A Public Ready to Act Against Genocide, in Syria and Beyond

Reading for Topic # 1

A Public Ready to Act Against Genocide, in Syria and Beyond

After interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, conventional wisdom has it that our country is turning inward. But with dramatic global events that often unfold on the Internet, the public seems to have a heightened awareness of the risk of genocide and other kinds of mass atrocities -- and want our leaders to act.

A new poll we worked on together suggests that Americans in fact care very much about preventing genocide in other countries, want our government to be actively engaged in stopping it and are willing to employ military force under certain conditions.

The findings emerge from a random telephone poll of 1,000 Americans conducted by Penn, Schoen, and Berland for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. We wanted to gauge how Americans think about the prevention of genocide and other mass atrocities, an oft-neglected element of our foreign policy agenda.

At its core, our new poll shows that Americans are both idealistic and realistic when it comes to preventing genocide.

Americans believe genocide is a clear threat today and that we can do something about it: More than 90 percent of the people we polled say they believe that genocide is not just a phenomenon of the past and could occur today, and two thirds believe it is preventable. They do not see such atrocities just as part of ancient feuding between peoples that we cannot do anything about -- that kind of thinking has precluded effective action in the past. They see genocide as a tool used by political leaders to accomplish political goals.

Americans have a fairly sophisticated understanding of what genocide is and have broad knowledge of the most egregious past cases, such as the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide. Almost one in two Americans describes genocide, correctly, as the destruction of a racial, national, religious and ethnic group.

Americans may lack a detailed knowledge of foreign policy issues, but they are tuned into potential genocides and mass killings, especially the younger generation.

Americans want their government to do something about preventing genocide. A strong proportion -- 69 percent -- believes the United States should prevent or stop mass atrocities from occurring in another part of the world. Substantial majorities also said they think the United States should have taken military action in cases such as Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

But on a range of questions, our poll suggests that Americans place important limits on the nature and scope of our engagement in current cases. They do not see the United States as the country most responsible for preventing or stopping mass atrocities, but rather look to international bodies such as the United Nations or NATO.

We asked what Americans think we should do in both Syria and Sudan. On both conflicts, strong majorities favor non-military tactics, such as assisting refugees or freezing trade (steps already being taken by the United States), but they also favor the use of military force. In both countries, a majority of those polled would be willing to send ground forces as part of an international force.

The public was clear -- more education to prevent genocide from developing and more use of force, as part of a coalition, when it does occur.

There's little doubt the United States and other countries are taking this the problem more seriously, even if they don't always succeed in stopping mass atrocities. International tribunals and courts have been established to try perpetrators. Every country has subscribed to the notion that the international community has a "responsibility to protect" civilians from genocide and other forms of mass slaughter. Our government agencies -- and some in other countries -- are adopting reforms aimed at improving their capacity to identify those countries at risk of genocide and do something about it before violence commences.

Political will continues to be a big issue. In the past, U.S. presidents often turned their back on mass killings because they saw a lack of public support. But our poll suggest this calculus may be changing and that leaders who fail to act may be the ones who pay a political price.

Source: The Huffington Post

Reading for Topic # 2

Antisemitism is the term used for hatred of Jews as a group or Jews as a concept. It is an archaic term conceived in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In practice, however, the hatred of Jews has deep roots in history. As far back as ancient times, Jews were often seen as outsiders and a stubborn people who were unwilling to assimilate, primarily because of their religious beliefs.

With the beginning of Christianity, there was an inherent clash between Judaism and Christianity. Christianity grew out of Judaism, but at the same time was competing with it. Early Church fathers believed that the Jews had failed in their role in the world and that Christians had inherited it. In addition, although the Romans crucified Jesus, the blame was put on all Jews everywhere and forever (a false blame that was condemned by the Catholic Church in the 1960s). Jews were also said to be in league with the devil, which both dehumanized and demonized them. For these reasons, not only were Jews seen as outsiders, but they were also regarded as a people who should be eternally punished.

SUMMARY OF ANTISEMITISM

Most significantly during the last third of the nineteenth century, racism as a pseudoscience first surfaced. Racism grew out of the emerging sciences of biology, genetics, and anthropology, and it held that human civilization could be best understood through biology. Moreover, it held that different national and ethnic groups were defined by their biological characteristics, and some groups were superior to others. With the long history of antisemitism as the background, Jews were seen by many racial thinkers as the worst race—strong, yet very dangerous. In other words, all the negative stereotypes Jews supposedly had were now explained as being the result of Jewish biology, or in language of the time, “Jewish blood.” With earlier forms of antisemitism Jews could escape hatred, at least in theory, by converting to Christianity or shedding their alleged bad characteristics by assimilating. As soon as anti-Jewish prejudice was linked to racism, Jews could do nothing to change themselves or the hatred directed toward them.

Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party did not invent antisemitism, but it was central to their ideology. They embraced a racial ideology that stated the Germans were the master race in the world. Their goal was to make Germany a superpower by conquering lands of supposedly lesser people and restructuring society according to racial principles. For the Nazis, the Jews were seen as a demonic force that aspired to dominate the world, and they believed that the Jews’ victory would spell the end of the world. The Nazis believed that Jews were behind Bolshevism (Communism), exploitative capitalism, and democracy, all of which supposedly threatened mankind. Nazi ideology also argued that Christianity had been weakened by Jewish ideas, such as that all human beings are created in the image of God. In short they blamed Jews for all of humanity’s shortfalls and troubles. Not only did they believe that Jews had no place in a racially restructured Europe, they felt that they must put an end to the “Jewish menace” lest the Jews destroy them.

One would think after the Holocaust antisemitism would have disappeared. Unfortunately it has continued to exist. Today, antisemitic stereotypes and motifs still may be found, some elements with older ideas and some with newer variations, chief among them hatred of Jews linked to a demonic image of Israel and Zionism.

Source: Echoes & Reflections (shortened from the original version)

Reading for Topic # 3

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising-Pre Reading

In 1942, Hitler decided to liquidate the ghettos and, within 18 months, had the more than two million Jews who’d survived the ghettos deported to death camps.

The Germans ordered the Jewish “police” in the Warsaw ghetto to round up people for deportation. Approximately 300,000 men, women, and children were packed in cattle cars and transported to the Treblinka death camp where they were murdered. This left a Jewish population of between 55,000 and 60,000 in the ghetto.

In April 1943, the Jews learned the Germans planned to deport all the people who remained in the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka. A group of mostly young people formed an organization called the Z.O.B. (for the Polish name, Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, which means Jewish Fighting Organization). The Z.O.B., led by 23-year-old Mordecai Anielewicz, issued a proclamation calling for the Jewish people to resist going to the railroad cars.

In January 1943, Warsaw ghetto fighters fired upon German troops as they tried to round up another group of ghetto inhabitants for deportation. Fighters used a small supply of weapons that had been smuggled into the ghetto. After a few days, the troops retreated. This small victory inspired the ghetto fighters to prepare for future resistance.

The impact on the ghetto residents is described in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust:

The Jews in the ghetto believed that what had happened in January was proof that by offering resistance it was possible to force the Germans to desist from their plans. Many thought that the Germans would persist in unrestrained mass deportations only so long as the Jews were passive, but that in the face of resistance and armed confrontation they would think twice before embarking upon yet another Aktion. The Germans would also have to take into account the possibility that the outbreak of fighting in the ghetto might lead to the rebellion spreading to the Polish population and might create a state of insecurity in all of occupied Poland. These considerations led the civilian population of the ghetto, in the final phase of its existence, to approve of resistance and give its support to the preparations for the uprising. The population also used the interval to prepare and equip a network of subterranean refuges and hiding places, where they could hold out for an extended period even if they were cut off from one another. In the end, every Jew in the ghetto had his own spot in one of the shelters set up in the central part of the ghetto. The civilian population and the fighters now shared a common interest based on the hope that, under the existing circumstances, fighting the Germans might be a way to rescue.

After the January battle, the Jews spent the following weeks training, acquiring weapons, and making plans to defend of the ghetto. The Germans also prepared for the possibility of a fight. On the eve of the final deportation, Heinrich Himmler replaced the chief of the SS and police in the Warsaw district, Obergruppenfuhrer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, with SS und Polizeifuhrer (SS and Police Leader) Jurgen Stroop, an officer who had experience fighting partisans.

The ghetto fighters were warned of the timing of the final deportation and the entire Jewish population went into hiding. On the morning of April 19, 1943, the Warsaw ghetto uprising began after German troops and police entered the ghetto to deport its surviving inhabitants. Seven hundred and fifty fighters armed with a handful of pistols, 17 rifles, and Molotov cocktails faced more than 2,000 heavily armed and well-trained German troops supported by tanks and flamethrowers..

After the Germans were forced to withdraw from the ghetto, they returned with more and more firepower. After several days without quelling the uprising, the German commander, General Jürgen Stroop, ordered the ghetto burned to the ground building by building. Still, the Jews held out against the overwhelming force for 27 days. On May 8, the headquarters bunker of the ZOB at 18 Mila Street was captured. Mordecai Anielewicz and a large number of his colleagues were killed in the fighting, but several dozen fighters escaped through the sewers.

On May 16, Stroop announced the fighting was over. He said his forces had captured 56,065 Jews and announced that he was going to blow up the Great Synagogue on Tlomack Street (which was outside the ghetto) as a symbol of victory and of the fact that “the Jewish quarter of Warsaw no longer exists.”

Approximately 300 Germans and 7,000 Jews were killed in the uprising, and another 7,000 Jews were deported to Treblinka. The outcome was preordained, but the dramatic act of resistance helped raise the morale of Jews everywhere, if only briefly.

Sources: Mitchell G. Bard, The Complete Idiot's Guide to World War II. 2nd Edition. NY: Alpha Books, 2004; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Israel Gutman, ed. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Vols. 1-4. NY: Macmillan, 1995. USHMM Photo or Stroop.

Reading for Topic # 4 - Liberation

Survivors of Mauthausen cheer American soldiers as they pass through the main gate of the camp. The photograph was taken several days after the liberation of the camp. Mauthausen, Austria, May 9, 1945.

— National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.

Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate concentration camp prisoners in the final stages of the war. On July 23, 1944, they entered the Majdanek camp in Poland, and later overran several other killing centers. On January 27, 1945, they entered Auschwitz and there found hundreds of sick and exhausted prisoners. The Germans had been forced to leave these prisoners behind in their hasty retreat from the camp. Also left behind were victims' belongings: 348,820 men's suits, 836,255 women's coats, and tens of thousands of pairs of shoes.

British, Canadian, American, and French troops also freed prisoners from the camps. The Americans were responsible for liberating Buchenwald and Dachau, while British forces entered Bergen-Belsen.. Although the Germans had attempted to empty the camps of surviving prisoners and hide all evidence of their crimes, the Allied soldiers came upon thousands of dead bodies "stacked up like cordwood," according to one American soldier. The prisoners who were still alive were living skeletons.

Bill Barrett, an American army journalist, described what he saw at Dachau: "There were about a dozen bodies in the dirty boxcar, men and women alike. They had gone without food so long that their dead wrists were broomsticks tipped with claws. These were the victims of a deliberate starvation diet..."

Allied troops, physicians, and relief workers tried to provide nourishment for the surviving prisoners, but many of them were too weak to digest food and could not be saved. In spite of the liberators' efforts, many camp survivors died. Half of the prisoners discovered alive in Auschwitz died within a few days of being freed.

Survivors had mixed reactions to their newfound freedom. While a few looked forward to being reunited with other family members, some felt guilty for surviving when so many of their relatives and friends had died. Some felt overwhelmed, as one survivor, Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist, expressed: "Timidly, we looked around and glanced at each other questioningly. Then we ventured a few steps out of the camp. This time no orders were shouted at us, nor was there any need to duck quickly to avoid a blow or a kick. 'Freedom,' we repeated to ourselves, and yet we could not grasp it."