Holocaust and Genocide Studies Commons^™

Arts & Literature: Voices Of Kurdish Women Survivors: Healing Through Wounds Of Genocide, Sarwa Azeez

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The Kurdish genocide tragically stole a generation, yet little attention has been given to the profound anguish endured by women left without husbands, fathers or sons. The poems "Alive," "Waiting," “To Hawa,” and "But Then Their Eyes Retained Everything" venture to unveil novel perspectives on the vast expanse of war, violence, trauma, and healing. They explore the impact of Saddam Hussein’s genocide on women during and after the war, its impact on subsequent generations, and the reflections of women on the implications of the Al-Anfal campaign, which spanned from 1986 to 1989. Similarly, the poem "Her Tongue Refuses to Recall," …

Arts & Literature: Songs Of My Ancestors, Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Aotearoa New Zealand, The Forcible Transfer Of Tamariki And Rangatahi Māori, And The Royal Commission On Abuse In Care, David B. Macdonald

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article investigates to what extent the forcible transfer of tamariki and rangatahi Māori (Indigenous children and youth) in Aotearoa New Zealand can be considered genocide. First, I begin by exploring contemporary genocide theory as it relates to dolus eventualis in settler colonial contexts, before engaging with precedents for recognizing Indigenous genocides established by truth commissions in Canada (2015; 2019) and Australia (1997). I then explore the history around Indigenous child removal in Aotearoa from the onset of colonization to the present day, attentive to ways in which the UN Convention can apply to the forced removal of Māori children. …

Book Review: Anthropological Witness: Lessons From The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Suzanne Schot

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Derviš M. Korkut: A Biography—Rescuer Of The Sarajevo Haggadah, Ehlimana Memišević

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

At the beginning of 2020, the Sarajevo-based publishing house El-Kalem, released a biography of Derviš M. Korkut, a Bosniak hero, to whom Yad Vashem posthumously awarded Righteous among the Nations on December 14, 1994.

Winston Churchill's words, with which the author begins the biography—that the Balkans produce more history than they can handle—best describe the difficult times in which Korkut lived. For Korkut and his fellow Bosnians, these difficult times lasted from the beginning of the 20th century to its very end.

The book is based on exhaustive archival research and reconstructs Korkut’s life very precisely, while the concise overview …

Why China Cares About Canada’S Indigenous Residential Schools: From Whataboutism To Internal Denial, Xiyuan (Marvin) Xia

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article examines how the Chinese government and its propaganda departments use genocide-related discourses to fulfil different political purposes at home and abroad. By criticizing Western colonialist regimes’ assimilation policies, especially Canada’s Indigenous residential schools, the Chinese diplomats apply the rhetoric of whataboutism to dodge the international community’s questions about China’s systematic persecution of Uyghur Muslims. Domestically, China’s state media intensively cover Canada’s residential school system and the colonial genocide against Indigenous people, trying to distract the audience from the state atrocities in Xinjiang and mislead the public to distrust Canada and other countries’ motives for accusing China of committing …

Institutional Legacies And The Decision To Commit Genocide, Stacey M. Mitchell

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Despite their striking similarities, which include population demographics, size, and a legacy of inter-group conflict, the collapse of democratization in Rwanda and Burundi in the early 1990s led to genocide in Rwanda and a different type of violence in Burundi. This study suggests that to better comprehend why risk factors lead to genocide in some cases and not others, focus must be placed on how these factors are perceived by those in power of the state experiencing them. This study introduces a model that uses Comparative Historical Analysis (CHA), process tracing, and the inclusion of a decision model built on …

Uncovering Emotional Contamination: Five Sites Of Trauma, Abigail Zola

Masters Theses

“Emotional contamination,” describes residual feelings associated with a space where a negative or tragic event occurred to an individual or group either personally, historically, or politically. Emotional contamination affects people’s associations with place and informs their willingness to spend time in them. This project considers a set of design principles rooted in uncovering and acknowledging the lifespan of a site, and considers how this acknowledgment can exist as an urban system rather than an individual architectural artifact. My thesis work analyzes five case studies in Berlin where political and economic factors determined the result of intervention, and how these sites …

Survivor Accounts Of Sexual Violence In The Holocaust And Rwandan Genocide: A Comparative History, Marisa Silva

Honors Projects

This research seeks to analyze and understand the approach and treatment of victims of sexual assaults stories and accounts using case studies of the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. Research was conducted by collecting and reading first-hand accounts of survivors and their experiences of sexual assault, then analyzing the historical response following the events. The two case studies are synthesized and compared in this project to understand which attributes of political and social policy effected the reception of stories of victims and witnesses of rape and assault. Both genocides are affected by unique struggles in collecting witness accounts, as well …

Silent Voices, Stolen Imagery, And Subjected Violence: Plains Native American Women In Historiography, Bobbie J. Roshone

Graduate Review

This paper delves into the historiography of Indigenous women’s history and experiences on the Great Plains have been recorded. The main question when approaching this subject was, “what does a review of the historiography reveal about how historians have addressed Indigenous women’s history in the Great Plains?” The overwhelming consensus was that Indigenous women’s history of the Great Plains was minimal in regard to articles, however, there was a growth of autobiographies and other historiographical works throughout the same time period. This would lead to a directed look at how individual women in Indigenous Plains history had a larger impact …

Editors' Introduction

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Negationist Denialism In The "Comfort Women" Issue In Japan, Tetsushi Ogata

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article deals with the pervasive and entrenched nature of Japanese denialism on wartime memories, mainly focusing on the “comfort women” issue. It argues that a lens of “negationism” is more beneficial to address entrenched denialism. The net effect of denialism has been to perpetuate binary identity constructs, the deniers and the denied, one side re-engineering social relations to dominate and continue dominating the other. Conventional approaches to counter such denialism have relied heavily on truth-seeking and justice-dispensing mechanisms, but they are inept at addressing negationist denialism. The article explores a post-atrocity model of narrative and identity to go beyond …

The Effects Of Trauma On Holocaust Survivors After The War, Natalie Braker

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This paper will examine the effects of trauma among Holocaust survivors after the war, including Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD), triggers, nightmares, and anxiety. It will review clinical research by comparing it to the range of experiences of Holocaust survivors as described in videotaped interviews during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Upon reviewing existing literature, it becomes clear that PTSD is life-long for Holocaust survivors. PTSD is a mental health condition triggered by either experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event or a series of events. There are four general types of PTSD symptoms: intrusive memories, avoidance, negative changes in thinking …

Socialist Legality On Trial: The Purge Of The Ukrainian Nkvd, 1938-1943, Reide Petty

Honors Theses

In the winter of 1938, Grigorii Iufa was put on trial in a Soviet court for the violation of socialist legality, a charge alleging that he had manipulated Soviet legal processes and undermined the rule of law during his work. Prior to his arrest, Iufa had worked in the Moldavian division of the NKVD, the Soviet Union’s state security agency. In that capacity, he had played a significant role in the Great Terror, which was a highly concentrated campaign of mass violence conducted by the Soviet Union between 1937-1938 against perceived enemies among its own citizenry. This campaign primarily consisted …

Was Ist (Nicht) Deutsch? Historische Und Aktuelle Versuche "Deutsch" Ex Negativo Zu Definieren, Mark Mckinney Smith

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

In this thesis I explore the question of how a xenophobic ideology could find a receptive audience in 21st Century Germany. Given extensive postwar efforts in Germany to address the Nazi Period, this question is of particular interest. I analyze and compare racist and xenophobic ideologies in four time periods: the Napoleonic Period, the Wilhelmine Period, the National Socialist Period and the contemporary period. Historically, xenophobic ideology is deeply tied to particular social and economic conditions which leads to the following questions: What are the similarities and differences between contemporary xenophobic messaging and that of the three other time periods …

Banned Or Grand?: Why Graphic Novels Maus And Persepolis Belong In The Classroom, Lauren Volk

Munn Scholars Awards

My capstone essay, “Banned or Grand?: Why Graphic Novels Maus and Persepolis Belong in The Classroom,” seeks to research both the objections to oft-banned memoir graphic novels being incorporated in the secondary school curriculum and the reasons why these graphic novels should not only be incorporated into the curriculum, but also why they assist students in developing necessary skills, such as higher-level critical thinking, a deeper understanding of complicated historical events, and the analysis of form and structure in literature, rather than just content. To enhance my research, I connected my main points to the pedagogical theory of learning transfer.

"Life Unworthy Of Life" Aktion T4: The First Nazi Genocide, Alexander M. Remington

Student Publications

Though usually viewed as a prelude to the Holocaust, the T4 euthanasia program was a distinct genocide carried out by the Third Reich’s doctors. Allowing themselves to be corrupted by eugenics and Nazi policy, the perpetrators of the Nazi euthanasia killings transformed themselves from healers to murderers. Despite public resistance led by Bishop Clemens von Galen which resulted in the cancellation of the T4 program, Nazi doctors took it upon themselves to continue euthanizing patients until the end of the war, emphasizing the legitimacy that euthanasia had acquired. The history of the T4 program, its perpetrators, and resisters is critical …

Nazi Education In Vienna: The Solidification Of Antisemitism And German Nationalism In The Classroom, Abigail J. Seiple

Student Publications

In contemporary Austrian schools there is an alarming number of students who know little of Austria's involvement in WWII. They see Austria as a victim of Hitler and as a conquered nation. This post-war victimization myth has survived in schools that works to undermine feelings of Austrian responsibility in the days following the Anschluss. However, this victimization myth is threatened by looking at education on the eve of the Anschluss to Nazi policy and Nazi sentiments that had already existed for decades in Austria.

Blood Cries Out From The Ground: The Einsatzgruppen And The Holocaust In Ukraine, Lauren R. Letizia

Student Publications

After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the Wehrmacht occupied much of the western Soviet regions. The Third Reich deployed special killing squads known as the Einsatzgruppen to protect its military and ideological interests. These units were responsible for murdering over two million Jews from 1941 to 1944, primarily through mass shootings. Ukraine was one of the most afflicted countries by this “Holocaust by Bullets.” Because of the efficient genocidal techniques of Einsatzgruppen units operating in the region, one in four Jews who perished in the Holocaust was Ukrainian. The scale on which these killings …

Redefining The Agency Of Jewish Communities Through Ghetto Humor, Addison E. Lomax

Student Publications

While the Holocaust is remembered by historians and victims as a time of suffering and genocide, Jewish ghetto survivors recall numerous occasions in which humor was used to combat the oppression of Nazi authorities. Although many historians emphasized the physical hardships and tragic conditions faced by Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the existence of jokes throughout Eastern European ghettos articulated the legitimacy of humor within the greater context and discussion of coping, resistance, and unification for the preservation of Jewish life and identity in the post-war period. Rather than depicting Jews as solely victims, humor returns agency to the Jews …