A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year A riveting account of a forgotten holocaust: the slaughter of over one hundred thousand Ukrainian Jews in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. In the Midst of Civilized Europe repositions the pogroms as a defining moment of the twentieth century. 'Exhaustive, clearly written, deeply researched' - The Times 'A meticulous, original and deeply affecting historical account' - Philippe Sands, author of East West Street Between 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine by peasants, townsmen, and soldiers who blamed the Jews for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In hundreds of separate incidents, ordinary people robbed their Jewish neighbors with impunity, burned down their houses, ripped apart their Torah scrolls, sexually assaulted them, and killed them. Largely forgotten today, these pogroms - ethnic riots - dominated headlines and international affairs in their time. Aid workers warned that six million Jews were in danger of complete extermination. Twenty years later, these dire predictions would come true. Drawing upon long-neglected archival materials, including thousands of newly discovered witness testimonies, trial records, and official orders, acclaimed historian Jeffrey Veidlinger shows for the first time how this wave of genocidal violence created the conditions for the Holocaust. Through stories of survivors, perpetrators, aid workers, and governmental officials, he explains how so many different groups of people came to the same conclusion: that killing Jews was an acceptable response to their various problems.

This work is an indispensable guide to the development of the emerging discipline of genocide studies and the only available assessment of the historical literature pertaining to genocides.It is the only historiographical assessment of genocide studies available, written by experts in the field. It brings together comparative analyses of the development of the discipline and examinations of the historiography of particular cases (or contested cases) of genocide. It includes thematic, comparative essays (e.g., on religion, gender, law, modernity) side by side with historiographical case studies.It deals not only with the few unambiguous and widely recognized cases of genocide but also with cases whose status is more contested (e.g., India, China, Guatemala) through analyses of the historiography relating to those cases. It is also an incomparable guide to a massive and complex literature, in newly-commissioned and up-to-date essays.

Numerous studies concerning transitional justice exist. However, comparatively speaking, the effects actually achieved by measures for coming to terms with dictatorships have seldom been investigated. There is an even greater lack of transnational analyses. This volume contributes to closing this gap in research. To this end, it analyses processes of coming to terms with the past in seven countries with different experiences of violence and dictatorship. Experts have drawn up detailed studies on transitional justice in Albania, Argentina, Ethiopia, Chile, Rwanda, South Africa and Uruguay. Their analyses constitute the empirical material for a comparative study of the impact of measures introduced within the context of transitional justice. It becomes clear that there is no sure formula for dealing with dictatorships. Successes and deficits alike can be observed in relation to the individual instruments of transitional justice - from criminal prosecution to victim compensation. Nevertheless, the South American states perform much better than those on the African continent. This depends less on the instruments used than on political and social factors. Consequently, strategies of transitional justice should focus more closely on these contextual factors.

Memory Art in the Contemporary World deals with the ever-expanding field of transnational memory art, which has emerged from a political need to come to terms with traumatic historical pasts, from the Holocaust to apartheid, colonialism, state terror and civil war. The book focuses on the work of several contemporary artists from beyond the Northern Transatlantic, including William Kentridge, Vivan Sundaram, Doris Salcedo, Nalini Malani and Guillermo Kuitca, all of whom reflect on historical situations specific to their own countries but in work which has been shown to have a transnational reach. Andreas Huyssen considers their dual investment in memories of state violence and memories of modernism as central to the affective power of their work. This thought-provoking and highly relevant book reflects on the various forms and critical potential of memory art in a contemporary world which both obsesses about the past, in the building of monuments and museums and an emphasis on retro and nostalgia in popular culture, and simultaneously fosters historical amnesia in increasingly flattened notions of temporality encouraged by the internet and social media.

"Neither a case study of a particular genocide nor a work of comparative genocide, this book explores the political constraints and imperatives that motivate debates about genocide in the academic world and, to a lesser extent, in the political arena. The book is an analysis of the ways that political interests shape discourse about genocide. It consists of case studies of Cambodia, Bangladesh, the Ottoman Armenians, the Holocaust and a comparative study of the concept of genocide provocation as applied to the Armenians, and Tutsis."--

Rainy Street Stories is a composition of powerful reflections on today's espionage, terrorism, and secret wars. These stories, essays, and poems by John Davis, himself a retired intelligence officer, take place from Europe, to Asia, and back to the Americas. He lived overseas for many years, where he served as a soldier, civil servant, and gifted linguist. Davis writes with a thoughtful, compassionate, and fair assessment of his lifetime lived during wars and conflicts which were his generation's legacy from World War II. He recounts mysterious, sometimes strangely suggestive, even curiously puzzling tales. Each will cause the reader to think. Davis draws from actual encounters in unusual circumstances, in conversations at utterly unexpected times, and chance meetings, historical site visits, or his readings to illustrate his reflections. Moreover, he is influenced by carefully listening to others who experienced history, from careful study of human nature, observation of international events, but also by remaining open to surprises, the better to distill the essence of a hidden truth. Those people about whom he speculates, events he interprets, motives he muses about, or wonders he reveals will remain with you for a long time. These are not writings to be read in a night, but to be reflected upon over the coming years.

Without succumbing to utopian fantasies or realistic pessimism, Riemer and his contributors call for strengthening the key institutions of a global human rights regime, developing an effective policy of prudent prevention of genocide, working out a sagacious strategy of keenly targeted sanctions--political, economic, military, judicial--and adopting a guiding philosophy of just humanitarian intervention. They underscore significant changes in the international system--the end of the Cold War, economic globalization, the communications revolution-- that hold open the opportunity for significant, if modest, movement toward strengthening key institutions.

The essays explore key problems in working toward prevention of genocide. They highlight the existence of considerable early warning of genocide and emphasize that the real problem is a lack of political will in key global institutions. Sanctions, especially economic sanctions may punish a genocidal regime, but at the expense of innocent civilians. Thus, more clearly targeted sanctions are seen as essential. The argument on behalf of a standing police force to deal with the crime of genocide, as they show, is powerful and controversial: powerful because the need is persuasive, controversial because political realists question its cost and political feasibility. Implementing a philosophy of just humanitarian intervention requires an appreciation of the difficulties of interpreting those principles in difficult concrete situations. A permanent international criminal tribunal to deter and punish genocide, they argue, will put into place a much needed component of a global human rights regime. A thoughtful analysis for scholars and students of international politics and law, and human rights in general.

For 25 years, Cambodia's Khmer Rouge have avoided responsibility for their crimes against humanity. For 30 long years, from the late 1960s to the late 1990s, the Cambodian people suffered from a war that has no name. Etcheson argues that this series of hostilities, which included both civil and external war, amounted to one long conflict, The Thirty Years War, and he demonstrates that there was one "constant, churning presence" that drove that conflict: the Khmer Rouge. New findings demonstrate that the death toll was approximately 2.2 million--about a half million higher than commonly believed. Detailing the struggle to come to terms with what happened in Cambodia, Etcheson concludes that real justice is not merely elusive, but in fact may be impossible, for crimes on the scale of genocide. This book details the work of a unique partnership, Yale University's Cambodian Genocide Program, which laid the evidentiary basis for the forthcoming Khmer Rouge tribunal and also played a key role in the international advocacy necessary for the tribunal's creation. It presents the information collected through the Mass Grave Mapping Project of the Documentation Center of Cambodia and reveals that the pattern of killing was relatively uniform throughout the country. Despite regular denial of knowledge of the mass killing among the surviving leadership of the Khmer Rouge, Etcheson demonstrates that they were not only aware of it, but that they personally managed and directed the killing.

Over the course of the long and violent twentieth century, only a minority of international crime perpetrators ever stood trial, and a central challenge of this era was the effort to ensure that not all these crimes remained unpunished. This required not only establishing a legal record but also courage, determination, and inventiveness in realizing justice. Defeating Impunity moves from the little-known trials of the 1920s to the Yugoslavia tribunal in the 2000s, from Belgium in 1914 to Ukraine in 1943, and to Stuttgart and Dusseldorf in 1975. It illustrates the extent to which the language of law drew an international horizon of justice.

The Central and South American collection at the British Museum collections contains approximately 62,000 objects, spanning 10,000 years of human history. The vast majority cannot be displayed, and those objects are the subject of Untold Microcosms, a collection of ten stories from ten Latin American writers, and inspired by the narratives about our past that we create through museums, in spite of their gaps and disarticulations.Featuring new original works by: Yasnaya Elena Aguilar, Cristina Rivera Garza, Joseph Zarate, Juan Cardenas, Velia Vidal, Lina Meruane, Gabriela Cabezon Camara, Dolores Reyes, Carlos Fonseca, Djamila Ribeiro.

In 1144, the mutilated body of William of Norwich, a young apprentice leatherworker, was found abandoned outside the city's walls. The boy bore disturbing signs of torture, and a story soon spread that it was a ritual murder, performed by Jews in imitation of the Crucifixion as a mockery of Christianity. The outline of William's tale swiftly gained currency far beyond Norwich, and the idea that Jews engaged in ritual murder became firmly rooted in the European imagination. E.M Rose's engaging book delves into the story of William's murder and the notorious trial that followed to uncover the origin of the ritual murder accusation-known as the "blood libel"-in western Europe in the Middle Ages. Focusing on the specific historical context-the 12th-century reform of the Church, the position of Jews in England, and the Second Crusade-and suspensefully unraveling the facts of the case, Rose makes a powerful argument for why the Norwich Jews (and particularly one Jewish banker) were accused of killing the youth, and how the malevolent blood libel accusation managed to take hold. She also considers four "copycat" cases, in which Jews were similarly blamed for the death of young Christians, and traces the adaptations of the story over time. In the centuries after its appearance, the ritual murder accusation provoked instances of torture, death and expulsion of thousands of Jews and the extermination of hundreds of communities. Although no charge of ritual murder has withstood historical scrutiny, the concept of the blood libel is so emotionally charged and deeply rooted in cultural memory that it endures even today. Rose's groundbreaking work, driven by fascinating characters, a gripping narrative, and impressive scholarship, provides clear answers as to why the blood libel emerged when it did and how it was able to gain such widespread acceptance, laying the foundations for enduring anti-Semitic myths that continue to the present.

The Rohingya Crisis is now in its fifth year with no end in sight. While the international community has supported the displaced Rohingyas in Bangladesh by providing humanitarian assistance, what is needed now is to investigate the short-and long-term implications of the crisis from the host country's perspective. Also, it is imperative to examine the current political situation, which was caused by the Myanmar military coup in February 2021. It has cast a dark shadow on the possibility of a negotiated repatriation. In this volume, scholars from Bangladesh and Canada have reflected upon the security situation, the pandemic's impact on the Rohingyas, inter-group conflict, environmental impact and burden sharing aspects, the informal labor situation, NGO intervention for resilience mapping, and diaspora activities. For both academics and policymakers who work in the fields of conflict resolution and peacebuilding, this book will show how not intervening early in a crisis can have long-term consequences.

While the fate of minorities under Nazism is well known, the earlier expulsions of Germany's unwanted residents are less well understood. Against a backdrop of raging public debate, and numerous claims of a 'state of exception', tens of thousands of vulnerable people living in the German Empire were the victims of mass expulsion orders between 1871 and 1914. Groups as diverse as Socialists, Jesuits, Danes, colonial subjects, French nationalists, Poles, and 'Gypsies' were all removed, under circumstances that varied from police actions undertaken by provincial governors through to laws authorising removals passed by the Reichstag. Purging the Empire examines the competing voices demanding the removal or the preservation of suspect communities, suggesting that these expulsions were enabled by the decentralised and participatory nature of German politics. In a surprisingly responsive political system, a range of players, including the Kaiser, the Reichstag, the bureaucracy, provincial officials, and local police authorities were all empowered to authorise the expulsion of unwanted residents. Added to this, the German press, civic associations, chambers of commerce, public intellectuals, religious societies, and the grassroots membership of political parties all played an important role in advocating or denouncing the measures before, during and after their implementation. Far from revealing the centrality of authoritarian caprice, Germany's mass expulsions point to the diffuse nature of coercive sovereign power and the role of public pressure in authorising or censuring the removals that took place in a modern, increasingly parliamentary Rechtsstaat.

A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year A riveting account of a forgotten holocaust: the slaughter of over one hundred thousand Ukrainian Jews in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. In the Midst of Civilized Europe repositions the pogroms as a defining moment of the twentieth century. 'Exhaustive, clearly written, deeply researched' - The Times 'A meticulous, original and deeply affecting historical account' - Philippe Sands, author of East West Street Between 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine by peasants, townsmen, and soldiers who blamed the Jews for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In hundreds of separate incidents, ordinary people robbed their Jewish neighbours with impunity, burned down their houses, ripped apart their Torah scrolls, sexually assaulted them, and killed them. Largely forgotten today, these pogroms - ethnic riots - dominated headlines and international affairs in their time. Aid workers warned that six million Jews were in danger of complete extermination. Twenty years later, these dire predictions would come true. Drawing upon long-neglected archival materials, including thousands of newly discovered witness testimonies, trial records, and official orders, acclaimed historian Jeffrey Veidlinger shows for the first time how this wave of genocidal violence created the conditions for the Holocaust. Through stories of survivors, perpetrators, aid workers, and governmental officials, he explains how so many different groups of people came to the same conclusion: that killing Jews was an acceptable response to their various problems.

In The Trial of Hissein Habre: The International Crimes of a Former Head of State, Emmanuel Guematcha recounts the trial of Hissein Habre, the former Head of State of Chad. Accused of committing crimes against humanity, war crimes, and torture while he ruled Chad between 1982 and 1990, he was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2016 and 2017 by the African Extraordinary Chambers. Guematcha examines the process that led to this achievement in Africa, including the failed attempts to try Hissein Habre in the Senegalese, Chadian, and Belgian courts. Guematcha discusses the mobilization of victims and the involvement of non-governmental and international organizations. He describes the particularities of the Extraordinary African Chambers, discusses the establishment of Hissein Habre's criminal responsibility, and presents the trial through the testimonies of several victims, witnesses, and experts. These testimonies shed light on what it means for individuals to be subjected to international crimes. The author also questions the impact and significance of the trial in Africa and beyond.

Positioning itself within significant developments in genocide studies arising from misgivings about two noteworthy observers, Arendt and Milgram, this book asks what lies 'beyond the banality of evil'? And suggests the answer lies within criminology. Offering the author's reflections about how to interpret genocide as a crime, Beyond the Banality of Evil: Criminology and Genocide endeavours to understand how the theories of criminal motivation might shed light on these stunning events and make them comprehensible. While a great deal has been written about the shortcomings of the obedience paradigm and 'desk murderers' when discussing the Holocaust, little has been said of what results when investigations are taken beyond these limitations. Through examination and analysis of the literature surrounding genocide studies, Brannigan frames the events within a general theoretical approach to crime before applying his own revised model, specifically to Rwanda and drawn from field-work in 2004 and 2005. This provides a new and compelling account of the dynamics of the 1994 genocide and its distinctive attributes of speed, popularity, totality and emotional indifference. With a focus on the disarticulation of personal culpability among ordinary perpetrators, Beyond the Banality of Evil questions the effectiveness of individual-level guilt imputation in these politically based, collectively orchestrated crimes, and raises doubts about the utility of criminal indictments that have evolved in the context of models of individual misconduct.

At the time of drafting the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention), the drafters were hopeful that the document will be the response needed to ensure that the world would never again witness such atrocities as committed by the Nazi regime. While, arguably, there has been no such great loss of human lives as during WWII, genocidal incidents have and still take place. After WWII, we have witnessed the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, to name only a few. The responses to these atrocities have always been inadequate. Every time the world leaders would come together to renew their promise of 'Never Again'. However, the promise has never materialised. In 2014, Daesh unleashed genocide against religious minorities in Syria and Iraq. Before the world managed to shake off from the atrocities, in 2016, the Burmese military launched a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. This was followed by reports of ever-growing atrocities against Christian minorities in Nigeria. Without waiting too long, in 2018, China proceeded with its genocidal campaign against the Uyghur Muslims. In 2020, the Tigrayans became the victims of ethnic targeting. Five cases of mass atrocities that, in the space of just five years, all easily meet the legal definition of genocide. Again, the response that followed each case has been inadequate and unable to make a difference to the targeted communities. This legacy does not give much hope for the future. The question that this books hopes to address is what needs to change to ensure that we are better equipped to address genocide and prevent the crime in the future.

The mass killing of Ottoman Armenians is today widely recognized, both within and outside scholarly circles, as an act of genocide. What is less well known, however, is that it took place within a broader context of Ottoman violence against minority groups during and after the First World War. Among those populations decimated were the indigenous Christian Assyrians (also known as Syriacs or Chaldeans) who lived in the borderlands of present-day Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. This volume is the first scholarly edited collection focused on the Assyrian genocide, or "Sayfo" (literally, "sword" in Aramaic), presenting historical, psychological, anthropological, and political perspectives that shed much-needed light on a neglected historical atrocity.

***Winner of an English PEN Award 2021*** During the 1948 war more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were violently expelled from their homes by Zionist militias. The legacy of the Nakba - which translates to 'disaster' or 'catastrophe' - lays bare the violence of the ongoing Palestinian plight. Voices of the Nakba collects the stories of first-generation Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, documenting a watershed moment in the history of the modern Middle East through the voices of the people who lived through it. The interviews, with commentary from leading scholars of Palestine and the Middle East, offer a vivid journey into the history, politics and culture of Palestine, defining Palestinian popular memory on its own terms in all its plurality and complexity.

On April 25th 1915, during the First World War, the famous Anzacs landed ashore at Gallipoli. At the exact same moment, leading figures of Armenian life in the Ottoman Empire were being arrested in vast numbers. That dark day marks the simultaneous birth of a national story - and the beginning of a genocide. When We Dead Awaken - the first narrative history of the Armenian Genocide in decades - draws these two landmark historical events together. James Robins explores the accounts of Anzac Prisoners of War who witnessed the genocide, the experiences of soldiers who risked their lives to defend refugees, and Australia and New Zealand's participation in the enormous post-war Armenian relief movement. By exploring the vital political implications of this unexplored history, When We Dead Awaken questions the national folklore of Australia, New Zealand, and Turkey - and the mythology of Anzac Day itself.