German II

The Horrors of World War II and Genocide

By: Andrea

Fear“Fear clings to the walls in your bedroom, crawls along the floor, and drips down from the ceiling; when you cross the threshold of your home, fear seizes you at the door and embraces you in an inescapable net; it hangs around in alleys and courtyards, lurking and waiting to attack as soon as you dare step out into the open. Fear is all around you, in all physical states-solid, liquid, gas; it presses in on you from without and seeps into you, and you have to hold it deep within yourself, silently, so as not to pass it on to others. It persists-in the night it wipes the sleep from your tired eyes, and during the day, on all following days and for all the weeks and months to come, it persists, without pause, without slack. Fear has a beginning but no end; it reaches a climax but never becomes a habit. Its corroding effect increases not arithmetically, but geometrically.”1

These are not crazed people

These are people who know what they are doing.

These are people that believe in what they are doing.

These are people who make a decision to act.

Genocide

There are a few varying definitions of the term genocide

Genocide – A word coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, which means: The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.2

The Run DownGenocide is a term created during the Holocaust and declared an international crime in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with the 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.5

…….or in other words

The specific "intent to destroy" particular groups is unique to genocide. A closely related category of international law, crimes against humanity, is defined as widespread or systematic attacks against civilians. Before 1944, no word existed to describe a coordinated assault on civilian populations. That year Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish legal scholar who had fled Nazi-occupied Poland and arrived in the United States in 1941, introduced the word "genocide" to give the crime a name.3

Do people really know much about genocide?

When you hear genocide what is the first image that pops into your head? It is most likely the Holocaust. I know that is the first image that pops into my head or at least it was the first until I began my research.

Political?

It seems like genocide always starts with some political issue….

…Land

…Religion

Never Again?

The Holocaust was a tragic event, but before I get into the Holocaust first I am going to talk about other genocides that happened before the Holocaust and those that happened in more recent years.

Yes…I said more RECENT years….

After 1945 people said never again, but it did happen. It happened again and again and again.

Before the Holocaust

Columbus Day & Thanksgiving…..hmmmmm?

Groups of people that were deemed unfit for life, barbaric, ect.

Ethnic cleansing

Native American Indians

I think we all know what happened to them when North America was first settled. Unless you slept through every history lesson in school.

Armenian Genocide - 1915In the year 1915 the Turkish government slaughtered ONE MILLION Armenians

Hundreds of thousands more were expelled into the desert to die.

1933 - 1945 HolocaustWe will come back to this

HELDENBERGEN, GERMANY, 1935 – Teacher refuses

to exclude Jewish Student

Group portrait of German girls posing outside their school in front of a Nazi flag. Among those pictured is Lilli Eckstein, a Jewish girl. Her teacher insisted that Lilli appear in this photo alongside her classmates. Six months later, Lilli was expelled from school for being Jewish.Credit: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Lilli Eckstein Stern

Cambodian Genocide – 1975-1979Death toll: Two Million (20% of the population, which equates to 1 out of every 5 slaughtered)

Under the rule of Pol Pot.

Guatemalan Genocide 1982Death toll: 200,000

Guatemala

Under the rule of the President Efraín Ríos Montt.

Even though he ruled as the Guatemalan President for fourteen months it was the bloodiest fourteen months in Guatemalan history.

Against the Mayan’s

In the 1980’s over two hundred thousand indigenous Mayan were brutally massacred across the lands by their own government. The Mayan were viewed as a threat to their country when in reality they were peaceful people and not a threat to anyone. The Guatemalan government said, “in order to kill the fish you must drain the pond.” Draining the pond is exactly what the government did. The government gave the orders and on July 18, 1982 the ruthless killings began. The government appointed soldiers obliterated one Mayan community after another.

The Horror

Women, men and children were taken from their homes and massacred. The soldiers cut the tongues out of people’s mouths. Pregnant women had their bellies sliced open and their fetuses ripped out of them. The fetuses were then brutally smashed against the trees. Children were beaten against the ground like rag dolls. The soldiers used guns to shoot and machetes to hack the bodies of their victims. Some victims were even burned alive and others had their limbs hacked off for fun. Girls were taken away and repeatedly raped and tortured.

Guatemala Continued

This was repeated from one village to the next. The government wanted all of the Mayan to be slaughtered to protect their country. Some people were lucky enough to hide from the soldiers when their community was being slaughtered and these people saw with their own eyes the brutality of the events that occurred.

Researchers have found massive graves with the bones of countless victims. Their bones also tell the stories of their tragic deaths.

Rwandan Genocide - 1994Death Toll: Over 500,000

Rwanda

Although they have always lived among each other ethnic Tutsi were considered a threat by the Hutu when a Hutu extremist led government decided to murder the entire Tutsi population in Rwanda.

In a Rwandan population of seven million in 1994 eighty five percent were Hutu and fourteen percent were Tutsi. Over five hundred thousand women, men and children were murdered in Rwanda within three months.

Rwanda ContinuedJust like the Hitler Youth/meetings went on behind closed doors to teach the Hutu the importance of Tutsi extermination.

The Hutu waited for the signal to start the killings of the Tutsi. Between April and July of 1994 the Hutu hunted down and massacred all Tutsi that they came in contact with. The Hutu would use machetes, clubs and guns to brutally murder the Tutsi. The government placed the fear in the hearts of the Hutu telling them that the Tutsi were dangerous and wanted to enslave the Hutu. This of course was false, but the Hutu believed that this is what the Tutsi wanted and in order to stop the Tutsi they all had to be killed.

Rwanda ContinuedOnce of the Hutu murderers said, “To start the killings every day the drums would start. The drum beat would begin when everyone was at home.” Tutsis were hiding in the hills and Hutu would search for them and kill them. 3

Killed women, men and children.

Set up road blocks on heavily traveled roads for killing.

Slaughtered babies just learning to smile to end the seed of the Tutsis.

This is what they believed in.

Did not look at them like human beings. This was the easiest way to perform the killings.

Tortured those who made them “work” for the kill.

Hutu felt on top of the world, invincible, nothing could stop them. In a fog.

The United States and other foreign government

began to evacuate their citizens from Rwanda

through the United Nations.

As the United Nations vehicles were evacuating by the truck loads Tutsi were jumping in front of the trucks and pleaded for help. The United Nations did not help the Tutsi and abandoned them. The Hutu waited on the perimeter until all of the UN were gone then went in for the kill.3

Cruelty

Cruelty is at the heart of every single genocide. The killers do not just eradicate the victims, but brutalize the victims in far more ways than is needed to kill them

Genocide is not always about killing.

Different forms of genocide happen in different places.

Serbia-Bosnia – 1992-1995Death Toll: Over 200,000

Not only were people killed but raped too.Muslim women were put into rape centers and repeatedly raped. The goal was to impregnate the women to rid Bosnia of the blood.

Darfur – 2003 and countingDeath toll: over 400,000 and counting

Darfur

A woman said that they were friends and neighbors that lived in the same village. Her father’s friend came over and chopped her father into pieces with a machete. Her mother and her brother were also chopped up into pieces. She said her father thought he was a good friend and even gave the killer a cow years before that.

This is what was happening all over.

People were turning on each other.

Why are children involved?

The children are perceived as the “seed” of the evil that they are trying to destroy.

Children are innocent, but this is something the killer feels is necessary from his/her brainwashing.

Rewind back to the Holocaust

Anyone viewed as racially inferior was affected by the mass exterminations put in place by Hitler. Plus others

This included:

Anyone of Jewish decent, Roma Gypsies, political traitors, anyone who was not heterosexual, physically and mentally challenged, prisoners of war, ect.

This resulted in the combined extermination of approximately 12 million people.

The Leaders Responsible for the Holocaust were very Intelligent People and Excellent ManipulatorsAdolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler…..

Genocide always starts with one man or one small group of people. That one man or small group build on the hate that others already have instilled in them. He feeds on the fear of the hatred and something terrible happens once people act on their fear and hatred.

Then you have the crazies who were given

powerDr. Mengele:

“The secret of multiplying the race of superior beings destined to rule was a “noble goal. If it were only possible, in the future, to have each German mother bear as many twins as possible. The project, conceived by the demented theorists of the Third Reich was utterly mad. It was Dr. Mengele, chief physician of Auschwitz, the notorious criminal doctor that these experiments had been entrusted. Among criminals the most dangerous type is the “criminal doctor,” especially when he is armed with powers such as those granted to Dr. Mengele. He sent millions of people to death mearly because, according to a racial theory, they were inferior beings and detrimental to mankind. This same criminal doctor spent long hours beside me, either at his microscopes, his disinfecting ovens and his test tubes, or standing with equal patience near the dissecting table, his smock befouled with blood, his bloody hands examining and experimenting like one possessed. The immediate objective was the increased reproduction of the German race. The final objective was the production of pure Germans in numbers sufficient to replace the Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, all of whom were condemned to be destroyed, but who for the moment were living on those territories declared vital to the Third Reich.”4

 

Auschwitz“In my role of Sonderkommando doctor, I was making my morning rounds. All four crematoriums were working at full blast. Last night they had burned the Greek Jews from the Mediterranean island of Corfu, one of the oldest communities of Europe. The victims were kept for twenty-seven days without food or water, first in launches, then in sealed box cars. When they arrived at Auschwitz’s unloading platform, the doors were unlocked, but no one got out and lined up for selection. Half of them were already dead, and the other half in a coma. The entire convoy, without exception, was sent to number two crematorium. Work accelerated during the night so all that remained by morning was a pile of dirty disheveled clothes in the crematorium courtyard.”6

My Opinion

In my honest opinion I don’t understand why we cannot reach the goal of world peace. All genocides are horrible.

I feel that we are going through a genocide right here in the United States through a slow death being served through food, convenience and prescription drugs.

Barbaric killings vs organized killings

Works Cited:3"Daniel Jonah Goldhagen | Worse Than War." RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2013.

2"Welcome to the United Nations: It's Your World." UN News Center. UN, n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2013.

1Adelsberger, Lucie, and Arthur Joseph. Slavin. Auschwitz: A Doctor's Story. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1995. 9. Print.

4Nyiszli, Miklós. Auschwitz: An Eyewitness Account of Mengele's Infamous Death Camp. New York: Seaver, 1986. 52. Print.

5"Patterns of Genocide." Preventing Genocide. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Mar. 2013.

6Nyiszli, Miklós. Auschwitz: An Eyewitness Account of Mengele's Infamous Death Camp. New York: Seaver, 1986. 83. Print.