Since the 1990s scholars have focused heavily on the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and have presented a complex and heterogeneous picture of perpetrators. This book provides a unique overview of the current state of research on perpetrators. Contributions approach the topic from various expertise (history, gender, sociology, psychology, law, comparative genocide), and address several unresolved questions. The overall focus is on the key question that it still disputed: How do ordinary people become mass murderers?

This groundbreaking book brings an important spatial perspective to our understanding of genocide through a fresh interpretation of Germany under Hitler, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and China's Great Leap Forward famine under Mao. James A. Tyner's powerful analysis of these horrifying cases provides insight into the larger questions of sovereignty and state policies that determine who will live and who will die. Specifically, he explores the government practices that result in genocide and how they are informed by the calculation and valuation of life-and death. A geographical perspective on genocide highlights that mass violence, in the minds of perpetrators, is viewed as an effective-and legitimate-strategy of state building. These three histories of mass violence demonstrate how specific states articulate and act upon particular geographical concepts that determine and devalue the moral worth of groups and individuals. Clearly and compellingly written, this book will bring fresh and valuable insights into state genocidal behavior.

Polish Literature and Genocide presents the attitude of Polish literature to the 20th-century acts of genocide. This volume examines the literary representations of the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and the massacre in Srebrenica in a rich, detailed, and comprehensive way, expanding the existing research and, in some cases, challenging the former sometimes ossified ideas. Polish literature not only reflects the obvious extermination of Jews and Poles, but also records what had been largely overlooked: the extermination of disabled and mentally ill people, the Roma and Sinti, and the Soviet prisoners of war by the Nazis. This volume includes analysis of the literary works of Wladyslaw Szlengel, the most prominent Polish-language poet in the Warsaw ghetto; the peculiar reception of Julian Tuwim's famous poem for children "Locomotive;" the memoir of Leon Weliczker, a prisoner of the Janowska concentration camp in Lvov and a member of the 'death brigade' (Sonderkommando); the origins of Medallions by Zofia Nalkowska, who 'processed' historical documents into literature and contributed to the making of professor Rudolf Spanner's 'dark legend,' and the textual origins of Tadeusz Rozewicz's 'poetry after Auschwitz.' Furthermore, this volume addresses issues related to the genesis and function of 'genocide literature' - aesthetic, cognitive, ideological, and social. This volume will be a crucial resource for academics interested in genocide and Holocaust literary studies.

On 2 August 2018 - Roma Genocide Remembrance Day - the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum expressed its deep concern about the escalating persecution and violence faced by Roma across Europe today In 2018, in the midst of heated debates about asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants, politicians are seizing on anti-Gypsy rhetoric and policies to win favour among disgruntled voters The book is an addition to studies of the Holocaust that have caused great controversy and debate such as Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands

This book explores the relationship between the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), challenging the assumption that they are always mutually reinforcing or complementary, and examining instead the many tensions which arise between the immediate imperative of saving lives, and the more long-term prospect of punishing perpetrators and preventing future conflicts through deterrence. Around the world, audiences in the mid-1990s watched the mass atrocities unfolding in Rwanda and Srebrenica in horror and disbelief. Emerging from these disasters came an international commitment to safeguard and protect vulnerable communities, as laid out in the R2P principle, and an international responsibility to punish perpetrators, with the establishment of the ICC. The book provides context-independent proposals for resolving contradictions between the two principles, suggesting that focusing on timing and sequencing in invoking international R2P and ICC actions could facilitate the easing of tensions. Drawing on examples from Uganda, Kenya, and Darfur, the book applies International Relations concepts and theories in order to deepen our understanding of international responses to mass atrocities. Ultimately the book concludes that a 'Protection First, Justice Later' sequence approach is necessary for managing the tension and facilitating more effective and consistent international responses. This book makes an important contribution to discussions and debates surrounding international responses to genocide and mass atrocities. It will be of special interest to scholars, students and policymakers in International Relations, Global Governance, African Studies, International Development, Human Rights and International Criminal Law.

At a time of dramatic struggles over monuments around the world, this book examines monuments that have been erected in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) since 1996. Examining the historical precedents for the high rate of monumentbuilding, and its links to ongoing political instability and national animosity, this book identifies the culture of remembrance in BiH as symptomatic of a broader shift: a monumentalisation and privatisation of history. It provides an argument for how to account for the politics of contemporary nation-state formation, control of space, trauma and revisions of history in a region that has been subject to prolonged instability and crisis. This book will be of interest to scholars in contemporary art, museum studies, war and conflict studies, and European studies.

Genocide has scarred human societies since Antiquity. In the modern era, genocide has been a global phenomenon: from massacres in colonial America, Africa, and Australia to the Holocaust of European Jewry and mass death in Maoist China. In recent years, the discipline of 'genocide studies' has developed to offer analysis and comprehension.
The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies is the first book to subject both genocide and the young discipline it has spawned to systematic, in-depth investigation. Thirty-four renowned experts study genocide through the ages by taking regional, thematic, and disciplinary-specific approaches. Chapters examine secessionist and political genocides in modern Asia. Others treat the violent dynamics of European colonialism in Africa, the complex ethnic geography of the Great Lakes region, and the structural instability of the continent's northern horn. South and North America receive detailed coverage, as do the Ottoman Empire, Nazi-occupied Europe, and post-communist Eastern Europe. Sustained attention is paid to themes like gender, memory, the state, culture, ethnic cleansing, military intervention, the United Nations, and prosecutions.
The work is multi-disciplinary, featuring the work of historians, anthropologists, lawyers, political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers. Uniquely combining empirical reconstruction and conceptual analysis, this Handbook presents and analyses regions of genocide and the entire field of 'genocide studies' in one substantial volume.

Genocide, State Crime and the Law critically explores the use and role of law in the perpetration, redress and prevention of mass harm by the state. In this broad ranging book, Jennifer Balint charts the place of law in the perpetration of genocide and other crimes of the state together with its role in redress and in the process of reconstruction and reconciliation, considering law in its social and political context. The book argues for a new approach to these crimes perpetrated 'in the name of the state' - that we understand them as crimes against humanity with particular institutional dimensions that law must address to be effective in accountability and as a basis for restoration. Focusing on seven instances of state crime - the genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman state, the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, apartheid South Africa, Ethiopia under Mengistu and the Dergue, the genocide in Rwanda, and the conflict in the former Yugoslavia - and drawing on others, the book shows how law is companion and collaborator in these acts of nation-building by the state, and the limits and potentials of law's constitutive role in post-conflict reconstruction. It considers how law can be a partner in destruction yet also provide a space for justice. An important, and indeed vital, contribution to the growing interest and literature in the area of genocide and post-conflict studies, Genocide, State Crime and the Law will be of considerable value to those concerned with law's ability to be a force for good in the wake of harm and atrocity.

This important reference work offers students a comprehensive overview of the Cambodian Genocide, with more than 90 in-depth articles by leading scholars on an array of topics and themes, supplemented by key primary source documents. Providing an indispensable resource for students and policy makers investigating the Cambodian catastrophes of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, together with international crisis management in the modern world, Cambodian Genocide provides a comprehensive survey of the leaders, ideas, movements, and events pertaining to one of the worst genocidal explosions of the post-World War II period. This book includes a series of essays examining various aspects of the Cambodian Genocide; A-Z entries dealing with leaders, ideals, movements, and events; a collection of primary documents; a chronology; and a comprehensive bibliography. It will be of interest to students undertaking the study of genocide in the modern world; research libraries; and anyone with an interest in modern wars, international crisis management, and peacekeeping/peacemaking. Provides profiles of the main leaders involved in the Cambodian Genocide of 1975-1979 and beyond Considers the various strategies adopted by members of the international community in trying to address the issues created by the Pol Pot regime Includes entries written by leading international authorities gathered from around the world Provides a number of contextualizing essays on various facets of the Cambodian Genocide Contains useful chronologies of the events surrounding the Cambodian Genocide Includes entries written in a clear and concise style, with suggestions for further reading

The law governing the relationship between speech and core international crimes - a key component in atrocity prevention - is broken. Incitement to genocide has not been adequately defined. The law on hate speech as persecution is split between the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Instigation is confused with incitement and ordering's scope is too circumscribed. At the same time, each of these modalities does not function properly in relation to the others, yielding a misshapen body of law riddled with gaps. Existing scholarship has suggested discrete fixes to individual parts, but no work has stepped back and considered holistic solutions. This book does. To understand how the law became so fragmented, it returns to its roots to explain how it was formulated. From there, it proposes a set of nostrums to deal with the individual deficiencies. Its analysis then culminates in a more comprehensive proposal: a Unified Liability Theory, which would systematically link the core crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes with the four illicit speech modalities. The latter would be placed in one statutory provision criminalizing the following types of speech: (1) incitement (speech seeking but not resulting in atrocity); (2) speech abetting (non-catalytic speech synchronous with atrocity commission); (3) instigation (speech seeking and resulting in atrocity); and (4) ordering (instigation/incitement within a superior-subordinate relationship). Apart from its fragmentation, this body of law lacks a proper name as Incitement Law or International Hate Speech Law, labels often used, fail to capture its breadth or relationship to mass violence. So this book proposes a new and fitting appellation: atrocity speech law.

The Jewish Orphanage in Leiden was the last one of eight such care homes to open its doors in the Netherlands before the Second World War. After spending almost 39 years in an old and utterly inadequate building in Leiden's city centre, the inauguration in 1929 of a brand-new building, shown on the front cover, was the start of a remarkably productive and prosperous period. The building still stands there, proudly but sadly, to this day: the relatively happy period lasted less than fourteen years. On Wednesday evening, 17th March 1943, the Leiden police, under German instructions, closed down the orphanage and delivered 50 children and nine staff to the Leiden railway station, from where they were brought to Transit Camp Westerbork in the north-east of the country. Two boys were released from Westerbork thanks to tireless efforts of a neighbour in Leiden; one young woman survived Auschwitz, and one young girl escaped to Palestine via Bergen-Belsen. The remaining 55 were deported to Sobibor - and not one of them survived. Some 168 children lived in the new building at one time or another between August 1929 and March 1943. This book reconstructs life in the orphanage based on the many stories and photographs which they left us. It is dedicated to the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, but also to those who survived. Without them, this book could not have been written.

Human remains and identification presents a pioneering investigation into the practices and methodologies used in the search for and exhumation of dead bodies resulting from mass violence. Previously absent from forensic debate, social scientists and historians here confront historical and contemporary exhumations with the application of social context to create an innovative and interdisciplinary dialogue, enlightening the political, social and legal aspects of mass crime and its aftermaths. Through a ground-breaking selection of international case studies, Human remains and identification argues that the emergence of new technologies to facilitate the identification of dead bodies has led to a "forensic turn", normalising exhumations as a method of dealing with human remains en masse. However, are these exhumations always made for legitimate reasons? Multidisciplinary in scope, this book will appeal to readers interested in understanding this crucial phase of mass violence's aftermath, including researchers in history, anthropology, sociology, forensic science, law, politics and modern warfare. The research program leading to this publication has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n Degrees 283-617. -- .

Historical research into the Armenian Genocide has grown tremendously in recent years, but much of it has focused on large-scale questions related to Ottoman policy or the scope of the killing. Consequently, surprisingly little is known about the actual experiences of the genocide's victims. Daily Life in the Abyss illuminates this aspect through the intertwined stories of two Armenian families who endured forced relocation and deprivation in and around modern-day Syria. Through analysis of diaries and other source material, it reconstructs the rhythms of daily life within an often bleak and hostile environment, in the face of a gradually disintegrating social fabric.

In the summer of 1947, three years before his death in a labor camp hospital, one of the most significant Soviet Yiddish writers Der Nister (Pinkhas Kahanovitsh, 1884-1950) made a trip from Moscow to Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Russian Far East. He traveled there on a special migrant train, together with a thousand Holocaust survivors. The present study examines this journey as an original protest against the conformism of the majority of Soviet Jewish activists. In his travel notes, Der Nister described the train as the ""modern Noah's ark,"" heading ""to put an end to the historical silliness"". This rhetoric paraphrasing Nietzsche's ""historical sickness"", challenged the Jewish history in the Diaspora, which broke the people's mythical wholeness. Der Nister formulated his vision of a post-Holocaust Jewish reconstruction more clearly in his previously unknown manifesto. Without their own territory, he wrote, the Jews were like ""a soul without a body or a body without a soul, and in either case, always a cripple"". Records of the fabricated investigation case against the anti-Soviet nationalist grouping in Birobidzhan reveal details about Der Nister's thoughts and real acts. Both the records and the manifesto are being published here for the first time.

The ignorant bystander: Britain and the Rwandan genocide uses a case study of Britain's response to the genocide to explore what factors motivate humanitarian intervention in overseas crises. The Rwandan genocide was one of the bloodiest events in the late twentieth century and the international community's response has stimulated a great deal of interest and debate ever since. In this study, Dean White provides the most thorough review of Britain's response to the crisis written to date. The research draws on previously unseen documents and interviews with ministers and senior diplomats, and examines issues such as how the decision to intervene was made by the British Government, how media coverage led to a significant misunderstanding of the crisis, and how Britain shaped debate at the UN Security Council. The book concludes by comparing the response to Rwanda, to Britain's response to the recent crises in Syria and Libya. -- .

This book investigates what impact gender equality has on genocide in Africa, to verify whether it is a missing indicator from current risk assessments and models for genocide prevention. Examining whether States characterised by lower levels of gender equality are more likely to experience genocide, Timmoneri adds gender indicators to the existing early warning assessment for the prevention of genocide. Moreover, the book argues for the formulation of policies directed at the improvement of gender equality not just as a means to improve women's conditions but as a tool to reduce the risk of genocide and mass atrocities. Using case studies from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Angola, Uganda, and Burundi, Timmoneri analyses recent atrocities and explores the role of gender equality as an indicator of potential genocide. Gender Equality and Genocide Prevention in Africa will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, genocide studies, and gender studies.

Throughout the 1990s, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) was forced to face the challenges posed by the genocide of Rwandan Tutsis and a succession of outbreaks of political violence in Rwanda and its neighbouring countries. Humanitarian workers were confronted with the execution of almost one million people, tens of thousands of casualties pouring into health centres, the flight of millions of people who had sought refuge in camps and a series of deadly epidemics. Drawing on various hitherto unpublished private and public archives, this book recounts the experiences of the MSF teams working in the field. It is intended for humanitarian aid practitioners, students, journalists and researchers with an interest in genocide and humanitarian studies and the political sociology of international organisations. -- .

Destruction and human remains investigates a crucial question frequently neglected in academic debate in the fields of mass violence and genocide studies: what is done to the bodies of the victims after they are killed? In the context of mass violence, death does not constitute the end of the executors' work. Their victims' remains are often treated and manipulated in very specific ways, amounting in some cases to true social engineering, often with remarkable ingenuity. To address these seldom-documented phenomena, this volume includes chapters based on extensive primary and archival research to explore why, how and by whom these acts have been committed through recent history. Interdisciplinary in scope, Destruction and human remains will appeal to readers interested in the history and implications of genocide and mass violence, including researchers in anthropology, sociology, history, politics and modern warfare. -- .

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was the first human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations, reflecting the global commitment to 'never again' in the wake of the Holocaust. Seven decades on, The United Nations and Genocide examines how the UN has met, and failed to meet, the commitment to 'prevent and punish' the crime of genocide. It explores why the UN was unable to respond effectively to the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, the Balkans and Darfur, and considers new approaches recently adopted by the UN to address genocide. This volume asks the crucial question: can the UN protect peoples from genocide in the modern world?

During World War II, the British formed a secret division, the 'SOE' or Special Operations Executive, in order to support resistance organisations in occupied Europe. It also engaged in 'targeted killing' - the assassination of enemy political and military leaders. The unit is famous for equipping its agents with tools for use behind enemy lines, such as folding motorbikes, miniature submarines and suicide pills disguised as coat buttons. But its activities are now also gaining attention as a forerunner to today's 'extra-legal' killings of wartime enemies in foreign territory, for example through the use of unmanned drones. Adam Leong's work evaluates the effectiveness of political assassination in wartime using four examples: Heydrich's assassination in Prague (Operation Anthropoid); the daring kidnap of Major General Kreipe in Crete by Patrick Leigh Fermor; the failed attempt to assassinate Rommel, known as Operation Flipper; and the American assassination of General Yamamoto.

During and after World War I, over one million Ottoman Greeks were expelled from Turkey, a watershed moment in Greek history that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. And while few dispute the expulsion's tragic scope, it remains the subject of fierce controversy, as activists have fought for international recognition of an atrocity they consider comparable to the Armenian genocide. This book provides a much-needed analysis of the Greek genocide as cultural trauma. Neither taking the genocide narrative for granted nor dismissing it outright, Erik Sjoeberg instead recounts how it emerged as a meaningful but contested collective memory with both nationalist and cosmopolitan dimensions.

Whether reburied, concealed, stored, abandoned or publicly displayed, human remains raise a vast number of questions regarding social, legal and ethical uses by communities, public institutions and civil society organisations. This book presents a ground-breaking account of the treatment and commemoration of dead bodies resulting from incidents of genocide and mass violence. Through a range of international case studies across multiple continents, it explores the effect of dead bodies or body parts on various political, cultural and religious practices. Multidisciplinary in scope, it will appeal to readers interested in this crucial phase of post-conflict reconciliation, including students and researchers of history, anthropology, sociology, archaeology, law, politics and modern warfare. -- .

Kaiowcide: Living through the Guarani-Kaiowa Genocide is an analysis of the genocidal violence perpetrated against indigenous peoples in Brazil and towards the Guarani-Kaiowa. The ongoing indigenous genocide is defined as "Kaiowcide," in place since the 1970s, when the Guarani-Kaiowa mobilized a reaction to land grabbing and oppression in the final years of the military dictatorship. The book is based on years of research on the agribusiness frontiers, on the indigenous geography of the Guarani-Kaiowa, and on sustained engagement with indigenous communities. Instead of merely describing the genocidal tragedy, the focus is on the life through genocide and trying to collectively go beyond it. One of the main contributions is to provide a robust interpretative analysis of the causes and the ramifications of the genocidal experience lived by the Guarani-Kaiowa. Rather than focusing on formalist notions of "direct intent" by settlers and governments, as a prerequisite for the tagging as genocide, this book emphasizes the destructive potential of the actors actively involved in agrarian capitalist transformations promoted by the national state in socio-economic frontiers.

This book presents a novel proposal for establishing justice and social harmony in the aftermath of genocide. It argues that justice should be determined by the victims of genocide rather than a detached legal system, since such a form of justice is more consistent with a socially grounded ethics, with a democracy that privileges citizen decision-making, and with human rights. The book covers the Holocaust; genocides in Argentina, South Africa, Rwanda, Latin America, and Australia, as well as crimes against humanity in Italy and France. From show trials to state- enforced forgiveness, the book examines various methods that have been used since 1945 to punish the individuals and groups responsible for genocide and how they have ultimately failed to deliver true justice to the victims. The only way to end this failure, the book points out, is to return justice to the victims. This simple proposition; however, challenges the Enlightenment tradition of Western law which was built on the refusal to allow victims to determine the measure of justice. That would amount, according to Bacon, Hegel, and Kant to a revenge system and bring social chaos. But, as this book points out, forgiveness is only something victims can give, no-one can demand it. In order to establish a lasting peace, it is necessary to re-examine the philosophical and theoretical refusal to return justice to the victims. The engaging argument put forth in this book can help deliver true justice and re-establish international social harmony in the aftermath of genocide. Genocide is ubiquitous in the modern, global world. It's understanding is highly relevant for the understanding of specific and perpetuating challenges in migration. Genocide forces the migration of millions to avoid crimes against humanity. When they flee war zones they bring their fears, hates, and misery with them. So migration research must engage fully with the experience of genocide, its human conseque nces and the ethical dilemmas it poses to all societies. Not to do so, will make it more difficult to understand and live with newcomers and to achieve some sort of harmony in host countries, as well as those which are centers of genocide.