dayton, Ohio (The Dayton Peace Accords) ended the conflict in Bosnia, and a force was created to maintain the cease-fire. The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague brought Serbian President Milosevic and more than 160 Serbs to trial for their crimes against humanity and the murder of more than 200,000. Many low-ranking officers were tried and sentenced to prison. As atrocities were committed on all sides, convictions have included Serb, Croat and Bosnian Muslims, though Serbians and Bosnian Serbs have faced the majority of the charges.

Discussion Questions

1. What do you think “the world” can do to stop genocide before it occurs?

2. What about during or after such an event?