One spring morning in the ghetto, my mother, sisters, and I went down the steps into the cellar. Mother was holding a long tube, which she had filled with the few pieces of jewelry she still had from her wedding. She looked at us, her daughters, and removed the earrings I loved so much. She dug a small hole in the ground, wrapped the tube in numerous layers of cloth, placed it in the earth, and we all joined in to cover the hole. "This is so you, my dear daughters, will have something to start with when you return." From her poverty-stricken, yet happy childhood in Hungary, when the author was strongly influenced by her family and community's Zionist ideology, to the hell of Auschwitz and her escape from the Death March in the final days of war, to the tumultuous period in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel, Rachel Bernheim-Friedman's life was and is filled with passion, determination, and a strong will to survive and build to build a better life, a Jewish state, and a hopeful future for her children and grandchildren. Continued in Jerusalem, Lebanon, Palestine, the United States and Israel, Earrings in the Cellar is a story that should not be missed.

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The Rwandan genocide has become a touchstone for debates about the causes of mass violence and the responsibilities of the international community. Yet a number of key questions about this tragedy remain unanswered: How did the violence spread from community to community and so rapidly engulf the nation? Why did individuals make decisions that led them to take up machetes against their neighbors? And what was the logic that drove the campaign of extermination?

According to Scott Straus, a social scientist and former journalist in East Africa for several years (who received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for his reporting for the Houston Chronicle), many of the widely held beliefs about the causes and course of genocide in Rwanda are incomplete. They focus largely on the actions of the ruling elite or the inaction of the international community. Considerably less is known about how and why elite decisions became widespread exterminatory violence.

Challenging the prevailing wisdom, Straus provides substantial new evidence about local patterns of violence, using original research including the most comprehensive surveys yet undertaken among convicted perpetrators to assess competing theories about the causes and dynamics of the genocide. Current interpretations stress three main causes for the genocide: ethnic identity, ideology, and mass-media indoctrination (in particular the influence of hate radio). Straus's research does not deny the importance of ethnicity, but he finds that it operated more as a background condition. Instead, Straus emphasizes fear and intra-ethnic intimidation as the primary drivers of the violence. A defensive civil war and the assassination of a president created a feeling of acute insecurity. Rwanda's unusually effective state was also central, as was the country's geography and population density, which limited the number of exit options for both victims and perpetrators.

In conclusion, Straus steps back from the particulars of the Rwandan genocide to offer a new, dynamic model for understanding other instances of genocide in recent history the Holocaust, Armenia, Cambodia, the Balkans and assessing the future likelihood of such events."

Daoud Hari lost a way of life in Darfur. But amidst the carnage and turmoil he found a new calling... As a Zaghawa tribesman in the Darfur region of Sudan, Daoud Hari grew up racing camels across the desert, attending colourful weddings and, when his work was done, playing games under the moonlight. But in 2003 helicopter gunships swooped down on Darfur's villages and shattered that way of life for ever. Sudanese government-backed militias came to murder, rape and burn. To drive the tribesmen from their lands. When Hari's village was attacked and destroyed, his family was decimated. He escaped and roamed the battlefield deserts, helping the weak and vulnerable find food, water and safety. When international aid groups and reporters arrived, Hari gave his services as a translator and guide. To do so was to risk his life, for the Sudanese government had outlawed journalists, punishing aid to 'foreign spies' with death. Yet Hari did so time and again. Until eventually, his luck ran out... The Translator is a harrowing tale of selfless courage in terrifying conditions.

Since the Nuremberg trials following World War II, there has been considerable debate about the nature and effects of war crimes with regard both to the Nazis and to modern-day perpetrators. What constitutes a “war crime,� and how has the concept changed over time? How do victors and vanquished deal with crimes that have universal as well as national dimensions? How is the historical reality of war crimes related to their judicial treatment? How are perpetrators portrayed during investigations and trials? These timely and provocative essays make use of newly available archival sources and a wide range of case studies to provide in-depth analyses of war crimes within a broad historical framework. The essays are organized into four sections: the history of war-crime trials from Weimar Germany to just after World War II; the sometimes diverging Allied efforts to come to terms with the Nazi concentration camp system; the ability of postwar society to confront war crimes of the past; and the legacy of war-crime trials in the twenty-first century. Atrocities on Trial illuminates a dark and timely subject and helps us to understand the ongoing struggle to hold accountable those who perpetrate crimes against humanity.

Former United States Marine Brian Steidle served for six months in Darfur as an unarmed military observer for the African Union. There he witnessed first-hand the ongoing genocide, and documented every day of his experience using email, audio journals, notebook after notebook and nearly 1,000 photographs. Gretchen Steidle Wallace, his sister, who wrote this book with Brian, corresponded with him throughout his time in Darfur. Fired upon, taken hostage, a witness to villages destroyed and people killed, frustrated by his mission's limitations and the international community's reluctance to intervene, Steidle resigned and has since become an advocate for the world to step in and stop this genocide. The Devil Came on Horseback depicts the tragic impact of an Arab government bent on destroying its black African citizens, the maddening complexity of international inaction in response to blatant genocide, and the awkward, yet heroic transformation of a formerMarine turned humanitarian. It is a gripping and moving memoir that bears witness to atrocities we have too long averted our eyes from, and reveals that the actions of just one committed person have the power to change the world.

In this remarkable and timely book, bestselling author Barbara Coloroso turns her attention to genocide: what it means, where it begins, where it must end. Through an examination of three clearly defined genocides, Coloroso deconstructs the causes of genocide and its consequences, both to the immediate victims and to the fabric of the world at large, and proposes the conditions that must exist in order to eradicate this evil from the world. Based on the author's 20 years of research and extensive travel, Extraordinary Evil is an urgently needed work in an age when acts of genocide seem to occur more frequently and are in the public's consciousness more than ever before.

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The Final Chapter of the German-Russian Volga Colonies is filled with words like Starvation, Torture, Mass Murders, Deportation, Siberia, and GENOCIDE. Why? One would think that after all the trouble that Tsarina Catherine the Great went to get the Germans to come to Russia, and after living in the Volga Colonies for 100 years, they would be welcome forever. Not so: the Russians felt the German-Russians were still "Germans" at heart and not to be trusted. This book covers the increasing stranglehold that the Tsarist Government clamped on the Volga Colonies around 1860. This was the start of 81 years of Russian scheming to rid Russia of the German-Russians. Also covered is their deportation and life in Siberia, and Moscow's elimination of all traces of the German-Russians Volga Colonies. "GENOCIDE" This is my third book in a series on the German-Russian Volga Colonies. See all my books at my websites, www.Volga-Germans.com & www.DarrelKaiserBooks.com

This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.

Now available for the first time in paperback, this volume of specially commissioned essays brings together contributions by internationally recognized scholars from Britain, Germany and the USA to present and reflect upon the latest research on the history of the Third Reich. The book provides a new approach to the history of Nazism's racial policy, its social policy, its planning for war and genocide, and its legacy. It shows how Nazism's radical ideological drive penetrated the most diverse areas of German society and everyday life. It reminds us that the crimes of the Third Reich were ultimately born of the decisions of a political, military and administrative leadership of singular ambition, drive and brutality.

Crimes of War--Iraq provides a comprehensive legal, historical, and psychological exploration of the war in Iraq from the same editorial team whose 1971 Crimes of War was a landmark book about Vietnam and the revelation of American war crimes. The editors apply standards of international criminal law, as set forth at Nuremberg after World War II, and by subsequent developments regarding individual responsibility and accountability. These principles have to do with the waging of aggressive war, attacks on civilian centers of population, rights of resistance against an illegal occupation, and the abuse of prisoners. Explorations of psychology and human behavior include levels of motivation and response in connection with torture at Abu Ghraib; the phenomenon of the atrocity-producing situation in both Vietnam and Iraq (in which counter-insurgency, military policies, and angry grief could cause ordinary people to participate in atrocities); the behavior of doctors and medics in colluding in torture at Abu Ghraib; emerging testimony of American veterans of Iraq concerning the confusions of the mission, and the widespread killing of civilians; and accounts of broadening unease and psychological disturbance among men and women engaged in combat.

Benjamin A. Valentino finds that ethnic hatreds or discrimination, undemocratic systems of government, and dysfunctions in society play a much smaller role in mass killing and genocide than is commonly assumed. He shows that the impetus for mass killing usually originates from a relatively small group of powerful leaders and is often carried out without the active support of broader society. Mass killing, in his view, is a brutal political or military strategy designed to accomplish leaders' most important objectives, counter threats to their power, and solve their most difficult problems.

In order to capture the full scope of mass killing during the twentieth century, Valentino does not limit his analysis to violence directed against ethnic groups, or to the attempt to destroy victim groups as such, as do most previous studies of genocide. Rather, he defines mass killing broadly as the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants, using the criteria of 50,000 or more deaths within five years as a quantitative standard. Final Solutions focuses on three types of mass killing: communist mass killings like the ones carried out in the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia; ethnic genocides as in Armenia, Nazi Germany, and Rwanda; and "counter-guerrilla" campaigns including the brutal civil war in Guatemala and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Valentino closes the book by arguing that attempts to prevent mass killing should focus on disarming and removing from power the leaders and small groups responsible for instigating and organizing the killing.

Africa has been at the forefront of contemporary global efforts towards ensuring greater accountability for international crimes. But the continent's early embrace of international criminal justice seems to be taking a new turn with the recent resistance from some African states claiming that the emerging system of international criminal law represents a new form of imperialism masquerading as international rule of law. This book analyses the relationship and tensions between the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Africa. It traces the origins of the confrontation between African governments, both acting individually and within the framework of the African Union, and the permanent Hague-based ICC. Leading commentators offer valuable insights on the core legal and political issues that have confused the relationship between the two sides and expose the uneasy interaction between international law and international politics. They offer suggestions on how best to continue the fight against impunity, using national, ICC, and regional justice mechanisms, while taking into principled account the views and interests of African States.

Faced with a world in which unspeakable crimes not only went unpunished but were rewarded with glory, profit, and power, the Bosnians of all faiths who testify in this book were starkly confronted with the limits and possibilities of their own ethical choices. Here, in their own words, they describe how people helped one another across ethnic lines and refused the myths promoted by the engineers of genocide. This compelling book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the reality of the "ethnic" conflicts of the late 20th and the 21st century.

In wartime, presidents are always tempted to expand their authority. But in doing so, they often reach beyond their constitutional mandate.

Although the use of military tribunals can be necessary and even effective in times of war, Louis Fisher contends that these courts present a grave danger to open government and the separation of powers. Citing the constitutional provision vesting Congress with the authority to create tribunals, Fisher addresses the threats posed by the dramatic expansion of presidential power in time of war-and the meek efforts of Congress and the judiciary to curb it.

"Military Tribunals and Presidential Power" is the only book to offer detailed and comprehensive coverage of these extra-legal courts, taking in the sweep of American history from colonial times to today's headlines. Focusing on those periods when the Constitution and civil liberties have been most severely tested by threats to national security, Fisher critiques tribunals called during the presidencies of Washington, Madison, Jackson, Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Truman. He also examines other presidential actions that present military justifications to augment political power, such as suspending the writ of habeas corpus, invoking martial law, and using courts-martial to try U.S. citizens.

Fisher also analyzes how the Bush administration relied heavily on precedents set in World War II-notably the Supreme Court's opinion regarding Nazi saboteurs, Ex parte Quirin, a case shown in recent times to have been a rush to judgment. He scrutinizes the much-publicized cases of John Walker Lindh, Yaser Esam Hamdi, Jose Padilla, Zacarias Moussaoui, and the Guantanamo detainees to reveal how the executive branch has gone far beyond the bounds of even Quirin, and he suggests that it is short-sighted to believe that what was only tolerable half a century ago should be accepted as a given today.

Fisher's primary concern is to show that the breadth of presidential power in time of war comes at the cost of legislative and judicial control-and that military tribunals represent a concentration of power in the executive branch that the United States would be quick to condemn in other countries. His book cuts to the bone of today's controversies and sounds an alarm for maintaining the checks and balances we value as a nation.

The Nazi looting machine was notoriously efficient during the Second World War. In the Netherlands, 8.5 million citizens suffered losses estimated at 3.6 billion guilders. Approximately one-third of these losses were borne by Jews, who comprised only 1.6% of the total population. In todays terms, the German occupiers stripped the Jewish population of assets worth $7 billion.Nazi Looting offers a comprehensive history of the Dutch experience and demonstrates how reputable indigenous institutions acted as willing collaborators. Beginning with a survey of international law and various definitions of 'looting', the author shows how the Germans systematically robbed Dutch Jewry through a variety of means that gave the outward appearance of honest trading. Forced to sell under duress and at unreasonably low prices, few dared refuse the German on the doorstep when threatened with prison or incarceration in a camp.The plundering was total and systematic. In May 1940, a team of highly trained art historians, linguists, musicologists and literary experts arrived immediately behind the victorious German troops to catalogue the vast collections for Hitler. From 1941, Jews were compelled to deposit all their money into a bank called Lippmann, Rosenthal Co. The name of the bank itself was a cynical ploy since it was taken from a respected, Jewish-owned Amsterdam bank and presented as a new branch. This bank, however, simply channelled money into the Third Reich with the help of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, insurance brokers and other well-established Dutch banks. Once the Jews were deported, their houses were emptied and the contents used to re-furnish bombed out areas of the Reich. In common with many other formerly Nazi-occupied countries in Europe, the Netherlands has been unable to retrieve many of its pre-war assets. More than fifty years after the wars end, 20% of its most important pre-war museum exhibits and approximately 80% of the less important works remain untrace

The most wide-ranging book ever published on gender-selective mass killing, or "gendercide," this collection of essays is also the first to explore systematically the targeting of non-combatant "battle-age" males in various wartime and peacetime contexts.

Representing such fields as sociology, political science, psychology, queer studies, and human-rights activism, the contributors explore themes and issues outlined by editor Adam Jones in the book's opening essay. In that article, which provoked considerable debate when it was first published in 2000, Jones argues that throughout history and around the world, the population group most consistently targeted for mass killing and state-backed oppression are non-combatant men of roughly fifteen to fifty-five years of age. Such males, Jones contends, are typically seen as "the group posing the greatest danger to the conquering force." Jones's article also examines the use of "gendercidal institutions"--such as female infanticide, witch-hunts, military conscription, and forced labor--against both women and men.

The subsequent essays--some original, some drawn from a special issue of the "Journal of Genocide Research" and other sources--expand, diversify, and criticize this framing of gendercide. They range from a sophisticated theoretical analysis of gendercide to in-depth treatments of such topics as the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the gendercidal oppression of young African American males, the predicament of gays and lesbians in the face of increasing biotechnological manipulation of human behavior, and the psychology of shame and humiliation underlying generdercides against both sexes. Still other articles take issue with Jones's theories of gendercide, or explore how human-rights organizations have defined, documented, and responded to gendercide and other sex-specific atrocities. A closing essay considers the relevance of feminist and men's studies literatures for the study of gendercide.

The most wide-ranging book ever published on gender-selective mass killing, or "gendercide," this collection of essays is also the first to explore systematically the targeting of non-combatant "battle-age" males in various wartime and peacetime contexts.

Representing such fields as sociology, political science, psychology, queer studies, and human-rights activism, the contributors explore themes and issues outlined by editor Adam Jones in the book's opening essay. In that article, which provoked considerable debate when it was first published in 2000, Jones argues that throughout history and around the world, the population group most consistently targeted for mass killing and state-backed oppression are non-combatant men of roughly fifteen to fifty-five years of age. Such males, Jones contends, are typically seen as "the group posing the greatest danger to the conquering force." Jones's article also examines the use of "gendercidal institutions"--such as female infanticide, witch-hunts, military conscription, and forced labor--against both women and men.

The subsequent essays--some original, some drawn from a special issue of the "Journal of Genocide Research" and other sources--expand, diversify, and criticize this framing of gendercide. They range from a sophisticated theoretical analysis of gendercide to in-depth treatments of such topics as the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the gendercidal oppression of young African American males, the predicament of gays and lesbians in the face of increasing biotechnological manipulation of human behavior, and the psychology of shame and humiliation underlying generdercides against both sexes. Still other articles take issue with Jones's theories of gendercide, or explore how human-rights organizations have defined, documented, and responded to gendercide and other sex-specific atrocities. A closing essay considers the relevance of feminist and men's studies literatures for the study of gendercide.

April 2004 sees the tenth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, an event generally acknowledged to be one of the most appalling of the twentieth century and potentially avoidable. Linda Melvern's new book, the result of a decade of investigative work, is a damning indictment of almost all the key figures and the institutions involved. It reveals how the French military trained the killers, how the US is still withholding wiretap and satellite evidence that the genocide was about to begin, how the John Major government ignored vital warnings that the genocide was planned, how much Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the French government knew prior to the genocide and how the Security Council's shameful decision to evacuate the peacekeepers came about. In addition to these official sources, the author draws on dozens of witness statements yet to be heard at the International Criminal Tribunal, at which she will be an expert witness, and a sixty-hour confession from the prime minister in the government that presided over the genocide never before made publicly available and currently locked in the safe of the chief prosecutors at the ICT court.

The question of the responsibility inherent in the unrivaled might of the U.S. military is one that continues to take up headlines across the globe. This award-winning group of reporters and scholars, including, among others, David Rieff, Peter Maass, Philip Gourevitch, William Shawcross, George Packer, Bill Berkeley and Samantha Power revisit four of the worst instances of state-sponsored killing--Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and East Timor--in the last half of the twentieth century in order to reconsider the success and failure of U.S. and U.N. military and humanitarian intervention.Featuring original essays and reporting, "The New Killing Fields" poses vital questions about the future of peacekeeping in the next century. In addition, theoretical essays by Michael Walzer and Michael Ignatieff frame the issue of intervention in terms of today's post-cold war reality and the future of human rights.

When the German Army captured Lw w, Poland, in 1941, the city contained a vibrant Jewish community of 160,000 people. By 1945, all but a few hundred were dead. "Witness to Annihilation" is the book that Samuel Drix vowed he would write. Drix endured nearly a year in the Janowska concentration camp, escaped and hid from the Nazis, was liberated by the Red Army, and eventually fled from behind the Iron Curtain to America. This rare Holocaust memoir by a caring physician will both horrify and inspire.

Why did the Rwandan genocide take place? How could parents feed their own children drinks laced with poison in Jonestown? As we see many parts of the world being engulfed in fratricidal frenzy, we wonder if it can happen in this country. Gupta examines contemporary cases of genocide and mass murder and seeks to explain why certain societies are more prone to these actions and others are relatively immune.

Gupta sees a dialectical tension between our two identities: the self and the collective. The end of the medieval period was marked by the emergence of individualism in Europe. With time, the march of individualism engulfed the entire Western world and permeated every aspect of its culture, tradition, and academic paradigm. Neoclassical economics is the embodiment of this single-minded pursuit of the rationality of individualism. However, our psychobiological evolution has also imbued us with the irrepressible desire to form groups and to act upon its welfare. The reason for this eternal conflict lies in our own struggle with our two identities. When the pendulum swings to the extreme end of collectivism, genocide and other forms of social abnormalities--collective madness--occur. When we move too far into individualism, people tend to seek something greater beyond selfish pursuits. Through his panoramic view, Gupta provides an explanation for both social order and political pathology that will be of interest to students, scholars, and other researchers involved with ethnic conflict, collective behavior, and conflict resolution.