Holocaust and the Genocide Against the Tutsi, Essay Example

Introduction

The history of human civilization presents one of the most murderous and destructive events, the Holocaust. During World War II, European Jewry was considered an inferior race and annihilated by Germany. Holocaust involved mass murder of six million Jews and millions of others by Nazi. Led by the anti-Semitic Adolf Hitler, Nazis found the Jews as a threat to German’s community and racial purity, and the killings happened after ten years of Nazi rule in Germany (Johnson and Caputo, 2014). The Nazis held communists in concentration camps, where the foundation for the Holocaust at the beginning of World War II, was laid. The Nazi party used the Jews to push their agenda and gain strength by insisting on the purity of Germany (Johnson and Caputo, 2014).

Historical Context

Germany had a long history of anti-Semitism goes back to the Medieval age when the Jews were a minority, and they suffered injustices amongst other groups (Johnson and Caputo, 2014). The Nazi’s followed the medieval example but singled out one community as the minority. Hitler blamed Germany’s defeat in World War I on Jews. He joined politics after the war ended. Hitler wrote a memoir predicting a European war that would exterminate the Jews, inspired by his desire for a superior pure German race. He had a quick rise to supreme leadership after leaving prison due to the weakness of competing parties. He had a foreign and domestic policy with two goals, spatial expansion, and racial purity. In 1933, the party opened the first official concentration camps with communists as the first prisoners.

The Holocaust’s killing grounds were the concentration camps. In 1933, Nazi took advantage of the low population percentage of the Jews to destroy them economically and socially, and they became a target for stigmatization and persecution. Germany occupied half of Poland between 1939 and 1940, and Polish Jews were pushed to the ghettos, and their property confiscated to ethnic Germans. Hitler used a Euthanasia program to kill the mentally ill and disabled Germans, a pilot program for the Holocaust. Hitler continued to expand the German empire across Europe and sending all Jews to Polish Ghettos. Experiments of mass killings went on to prepare for the Holocaust with prisoners of war as well. The summer and fall of 1942 saw the highest number of mass killings in concentration camps, and although a revolt happened, the Nazis Managed to Conquer (Johnson and Caputo, 2014).

Hitler’s attempt to keep the murders a secret was unsuccessful since eyewitnesses reported to the authorities. The scale was virtually impossible to hide. Allied governments were criticized for taking no action and only focusing on winning the ongoing war. Because allied nations did not respond, news of the Holocaust was unbelievable and was met with so much denial. More than six million people were murdered, and interestingly, the Holocaust continued even after the fall of the Nazi rule. Survivors of the Holocaust were left with wounds almost impossible to heal after losing their kin and being rejected by neighbors. It was hard for the Germans to acknowledge their part, but later, the government compensated some of the Jewish individuals for the horrifying experience. The hate for Jewish people began a long time ago, and Hitler used it to advance the political agenda of his Nazi party (Lewis, 2019).

Related Social Issues

Protecting the human rights of minorities is one of the major concerns facing society today and during the time of the Holocaust. Jews and people with Jewish descent made up about 1% of Germany’s population when the Nazis began to try and get rid of them. They were a minority whose voice was ignored, and Hitler took advantage of the fact to ensure they are silently wiped off. They not just targeted in Germany but throughout Europe. The minority had no voice to call on the international community for help eve by printing anything on the media and bring attention to the issue. More than six million people died before any action was taken, and it is proof that the rights of the minority have been a struggle for a long time. The murder took place around the same time as a world war, and other nations focused on the ‘bigger’ war instead.

Hitler spread hate propaganda against the Jews to convince other members of the Nazi party that they deserved to be killed. Hate propaganda incites hatred against an identifiable group, and people of mixed descent were also implicated as long they had Jewish relations. Germany appeared as the looser after the end of a previous war and wanted so much to take revenge. Hitler believed the Jews are the reason as to why they lost that war and spread that message to Germans to seclude them. The Jews had been a target of hate propaganda amongst the Germans since medieval times, and it was easy to revive that history for the benefit of a specific agenda. It was not clear what Hitler had against the Jewish people, but he used that hate to propel himself politically and did not relent even after the news went out that he has been secretly masterminding their murder.

Ethics in medical research and human healthcare is another significant social concern arising from the Holocaust. Humans were used to experimenting with the performance of the killing agent used during the Holocaust. In 1939, around 70,000 Germans who had been institutionalized for mental health or any form of disabilities, were gassed to death in a sort of euthanasia. Hitler only ended the program after complaints from religious leaders but continued killing the disabled secretly and other people around Europe. The program turned out to be a pilot for the Holocaust. Medical personnel conducted experiments to make the gas used to kill people and then testing it on those who could not defend themselves. There was no respect for human life whatsoever, and medical professionals engaging in the practice were unethical. Research in medicine is meant to advance the well-being of individuals and not diminish it. Hitler and his team did the opposite, and it was not just on the Jews but fellow Germans as well.

Intolerance was displayed by the pushing of all Jews and people of Jewish descent to the ghettoes. Societies exist with people from diverse cultures, races, and ethnic backgrounds. Hitler used his hatred for the Jews to mastermind their isolation and ensured they ended up in the ghettoes. Liquidating their businesses and denying them legal representation was another tactic to push them to places they could easily be accessed and transferred to concentration camps. The Warsaw ghetto on Poland was the largest, and all Jews from every part of the city were pushed to the area. Their money and valuables were taken to them and handed to the Germans and Polish before staring life in the horrendous ghettos. People would crowd in one room in dilapidated buildings and endure all forms of abuse from the Nazis. People died of maltreatment, hunger, and illnesses, and those who survived ended up in the concentration camps.

There was no freedom of expression as it is a necessity for Jewish people. Nazi hated religion and used it to discriminate them further. Jews have symbols of worship that can quickly get them singled-out in a group of people. They have earlocks, beards, kaftans, and hats that represent their faith. They also had holy books, synagogues, and scrolls that are used during worship, which the Nazis burned down. The intolerance resulted from Hitler’s propaganda that coined the Jews and other minority groups as the ‘undesirables.’ The Nazis successfully brainwashed the German public against the Jews, and it encouraged them to turn a blind eye on what happened. Most people are in denial of the Holocaust today because the magnitude of atrocities that the Jews went through is unimaginable. The Germans bought the idea that Jews deserved to suffer because they caused the defeat suffered by Germany in war, among other messages of propaganda spread by Hitler and the Nazis.

Framing of the Holocaust and Other Genocides

Historical references, language, symbols, inclusion, and omission of information are some of the tactics used to simplify available information on genocide. The pieces put together lead to appraisals, values, narratives, and they convey meaning. A simple frame will often reduce groups, people, political developments, and events into one dimension portrayals (Armoudian, 2018). While a complicated structure may give all information, it is sometimes exaggerated, and hard to understand. Frames determine how future generations interpret the past because they tell the story in the eye of the observer or recorder. The Holocaust, for instance, is understood from the story told by eyewitnesses and other researchers. Frames influence the tolerance of audiences, and those who see events from different structures will have different tolerance levels. A frame that tells two sets of people apart push the narrative of ‘us vs. them’ with us supposed to be bigger than them.

Scholars unanimously accept the Holocaust and Rwandan genocide as two distinct modern genocides, that targeted ethnoreligious groups for annihilation. They had no economic or political interests, so the survivors were not targeted for conquering or submission (Owens et al., 2013). The two twentieth-century genocides made use of the media to spread messages widely, and they were vital tools in perpetuating the attack. In both Rwanda and Germany, the oppressors used the media to spread propaganda against the target population using blame stereotypes (Yanagizawa-Drott, 2014). Both Hutu and Nazis had control over the media and used it to blame the victims for their situations before and even during the genocide. The Hutu blamed Tutsi people for violations that caused them to harm while Nazis blamed Jews for the defeat of world war I. The ‘us vs. them’ narrative comes in because the people are influenced to believing the target group is the root to their problems.

Apart from victim-blaming, genocide uses a demonization and dehumanization frame to make the target population subhuman, evil, and vile. The idea is to convince others that their existence is dangerous for them, thus triggering destructive emotions of hate. Making them appear heartless and harmful and that no action would appease them because it is their nature. Hitler said the Jews are evil, and it is impossible to change that because it is a result of their race and place of birth. The Hutu were also portrayed as evil by the perpetrators of the hate propaganda (Nikuze, 2016). The whole population is also made to be indistinguishable so that there is no good amongst them; they are all evil. Blaming their predicament on the target convinces the masses that they are deserving of the maltreatment and suffering bestowed upon them.

The frame of dehumanization is also justified by self-defense and a grand cause. ‘It is necessary to eliminate the target population because if you do not kill, you will be killed.’ The battle is meant to be something big for humanity and with the desire to rebuild greatness. The Tutsi were convinced that Hutu cause their troubles and that if they kill them, then their land would be purified and cleansed. The Germans were confident that their future happiness, glory, and greatness of their nation was at the expense of the Jews. They knew the Holocaust would be a significant step towards rebuilding their country. The genocide was meant to appear as a higher calling that people needed to heed to or let their future crumble. Hutu’s and Germans were convinced that killing the target group was the only path towards the future lest they crumble.

Genocidal leaders come up with grand narratives that if they do not annihilate the target population, then they would be the victims. They push the ‘us vs. them’ theme and that ‘them’ are to be blamed for the crisis. They then demonize and dehumanize ‘them’ and justify genocide as the only means of ending the argument. The Holocaust and Rwandan genocides are perfect evidence of the fact, and the media is an essential tool in pushing the narratives. The genocidal frames in both cases show the promotion of fear, anger, and hatred to divide the groups. All the themes r frames of genocide have to exist together to promote the actual event. For example, us vs. them’ divides the groups but does not evoke group responses of anger, contempt, fear, and hatred. There must be the feeling of ‘us vs. them’, accompanied by blame, dehumanization, demonization, ‘kill-or-be-killed,’ and emotional attacks for a genocide to occur.

Conclusion

The Holocaust is one of the most murderous and destructive events in the history of civilization. Genocides have continued to occur since the Holocaust, and they are getting worse every time. Hitler led Germans into blaming the Jews for their defeat in world war I, and they firmly held the belief that Jews had to be killed. Over 6 million people were killed since the Nazi party started spreading hate propaganda against the Jews, and they went on even after the death of Hitler. The minorities were destroyed through hate propaganda, and medical professionals took part in the genocide. Gas was tested on innocent people in preparation for the Holocaust, and Jews were killed in concentration camps. The frames of genocides observe din Holocaust and others like the Rwandan genocide are division ‘us vs. them,’ victim-blaming, demonization, dehumanizing, ‘kill-or-killed,’ and negative emotions.

References

Armoudian, M. (2018). In search of a genocidal frame: Preliminary evidence from the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. Media, War & Conflict, 1750635218810927.

Johnson, H., & Caputo, N. (2014). The middle ages and the Holocaust: Medieval anti-Judaism in the crucible of modern thought. Postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, 5(3), 270-277.

Nikuze, D. (2016). Comparative Analysis of the Genocidal Process: Holocaust and the Genocide against the Tutsi. Contemporary Review of the Middle East, 3(3), 316-328.

Owens, P. B., Su, Y., & Snow, D. A. (2013). The social scientific inquiry into genocide and mass killing: From unitary outcome to complex processes. Annual Review of Sociology, 39, 69-84.

Stone, L. (2019). Quantifying the Holocaust: Hyperintense kill rates during the Nazi genocide. Science advances, 5(1), eaau7292.

Yanagizawa-Drott, D. (2014). Propaganda and conflict: Evidence from the Rwandan genocide. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(4), 1947-1994.