During the 20th century tens of millions of people were annihilated by genocidal regimes. As we enter the 21st century, we must look back and attempt to comprehend what has been aptly termed the "century of genocide." It is only through such understanding that we can begin to imagine ways of preventing or minimizing future atrocities. "

Genocide: An Anthropological Reader" lays the foundation for a ground-breaking "anthropology of genocide" by gathering together for the first time the seminal texts for learning about and understanding this phenomenon. While scholars in other fields have conducted excellent analyses of the macrolevel factors facilitating genocide, few have been able to approach genocide from the local perspective. By filling this important niche-pulling together key anthropological and interdisciplinary sources on genocide - "Genocide: An Anthropological Reader" stands both to make an important contribution to our understanding of genocide and to serve as a valuable resource for readers across a wide variety of fields.

When the Turks demanded the cancellation of all lectures on the Armenian Genocide and that Armenian lecturers not be allowed to participate, the Israeli government followed suit, demanding the same of the then forthcoming First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide. This book follows the author's gutsy campaign against the Israeli government and his quest to successfully hold the conference in the face of censorship. A political whodunit based on previously secret Israel Foreign Ministry cables, this book investigates Israel's overall tragically unjust relationships to genocides of other peoples. Charny also closely examines Elie Wiesel, who remains a great hero but is seen also as interfering with recognition of other peoples' genocidal tragedies, and Shimon Peres, who opposed recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Additional chapters by three famous leaders-a Turk (Ragip Zarakolu), an Armenian (Richard Hovannisian), and a Jew (Michael Berenbaum)-provide added perspectives.

What exactly constitutes 'genocide'? How prevalent have instances of genocide been throughout history? How successful have efforts to prevent genocide been? These, and other questions, are addressed in Genocide: The Basics, a concise introduction to the study of the phenomenon of genocide. Case studies of genocide from throughout history are explored and analysed to address key issues in genocide studies, including: The killing of indigenous peoples by colonial powers and the definition of genocide The Holocaust and the question of 'uniqueness' Genocide in the 1990s and the success or otherwise of peace-keeping efforts The Christians of the Ottoman Empire and the notion of 'genocide provocation'. Genocides in Asia during the Cold War Legal attempts to stop Genocide and make a genocide-free world Each chapter concludes with questions for discussion. At the end of this book is a list of suggestions for further reading, and the book is complete with a glossary, ensuring that Genocide: The Basics is the ideal introduction to this controversial and widely-debated topic.

The Persecution of the Jews in Photographs, the Netherlands 1940-1945 is the first book of its kind on the subject. Both the professional photographers commissioned by the occupying forces and amateurs took moving photographs. On 10 May 1940, the day of the German invasion, there were 140,000 Jewish inhabitants living in the Netherlands. The full extent of their terrible fate only became known after the war: at least 102,000 were murdered, died of mistreatment or were worked to death in the Nazi camps. This tragedy has had a profound effect on Dutch society. Photographic archives and private collections were consulted in the Netherlands and abroad. Extensive background data was researched, which means that the moving pictures have an even greater force of expression. The result is an overwhelming collection of almost 400 photographs, accompanied by detailed captions.

In the 1910s historian Harry Harootunian's parents Ohannes and Vehanush escaped the mass slaughter of the Armenian genocide, making their way to France, where they first met, before settling in suburban Detroit. Although his parents rarely spoke of their families and the horrors they survived, the genocide and their parents' silence about it was a permanent backdrop to the Harootunian children's upbringing. In The Unspoken as Heritage Harootunian-for the first time in his distinguished career-turns to his personal life and family heritage to explore the genocide's multigenerational afterlives that remain at the heart of the Armenian diaspora. Drawing on novels, anecdotes, and reports, Harootunian presents a composite sketch of the everyday life of his parents, from their childhood in East Anatolia to the difficulty of making new lives in the United States. A meditation on loss, inheritance, and survival-in which Harootunian attempts to come to terms with a history that is just beyond his reach-The Unspoken as Heritage demonstrates how the genocidal past never leaves the present, even in its silence.

Perpetrator Cinema explores a new trend in the cinematic depiction of genocide that has emerged in Cambodian documentary in the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries. While past films documenting the Holocaust and genocides in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and elsewhere have focused on collecting and foregrounding the testimony of survivors and victims, the intimate horror of the autogenocide enables post-Khmer Rouge Cambodian documentarians to propose a direct confrontation between the first-generation survivor and the perpetrator of genocide. These films break with Western tradition and disrupt the political view that reconciliation is the only legitimate response to atrocities of the past. Rather, transcending the perpetrator's typical denial or partial confession, this extraordinary form of "duel" documentary creates confrontational tension and opens up the possibility of a transformation in power relations, allowing viewers to access feelings of moral resentment. Raya Morag examines works by Rithy Panh, Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath, and Lida Chan and Guillaume Suon, among others, to uncover the ways in which filmmakers endeavor to allow the survivors' moral status and courage to guide viewers to a new, more complete understanding of the processes of coming to terms with the past. These documentaries show how moral resentment becomes a way to experience, symbolize, judge, and finally incorporate evil into a system of ethics. Morag's analysis reveals how perpetrator cinema provides new epistemic tools and propels the recent social-cultural-psychological shift from the era of the witness to the era of the perpetrator.

This important collection of essays expands the geographic, demographic, and analytic scope of the term genocide to encompass the effects of colonialism and settler colonialism in North America. Colonists made multiple and interconnected attempts to destroy Indigenous peoples as groups. The contributors examine these efforts through the lens of genocide. Considering some of the most destructive aspects of the colonization and subsequent settlement of North America, several essays address Indigenous boarding school systems imposed by both the Canadian and U.S. governments in attempts to "civilize" or "assimilate" Indigenous children. Contributors examine some of the most egregious assaults on Indigenous peoples and the natural environment, including massacres, land appropriation, the spread of disease, the near-extinction of the buffalo, and forced political restructuring of Indigenous communities. Assessing the record of these appalling events, the contributors maintain that North Americans must reckon with colonial and settler colonial attempts to annihilate Indigenous peoples. Contributors. Jeff Benvenuto, Robbie Ethridge, Theodore Fontaine, Joseph P. Gone, Alexander Laban Hinton, Tasha Hubbard, Margaret D. Jabobs, Kiera L. Ladner, Tricia E. Logan, David B. MacDonald, Benjamin Madley, Jeremy Patzer, Julia Peristerakis, Christopher Powell, Colin Samson, Gray H. Whaley, Andrew Woolford

Im Rahmen des 100-jahrigen Gedenkens an den Voelkermord an den Aramaern veranstaltete die Forschungsstelle fur Aramaische Studien vom 29.-30. Mai 2015 die Tagung "Der Genozid an der aramaischen Gemeinschaft (ost- und westsyrische Christen) im Osmanischen Reich sowie im osmanisch besetzten Iran (1914-1918)" an der Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin. Dieser Sammelband beinhaltet Beitrage der Teilnehmer der Tagung und thematisiert verschiedene Felder der Erforschung des Genozids. Sie beleuchten den Voelkermord an den syrischen Christen im Osmanischen Reich, die Rolle deutscher Missionen beim Voelkermord, sowie Erinnerungsdiskurse der Nachfahren in der Diaspora heute. Der Band erschliesst somit verschiedene Felder fur die Erforschung des Genozids.

Judge Mettraux's four-volume compendium, International Crimes: Law and Practice, will provide the most detailed and authoritative account to-date of the law of international crimes. It is a scholarly tour de force providing a unique blend of academic rigour and an insight into the practice of international criminal law. The compendium is un-rivalled in its breadth and depth, covering almost a century of legal practice, dozens of jurisdictions (national and international), thousands of decisions and judgments and hundreds of cases. This first volume discusses in detail the law of genocide: its definition, elements, normative status, and relationship to the other core international crimes. While the book is an invaluable tool for academics and researchers, it is particularly suited to legal practitioners, guiding the reader through the practical and evidential challenges associated with the prosecution of international crimes.

The study of genocide and mass atrocity abounds with references to emotions: fear, anger, horror, shame and hatred. Yet we don't understand enough about how 'ordinary' emotions behave in such extreme contexts. Emotions are not merely subjective and interpersonal phenomena; they are also powerful social and political forces, deeply involved in the history of mass violence. Drawing on recent insights from philosophy, psychology, history, and the social sciences, this volume examines the emotions of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. Editors Thomas Brudholm and Johannes Lang have brought together an interdisciplinary group of prominent scholars to provide an in-depth analysis of the nature, value, and role of emotions as they relate to the causes and dynamics of mass atrocities. The result is a new perspective on the social, political, and moral dimensions of emotions in the history of collective violence and its aftermath.

In the wake of World War II the Sudetenland became the scene of ethnic cleansing, witnessing not only the expulsion of nearly three million German speakers, but also the influx of nearly two million resettlers. Yet mob violence and nationalist hatred were not the driving forces of ethnic cleansing; instead, greed, the search for power and property, and the general dislocation of post-war Central and Eastern Europe facilitated these expulsions and the transformation of the German-Czech borderlands. These overlapping migrations produced conflict among Czechs, hardship for Germans, and facilitated the Communist Party's rise to power. Drawing on a wide range of materials from local and central archives, as well as expellee accounts, David Gerlach demonstrates how the lure of property and social mobility, as well as economic necessities, shaped the course and consequences of ethnic cleansing.

Sheds new light on the mistreatment of downed airmen during World War II and the overall relationship between the air war and state-sponsored violence. Throughout the vast expanse of the Pacific, the remoteness of Southeast Asia, and the rural and urban communities in Nazi-occupied Europe, more than 120,000 American airmen were shot down over enemy territory during World War II, thousands of whom were mistreated and executed. The perpetrators were not just solely fanatical soldiers or Nazi zealots but also ordinary civilians triggered by the death and devastation inflicted by the war. In Forgotten Casualties, author Kevin T Hall examines Axis violence inflicted on downed Allied airmen during this global war. Compared with all other armed conflicts, World War II exhibited the most widespread and ruthless violence committed against airmen. Flyers were deemed guilty because of their association with the Allied air forces, and their fate remained in the hands of their often-hostile captors. Axis citizens angered by the devastation inflicted by the war, along with the regimes’ consent and often encouragement of citizens to take matters into their own hands, resulted in thousands of Allied flyers’ being mistreated and executed by enraged civilians. Written to help advance the relatively limited discourse on the mistreatment against flyers in World War II, Forgotten Casualties is the first book to analyze the Axis violence committed against Allied airmen in a comparative, international perspective. Effectively comparing and contrasting the treatment of POWs in Germany with that of their counterparts in Japan, Hall’s thorough analysis of rarely seen primary and secondary sources sheds new light on the largely overlooked complex relationship among the air war, propaganda, the role of civilians, and state-sponsored terror during the radicalized conflict. Sources include postwar trial testimonies, Missing Air Crew Reports (MACR), Escape and Evasion reports, perpetrators’ explanations and rationalizations for their actions, extensive judicial sources, transcripts of court proceedings, autopsy reports, appeals for clemency, and justifications for verdicts. Drawing heavily on airmen’s personal accounts and the testimonies of both witnesses and perpetrators from the postwar crimes trials, Forgotten Casualties offers a new narrative of this largely overlooked aspect of Axis violence.

Rebuilding societies where conflict has occurred is rarely a simple process. Where conflict has been accompanied by gross and systematic violations of human rights, the procedure becomes very controversial. The traditional debate on "transitional justice" sought to balance justice, truth, accountability, peace, and stability. The appearance of impunity for past crimes undermines confidence in new democratic structures and casts doubt upon commitments to human rights. Yet the need to consolidate peace sometimes resulted in reluctance on the part of authorities --both local and international --to confront suspected perpetrators of human rights violations, especially when they are a part of a peace process. Experience in many regions of the world therefore suggested a tradeoff between peace and justice. But that is changing. There is a growing consensus that some forms of justice and accountability are integral to --rather than in tension with --peace and stability. This volume considers whether we are truly going beyond the transitional justice debate. It brings together eminent scholars and practitioners with direct experience in some of the most challenging cases of international justice, and illustrates that justice and accountability remain complex, but not mutually exclusive, ideals.

Using a new approach to ethnicity that underscores its relative territoriality, H. Zeynep Bulutgil brings together previously separate arguments that focus on domestic and international factors to offer a coherent theory of what causes ethnic cleansing. The author argues that domestic obstacles based on non-ethnic cleavages usually prevent ethnic cleansing whereas territorial conflict triggers this policy by undermining such obstacles. The empirical analysis combines statistical evaluation based on original data with comprehensive studies of historical cases in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Bosnia, in the 1990s. The findings demonstrate how socio-economic cleavages curb radical factions within dominant groups whereas territorial wars strengthen these factions and pave the way for ethnic cleansing. The author further explores the theoretical and empirical extensions in the context of Africa. Its theoretical novelty and broad empirical scope make this book highly valuable to scholars of comparative and international politics alike.

Hypocrisy and Human Rights examines what human rights pressure does when it does not work. Repressive states with absolutely no intention of complying with their human rights obligations often change course dramatically in response to international pressure. They create toothless commissions, permit but then obstruct international observers' visits, and pass showpiece legislation while simultaneously bolstering their repressive capacity. Covering debates over transitional justice in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Cambodia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and other countries, Kate Cronin-Furman investigates the diverse ways in which repressive states respond to calls for justice from human rights advocates, UN officials, and Western governments who add their voices to the victims of mass atrocities to demand accountability. She argues that although international pressure cannot elicit compliance in the absence of domestic motivations to comply, the complexity of the international system means that there are multiple audiences for both human rights behavior and advocacy and that pressure can produce valuable results through indirect paths.

Following times of great conflict and tragedy, many countries implement programs and policies of transitional justice, none more extensive than in post-genocide Rwanda. Placing Rwanda's transitional justice initiatives in their historical and political context, this book examines the project undertaken by the post-genocide government to shape the collective memory of the Rwandan population, both through political and judicial reforms but also in public commemorations and memorials. Drawing on over two decades of field research in Rwanda, Longman uses surveys and comparative local case studies to explore Rwanda's response both at a governmental and local level. He argues that despite good intentions and important innovations, Rwanda's authoritarian political context has hindered the ability of transnational justice to bring the radical social and political transformations that its advocates hoped. Moreover, it continues to heighten the political and economic inequalities that underline ethnic divisions and are an important ongoing barrier to reconciliation.

A global history of environmental warfare and the case for why it should be a crime The environmental infrastructure that sustains human societies has been a target and instrument of war for centuries, resulting in famine and disease, displaced populations, and the devastation of people's livelihoods and ways of life. Scorched Earth traces the history of scorched earth, military inundations, and armies living off the land from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, arguing that the resulting deliberate destruction of the environment-"environcide"-constitutes total war and is a crime against humanity and nature. In this sweeping global history, Emmanuel Kreike shows how religious war in Europe transformed Holland into a desolate swamp where hunger and the black death ruled. He describes how Spanish conquistadores exploited the irrigation works and expansive agricultural terraces of the Aztecs and Incas, triggering a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions. Kreike demonstrates how environmental warfare has continued unabated into the modern era. His panoramic narrative takes readers from the Thirty Years' War to the wars of France's Sun King, and from the Dutch colonial wars in North America and Indonesia to the early twentieth century colonial conquest of southwestern Africa. Shedding light on the premodern origins and the lasting consequences of total war, Scorched Earth explains why ecocide and genocide are not separate phenomena, and why international law must recognize environmental warfare as a violation of human rights.

Genocide is a matter of law. It is also a matter of history. Engaging some of the most disturbing responses to the Armenian genocide, Marc Nichanian strikingly reveals the complex role played by law and history in making this and other genocides endure as contentious events.

Nichanian's book argues that both law and history fail to contend with the very nature of events for which there is no archive (no documents, no witnesses). Both history and law fail to address the modern reality that events can be--and are now being--perpetrated that "depend" upon the destruction of the archive, turning monstrous deeds into nonevents. Genocide, this book makes us see, is in one sense the "destruction" of the archive. It relies on the historiographic perversion.

This memoir recalls Yervant Alexanian's death-defying experiences in the center of the Armenian Genocide. Like other Armenians of his generation, he was an eyewitness to the massacre and dislocation of his family and fellow countrymen in Ottoman Turkey during World War I. Alexanian was conscripted into the Turkish army-but unlike others so conscripted, he survived. Alexanian was forced to become an onlooker while he watched the atrocities unfold. His story of resourceful action and fateful turns is a suspenseful "insider's account" of a Genocide survivor. From his singular position, Alexanian was able to document the tragedy of his people in his journals and diaries, but he also offers us a behind-the-scenes look into the motivations and actions of Turkish military officials as they committed the atrocities. His story continues after the war as we follow the trail of his journey through Europe and finally to America, where he found solace and was able to start anew with fellow survivors. No comparable account exists in the literature of the Armenian Genocide. This edition, translated from Alexanian's hand-written Armenian-language chronicle, includes never-before-seen documents and photos that the author preserved. Through his eyes we relive the astonishing cruelty of the Genocide's perpetrators-but also rare, unexpected acts of humanity between victim and oppressor.

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. -- .

The first-born son of his generation, Peter Balakian grew up in a close, extended family, sheltered by 1950s and '60s New Jersey suburbia and immersed in an all-American boyhood defined by rock 'n' roll, adolescent pranks, and a passion for the New York Yankees that he shared with his beloved grandmother. But beneath this sunny world lay the dark specter of the trauma his family and ancestors had experienced--the Turkish government's extermination of more than a million Armenians in 1915, including many of Balakian's relatives, in the century's first genocide.
In elegant, moving prose, Black Dog of Fate charts Balakian's growth and personal awakening to the facts of his family's history and the horrifying aftermath of the Turkish government's continued campaign to cover up one of the worst crimes ever committed against humanity. In unearthing the secrets of a family's past and how they affect its present, "Black Dog of Fate gives fresh meaning to the story of what it means to be an American.

During the twentieth century, witnessing grew to be not just a widespread solution for coping with political atrocities but also an intricate problem. As the personal experience of victims, soldiers, and aid workers acquired unparalleled authority as a source of moral and political truth, the capacity to generate adequate testimonies based on this experience was repeatedly called into question. Michal Givoni's book follows the trail of the problems, torments, and crises that became commingled with witnessing to genocide, disaster, and war over the course of the twentieth century. By juxtaposing episodes of reflexive witnessing to the Great War, the Jewish Holocaust, and third world emergencies, The Care of the Witness explores the shifting roles and responsibilities of witnesses in history and the contribution that the troubles of witnessing made to the ethical consolidation of the witness as the leading figure of nongovernmental politics.

Using a new approach to ethnicity that underscores its relative territoriality, H. Zeynep Bulutgil brings together previously separate arguments that focus on domestic and international factors to offer a coherent theory of what causes ethnic cleansing. The author argues that domestic obstacles based on non-ethnic cleavages usually prevent ethnic cleansing whereas territorial conflict triggers this policy by undermining such obstacles. The empirical analysis combines statistical evaluation based on original data with comprehensive studies of historical cases in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Bosnia, in the 1990s. The findings demonstrate how socio-economic cleavages curb radical factions within dominant groups whereas territorial wars strengthen these factions and pave the way for ethnic cleansing. The author further explores the theoretical and empirical extensions in the context of Africa. Its theoretical novelty and broad empirical scope make this book highly valuable to scholars of comparative and international politics alike.

This text is one of the few surviving eyewitness sources on the Assyrian genocide, written by a seminarian living in greater Tur Abdin (the southeast of today's Turkish state). The perspective is one that is little known and less discussed. Translated and annotated by a master of Syriac with an in-depth knowledge of modern Assyrian history, this text creates a unique opportunity for new and progressive scholarship. The Assyrian genocide is one of the forgotten atrocities of the 20th century. The physical destruction was but one element; it also caused demographic shifts, loss of territory, generational trauma and linguicide, along with cultural genocide/ethnocide and identity erosion.