GENOCIDESNAZI GERMANY AND THE JEWISH

HOLOCAUST

WHAT IS A GENOCIDE? The deliberate killing of a large group of

people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group.

In human history there has been a number of recorded incidences of genocides. Prominent and yet not often mentioned was the killing of the inhabitants of the continent now referred to as America by European settlers in the 18th century.

Some have concluded that "the killing of native Americans was the biggest genocide in world history”

In the 20th century this was followed by the Jewish holocaust and the Rwanda genocides.

SYNONYMS OF GENOCIDEOther words which have the same meaning and can be used instead of genocide are:- racial killing, massacre, wholesale slaughter,

mass slaughter, wholesale killing  indiscriminate killing, mass murder, mass

homicide mass destruction, annihilation, extermination,

elimination, liquidation eradication, decimation, butchery, bloodbath, 

bloodletting; pogrom ethnic cleansing, holocaust, Shoah which

literary means slaying

THE JEWISH HOLOCAUST

The Holocaust, also known as the ‘Shoah’, was a genocide in which approximately six million Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and its collaborators.

NAZI JUSTIFICATIONS FOR THE HOLOCAUST First and foremost Hitler and his fellow

Nazis were racists who hated the Jews. Hitler and his Nazis were obsessed with

the belief of the ‘Master race’ superior to other races.

The Nazis believed the Aryan race was the ‘master race’ who were superior to others.

According to the Nazis’ league table of races at the top was the Aryans at the bottom were the Jews, Gypsies and Blacks.

The inferior races were seen as a threat to the purity and strength of the German nation.

As a result when the Nazi took power all people of the inferior races were deprived of their basic human rights before a decision to eliminate them was taken.

The Nazi believed that the “Master race” needed more living space “lebensraum” hence inferior races had to be wiped out to create space for the Germany people.

The word lebensraum refers to the requirement of additional territory considered by a nation, especially Nazi Germany, to be necessary for national survival or for the expansion of trade.

Sociologists argue that genocide must be understood as a fundamentally illegitimate variant of warfare directed against civilian social groups rather than armed enemies.

That most often genocides takes place in the context of more generalized conventional warfare.

The aim to reclaim Germany’s lost pride by extending its territory in Eastern Europe occupying lands by Jews and other inferior races in this part of the world The Nazi’s actions could also be explained in

the context of old theories on the elimination of weaker species by the stronger species advanced by Thomas Malthus.

METHODS USED BY THE NAZIS TO KILL THE JEWS At the beginning soldiers were ordered to

fire at the defenseless Jews. This method was affecting the soldiers

who began to complain. The Nazi leaders then thought of sending

the Jews to Siberia in central Russia where it is very cold so that the Jews could die slowly from the low temperatures.

The transportation of the Jews was going to be an unnecessary cost which the Nazis did not like to shoulder.

It was further suggested to send the Jews to the then malaria infested island of Madagascar off the coast of south eastern Africa.

This idea was again dropped for cost reasons.

The last method suggested was to built concentration camps were the Jews would be exterminated in gas chambers.

GENOCIDE IN RWANDA The Rwandan Genocide was a genocidal

mass slaughter of Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda by members of the Hutu majority.

During the approximate 100-day period from April 7 to mid-July 1994, an estimated 500,000–1,000,000 Rwandans were killed, constituting as much as 70% of the Tutsi and 20% of Rwanda's total population.

The genocide was planned by members of the core political elite known as the akazu many of whom occupied positions at top levels of the national government.

Perpetrators came from the ranks of the Rwandan army, the National Police (gendarmerie), government-backed militias including the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, and the Hutu civilian population.

The genocide took place in the context of the Rwandan Civil War, an ongoing conflict beginning in 1990 between the Hutu-led government and the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).

The RPF was largely composed of Tutsi refugees whose families had fled to Uganda following earlier waves of Hutu violence against the Tutsi.

International pressure on the Hutu-led government of Juvénal Habyarimana resulted in a ceasefire in 1993 with a roadmap to implement the Arusha Accords that would create a power-sharing government with the RPF.

This agreement displeased many conservative Hutu, including members of the Akazu, who viewed it as conceding to enemy demands.

Among the broader Hutu populace, the RPF military campaign had also intensified support for the so-called "Hutu Power” ideology.

The Hutu power ideology portrayed the RPF as an alien force intent on reinstating the Tutsi monarchy and enslaving Hutus, a prospect met with extreme opposition.

THE OUTBREAK OF THE GENOCIDE On April 6, 1994, an airplane carrying the Hutu

Rwandan President Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down on its descent into Kigali, killing all on board.

Genocidal killings began the following day: soldiers, police and militia quickly executed key Tutsi and moderate Hutu leaders, then erected checkpoints and barricades and used Rwandans' national identity cards to systematically kill Tutsi.

These forces recruited or pressured Hutu civilians to arm themselves with machetes, clubs, blunt objects and other weapons to rape, maim and kill their Tutsi neighbors and to destroy or steal their property

BACKGROUND TO THE PROBLEM The earliest inhabitants of what is now

Rwanda were the Twa. The Twa were a group of aboriginal pygmy

hunter-gatherers who settled in the area between 8000 BC and 3000 BC and remain in Rwanda today.

Between 700 BC and 1500 AD, a number of Bantu groups migrated into Rwanda, and began to clear forest land for agriculture.

ORIGINS OF THE TUTSI AND HUTUS

Historians have several theories regarding the nature of the Bantu migrations: one theory is that the first settlers were Hutu, while the Tutsi migrated later and formed a distinct racial group, possibly of Cushitic origin.

An alternative theory is that the migration was slow and steady from neighboring regions, with incoming groups bearing high genetic similarity to the established ones and integrating into rather than conquering the existing society.

The Tutsi herded cattle while the Hutu farmed the land.

The word Tutsi was originally used to describe the status of "a person rich in cattle’", and later progressed to become "the term that referred to the elite group as a whole’".

The Hutu, Tutsi and Twa of Rwanda share a common language and are collectively known as the Banyarwanda.

For over 400 years these groups had lived peacefully alongside each other.

By 1700 these people had coalesced into clans and later into eight kingdoms.

KINGDOM OF RWANDA

One of these kingdoms of Rwanda ruled by the Tutsi Nyiginya clan, became increasingly dominant.

From the mid-eighteenth century it expanded through a process of conquest and assimilation.

It achieved its greatest extent under the reign of King Kigeli Rwabugiri.

Rwabugiri expanded the kingdom west and north and initiated administrative reforms.

A reconstruction of the King of

Rwanda's palace at Nyanza.

These reforms included ubuhake, in which Tutsi patrons ceded cattle, and therefore privileged status, to Hutu or Tutsi clients in exchange for economic and personal service and uburetwa.

Uburetwa was a corvée system in which Hutu were forced to work for Tutsi chiefs.

Rwabugiri's changes deepened the socio-economic and power divisions between the Hutu and Tutsi.

CAUSES OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE TUTSI AND THE HUTU

The dominance of the Tutsi kingdom laid the foundations for the discontentment of the Hutu people who were forced to work for Tutsi chiefs.

During the 19th century Rwanda became a colony of Germany following the partition of Africa at the Berlin conference of 1884.

The Germans decided that it was cheaper and administratively easier for them to rule through the Rwandan monarchy.

This also meant the Germans would not require a large military presence in Rwanda, however this helped to strengthen the dominance of the Tutsi over the Hutu.

The German colonists believed that the Tutsi had migrated from Ethiopia and were more Caucasian than the Hutus.

This led them to believe that the Tutsi were therefore racially superior and better suited to carry out colonial administrative tasks.

The Tutsi King Musinga used Germany support to strengthen his rule.

During the First World War Rwanda and Burundi were occupied by Belgium.

The Belgians initially continued using the method used by the Germans but by 1926 made changes which saw Tutsi chiefs gaining more control over the Hutus.

Grazing lands previously under Hutu collectives were privatized with minimal compensation.

The scope of Uburetwa (forced labour) was broadened.

In 1935, Belgium introduced identity cards labelling each individual as Tutsi, Hutu, Twa or Naturalized.

While it had previously been possible for particularly wealthy Hutu to become honorary Tutsi, the identity cards prevented any further movement between classes

The Catholic Church became increasingly important in Rwanda, as the Belgian government relied on the clergy's local knowledge

Many Rwandans became Catholics as a means of social advancement.

After World War II, a Hutu emancipation movement began to grow in Rwanda.

This was fuelled by increasing resentment of the inter-war social reforms, and also an increasing sympathy for the Hutu within the Catholic Church.

Colonial masters played the ethnic groups against each other to perpetuate their stay in control.

By early 1960, the Belgians had replaced most Tutsi chiefs with Hutu and organized mid-year commune elections which returned an overwhelming Hutu majority.

 The king was deposed, a Hutu dominated republic created, and the country became independent in 1962.

As the revolution progressed, Tutsi began leaving the country to escape the Hutu purges.

These settled in the four neighbouring countries Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and Zaire.

Rwanda has one of the highest population densities in Africa at 408 people per square kilometre.

Its population has increased from 1.6 million people in 1934 to 7.1 million in 1989, leading to competition for land and this is cited as one of the causes behind the genocide.

SUMMARY OF THE CAUSES OF RWANDA GENOCIDE

The historical dominance of the Tutsi and their ill-treatment of the Hutu such as forced labor sowed the seeds of hatred between the two ethnic groups.

The tensions between the majority Hutus and the Tutsis, who were seen as the elite members of society

The tactics of the European colonizers in playing one ethnic group against the other in order to create disunity further intensified their hatred of each other.

For example the Germans used the racial argument that the Tutsi were more closer to Caucasians than the Hutu hence were therefore racially and intellectually superior.

The Belgians on the other hand sought to capitalize on the discontentment of the Hutu by symphathizing and began placing them in positions of power.

The Belgian colonial rule, which rewarded Tutsis with a Western education, and denied political and economic power to the Hutus

The large increase in population and the competition for limited resources was also a major factor in the conflict.

The missionaries also played an important part in fuelling the rift between the two groups.

For example the Catholic church offered an opportunity for the social advancement of the Hutu.

Since the Belgian government relied so much on the missionaries’ knowledge of the local situation, they were easily influenced by the missionaries to replace the Tutsi chiefs with Hutu people.

Rwandan Independence, in 1963, when the Tutsis were discriminated against, and went into exile in Uganda

The genocide was also premeditated and well orchestrated as shown by the evidence on how the Hutu people had been provided with machetes well before the shooting down of the plane carrying the President and his eventually death.

The Civil War, when the Tutsis returned to Rwanda in 1990, a civil war broke out, ending in a cease-fire, signed by the Hutu president, and presided over by the United Nations peacekeeping force

Lastly, the international community can also be blamed for not having been decisive enough to avert the catastrophe.

This is shown by the reluctance of Kofi Annan the then Secretary General to authorize the UN mission in Rwanda to disarm the Hutu militias.

The shooting of President Habyariman, a Hutu, on April 6th, 1994. The Hutus blamed the Tutsi for this, and they started a massacre.