The most common question people are compelled to ask when studying genocide is: why? Throughout our lives, we hear about these atrocities, and yet they never seem to make sense to the average person. Many people tend to look over the details, just reassuring themselves that these campaigns are led out by evil, sociopathic dictators. Yet, they forget to ask how these campaigns start and, once again, why they started in the first place. In the case of genocide, there are two main reasons why a genocidal campaign would be launched against a group of people: the pursuit of power and the pursuit to exterminate or deportation an ethnic or religious group. To begin, in a majority of cases of genocide and crimes against humanity, the pursuit of power
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Some even make it their goal to liquidate the entire group. This example is prominent in many genocides, some well-known ones are the Holocaust, Rwanda, and the Armenian genocide. To begin, the Holocaust occurred when Nazi Germany believed that people of the Jewish religion were becoming a threat to the German community and were to blame for all social and economic issues within the country’s borders. The Nazi’s set out a goal to deport, and then later exterminate, the Jewish population living in and around Germany. Hitler used persuasive tactics to spark a anti-Semitic movement throughout the country, which led to the dehumanization of the Jewish people in Europe. By the end of WWII, the causalities of the Jewish population reached nearly 6 million. Other groups, such as homosexuals, Poles, and the mentally and physically disabled were also killed by the masses. Next, within Rwanda, a similar conflict occurred. The Hutus and the Tutsis, two ethnic groups that were created by the Europeans after seizing control of the country, faced an ongoing rivalry. After the assassination of their President, a Hutu group by the name of Interhamwe began arming young thugs, killing Tutsi people. By the time the country was taken under rebel army leader Paul Kagame, nearly 800 000 people had perished, …show more content…
With all that said, how can we, as humanity, help protect each other from these atrocities? With all of our past knowledge on genocides, many like to say “Never again”, but can we really promise that situations like the Holocaust or the Rwanda genocide will never occur again? We can answer the questions of why genocides occur, but we cannot answer the question of whether or not we will see these acts again in the
Some even make it their goal to liquidate the entire group. This example is prominent in many genocides, some well-known ones are the Holocaust, Rwanda, and the Armenian genocide. To begin, the Holocaust occurred when Nazi Germany believed that people of the Jewish religion were becoming a threat to the German community and were to blame for all social and economic issues within the country’s borders. The Nazi’s set out a goal to deport, and then later exterminate, the Jewish population living in and around Germany. Hitler used persuasive tactics to spark a anti-Semitic movement throughout the country, which led to the dehumanization of the Jewish people in Europe. By the end of WWII, the causalities of the Jewish population reached nearly 6 million. Other groups, such as homosexuals, Poles, and the mentally and physically disabled were also killed by the masses. Next, within Rwanda, a similar conflict occurred. The Hutus and the Tutsis, two ethnic groups that were created by the Europeans after seizing control of the country, faced an ongoing rivalry. After the assassination of their President, a Hutu group by the name of Interhamwe began arming young thugs, killing Tutsi people. By the time the country was taken under rebel army leader Paul Kagame, nearly 800 000 people had perished, …show more content…
With all that said, how can we, as humanity, help protect each other from these atrocities? With all of our past knowledge on genocides, many like to say “Never again”, but can we really promise that situations like the Holocaust or the Rwanda genocide will never occur again? We can answer the questions of why genocides occur, but we cannot answer the question of whether or not we will see these acts again in the