Conflict between different political, ethnic, or religious groups, nations, or societies has been occurring for centuries. There are many reasons behind the conflicts, but they are generally caused when people’s ideas and goals are seen as incompatible with each other. At times these differences will seem to the people as having no resolution. So the majority group, generally, will decide that the best and only way to get the results they want is to eliminate the minority group completely. Genocide is an attempt to eliminate a specific group of people because of their religious, racial, ethnic, or political affiliation[1].
Africa and Europe as separate nations have had several instances of genocide in their history. The genocide of the Armenians during World War I, the Jews during World War II, the genocides in Sierra Leon and South Africa, and the Rwandan Genocide to name a few. This essay will focus on the two cases of the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide in an attempt to answer the question: Africa or Europe, which is the real “Dark Continent”? In order to answer this question I will look at the causes, number of people who perished, length of time, means of murder, and the effects on the victims and the nations involved in each situation. This essay does not, however, wish to make either situation appear as being any less horrific than the other or to devalue either ones importance. Its only goal is to attempt to draw a conclusion based on comparing two of the most brutal cases of genocide in modern history.
Causes
The causes of the Holocaust are rooted in the ideas and beliefs of one man, Adolf Hitler. Hitler grew up in Linz, Austria then moved to Vienna, Austria where he began having more contact with Jewish people. At first he only viewed Jewry as a religion that had been persecuted and had no prejudice against them as a people. He started reading anti-Semitic newspapers and could not help but question his beliefs. The more he read the more he began to notice not just the differing religious beliefs of the Jews, but the different physical appearance[2].
Hitler began looking more into the Jewish question and the more he looked the more his feelings toward the people changed. He saw that Jews controlled much of what he despised; the “horrible trash they advertised” in the theatre, press, and literature as well as prostitution and white slave trafficking. The most disturbing to Hitler was the Jewish involvement in the Social Democracy. This was the beginning of Hitler’s anti-Semitic views[3].
After World War I, Germany’s standard of living dramatically decreased. These difficult life conditions made it easy for Hitler and the Nazi party to come into power. Hitler was very charismatic and because of the delicate nature of the German people it was easy for him to manipulate them into believing and following his views. He believed in racial purity of the Aryan race and Jews did not fit within that category. Hitler’s initial goal was to remove all the Jews from Germany by way of forced emigration. He wanted all Jews just to move out of Germany[4]. After the start of the war his initial plan was not proving effective and so he and his high-ranking officials needed to come up with a better idea of what to do to solve the Jew problem. Adolf Eichmann came up with a plan termed the “Final Solution.” This was the beginning of the Holocaust.
The Rwandan Genocide occurred for similar yet different reasons. During the time of European colonial rule in Africa (prior to 1962), the Germans and then the Belgians had control over the area known today as Rwanda. The Belgians did not understand the complex social structure of the people of the Rwandan kingdom, nor did they care to understand. They were not able to make any distinctions between the Hutu and Tutsi. To make it easier on the Belgians to identify who was who, they created a method for dividing up the people of the area into separate ethnic groups. “Any man with more than ten head of cattle was to be permanently classified as Tutsi, and any man with fewer than ten cattle as Hutu” is one way that may have been used to classify each group.[5] This odd way of classifying people contradicted the pre-colonial way of division. A person could be “both Tutsi in relation to clients, and Hutu in relation to patrons”[6] as the two groups were socially divided rather than racially or ethnically. The European ideas of race were superimposed on the Rwandans and dramatically changed the social structure of the nation.
The Belgians saw the Tutsis as being racially superior to the Hutus and therefore favored and supported their political dominance[7]. This led to animosity from the Hutus and a demand for equality. With the help of Belgian officials and priests the Hutu began to slowly rise in power. They believed themselves to be the only indigenous people of the area. While the Tutsi maintained economic power, the Hutu gained political and administrative power. Just prior to colonial independence in 1962, the image of the Tutsi had changed from elite and proud to indolent and parasitic.[8]
Another important factor in the Rwandan Genocide was the economic crisis the nation had been in since the mid-1980s. Coffee had become a primary export and in 1986 the price dropped dramatically. Soon debt began to accumulate and the Hutu started blaming the crisis on the Tutsi since many of the offices held by the Tutsi were in the field of economics. This created a landslide of events that dramatically decreased the standard of living for the Rwandans.[9]
With all the events and situations that continued to unfold tensions continued to rise between the Hutu and Tutsi until October 1990 a group of Tutsi refugees, who had fled to Uganda, attacked Rwanda.[10] Civil war broke out and then on April 6, 1994 a Tutsi snipers shot down a plane carrying the President of Rwanda, a Hutu.[11] For the next one hundred days the genocide of the majority of the Tutsi population occurred.
Length of incidents and number killed
Both the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda had profound effects on the population of the victim groups. The Holocaust claimed the lives of many Jews throughout the war that lasted from the invasion of Poland in 1939 to the liberation of the Jews in 1945. During the length of the Holocaust some six million Jews perished. This number amounted to approximately two thirds or about sixty seven percent of the total Jewish population in Europe. These numbers do not include other minority groups the Nazis viewed as undesirable, such as the gypsies, blacks, and POWs that were killed by the Nazis.
In Rwanda approximately 800,000 Tutsi were killed totaling three quarters of the Tutsi population in Rwanda and approximately ten percent of the Rwandan population. These numbers did include the moderate Hutu group or anyone who opposed the killings that were killed in Rwanda who amounted to about 50,000 people. The killings in Rwanda lasted one hundred days, from April 7, 1994 until July 17, 1994. Many people continued to die after the one hundred day genocide from disease and other killings, but the genocide had ended.[12]
Means of murder
While the Holocaust and the Rwanda genocide do have many similarities regarding the planning and preparation for the genocide, the way in which the killings were executed were quite different. The Nazis were very methodical in their killing of the Jews. They began by forcing the Jews to dig their own graves, undress, and stand naked in front of the graves they had just dug. The Nazis would then shoot the Jews so that they would fall into the graves. This way the Nazis would not have to handle the bodies or do anything other than shoot them.
When this method proved to be ineffective and the “Final Solution” was implemented the Nazis needed something more efficient, something that would kill more Jews at one time. This is when the concentration camps came in and gas chambers were created. The Jews would be told they were going to shower so they would remove their clothes and gather in a large common shower. They would be locked in and the gas, instead of water, would be turned on killing everyone inside. The Nazis would then force other prisoners in the camp to take the bodies either to the crematorium where the bodies were burned or a mass grave where they were piled up until they could be cremated.[13]
The Nazis would kill the Jews in an indirect way by disease, malnutrition, and starvation. Typhus and tuberculosis among many other diseases would run throughout the ghettos and concentration camps and claim the lives of many people. The lack of proper nutrition and medical care created a breeding ground for disease in the camps. Prisoners were rationed generally a small piece of bread and some dark broth each day. Not enough to sustain a healthy person and especially not enough for someone who was extremely sick. The Nazis may not have directly killed the Jews in this way, but they were still responsible for their deaths because they created an environment not conducive for life.[14]
In Rwanda they took a less methodical approach and were more savage in a sense. When the genocide began neighbors killed neighbors, friends and sometimes even family members would kill one another. The main weapon that was used was the machete. The Hutus would walk down the street cutting anyone who appeared to be or was known to be a Tutsi. They would go from house to house searching for Tutsis and anyone who was trying to save them. It was a slaughter. Many survivors today are living with scars and are missing limbs because of the damage that was inflicted upon them with machetes. The Hutus would cut of an arm or a leg and leave the person for dead waiting for them to bleed to death.[15] It was vicious.
One way in which the Hutus were similar to the Nazis was that they would go to a place where Tutsis were trying to hide and they would slaughter every single one of them that was there. There were multiple massacres in churches and stadiums where the Tutsis believed they would be safe. Hundreds and thousands of Tutsi would attempt to hide or seek refuge from a Hutu priest in a church only to be betrayed and killed. Many times the Hutu would torture the Tutsi victims by severely wounding them and letting them bleed to death.
Women were tortured in even worse ways. The women and even young girls were raped over and over again, a lot of times by multiple men several times a day. Many survivors accounts describe how they would lose count how many times they were raped. But the torture didn’t stop there; sometimes the men would use objects to rape the women or mutilate their genitals. After the men had their way with the women they would sometimes kill them and other times keep them as slaves.[16] Not only do the surviving women have to live with the memories of the rapes, but also many of them were infected with AIDS. They are dying a slow death and their pain continues today.[17]
Effects
War itself has many psychological effects on the people involved, both perpetrators and victims. Cases of genocide add other factors into the effects of the people. The victims tend to suffer from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and complex trauma.[18] They view anyone from groups other than their own as threats. This may cause the victims to lash out and overreact to situations that they perceive as being threatening. Many times without any sort of healing, emotional and psychological, the victims may become the perpetrators. When a perceived threat arises the victim may feel the need to defend themselves and by doing so inflict harm upon the person who is the perceived threat[19].
Another effect on victims is the feeling of guilt. While they may know they are not at fault for the acts committed against them, they may have some sense of guilt. In the back of their minds, the victims may think how could something that awful happen to them if there was not something wrong with them as an individual or as a part of a group?[20] Even members of the group who may have not been physically present during the violence can still be affected by the events since “individual identity is deeply rooted in group membership.”[21] One survivor of the Holocaust, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, explains how she involved herself in illegal activities to give the Germans reason to kill her. She could not accept being killed for being born a Jew.[22]
Many survivors of both events have spoken out to tell their stories and recollections of the events. Each one has a different story about what happened to them, but they all have one thing in common, all of their stories end in tragedy. In Rwanda in many cases they were the only survivors from their families. Everyone else they knew had been killed. They now have to live alone with no friends and no family. They are trying to rebuild their lives but they carry around the memories of what they witnessed and were victim to.
Even the perpetrators were affected by events in which they participated. Some have no feelings of regret or sympathy toward their victims, while others are traumatized by their actions. Many perpetrators had become desensitized to their actions and have created a defense mechanism that shields them from feelings of guilt. They continue to blame their actions on the victims believing they were justified in what they did.[23]
Both events were caused by similar yet different circumstances. A major factor in both events was difficult economic times for each nation. It is hard to distinguish one certain event that caused the perpetrators to feel the need to commit these atrocities because there was not one. It was several factors together that created a situation that allowed the act of genocide to occur. Each event caused a substantial loss in the population of the victim group, between sixty-five and seventy five percent. These losses caused a great deal of anguish for the victims and a feeling of insecurity and fear. Some victims became indifferent to the idea of death, not fearing it and almost welcoming the idea.[24] These were traumatic events that should never have happened, but now they can be used to try to prevent any other acts of genocide to occur.
I cannot say whether or not one incident was worse or more horrific than the other. The Holocaust claimed the lives of six million Jews while the Rwanda Genocide only claimed 800,000 lives. On the other hand only two thirds of the Jewish population perished but three quarters of the Tutsi were killed. The amount of time that the Holocaust lasted was substantially longer than the one hundred day Rwandan Genocide, but the number of people killed each day was much larger in Rwanda. Each situation was devastating in its own way and the effects on survivors and others involved are unique to that event. What this paper can conclude is that preventive measures need to be taken to recognize signs of genocide to prevent it from happening in the future.
Bibliography
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Hintjens, Helen M. ”Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda.” The Journal of Modern African Studies Vol. 37, No. 2 (Jun., 1999), pp. 241-286 http://www.jstor.org/stable/161847 (accessed July 10, 2011).
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[1] Staub, Ervin, and Bar-Tal, Daniel. “Genocide, Mass Killing, and Intractable Conflict: Roots, Evolution, Prevention, and Reconciliation,” in Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, ed. David O. Sears, Leonie Huddy and Robert Jervis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 712.
[2] Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. (Oregon: CPA Book Publisher, 1942), 54-70.
[3] Hilter, 54-70.
[4] Dadrian, Vahakn N. “Patterns of Twentieth Century Genocides: the Armenian, Jewish, and Rwandan cases,” Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 6, No.4 (Dec., 2004) 493, cranepsych2.edublogs.org (accessed July 9, 2011).
[5] Hintjens, Helen M. ”Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda.” The Journal of Modern African Studies Vol. 37, No. 2 (Jun., 1999), 253, http://www.jstor.org/stable/161847 (accessed July 10, 2011).
[6] Hintjens, 250.
[7] Hintjens, 252.
[8] Hintjens, 254-255.
[9] Hintjens, 256.
[10] Verwimp, Philip. “Death and Survival during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda.” Population Studies Vol. 58, No. 2 (Jul., 2004), 233. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4148232 (accessed July 10, 2011).
[11] Staub, Ervin. “Reconciliation after Genocide, Mass Killing, or Intractable Conflict: Understanding the Roots of Violence, Psychological Recovery, and Steps toward a General Theory.” Political Psychology Vol. 27, No. 6 (Dec., 2006), 869. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20447006 (accessed July 7, 2011).
[12] Staub, 869.
[13] Lasker-Wallfisch, Anita. Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, London.
[14] Oppenheimer, Eve, Rudy, and Paul. Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, London.
[15] Mutanguha, Feddy. Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, London.
[16] Staub, 869.
[17] Clare. Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, London.
[18] Staub, 871.
[19] Staub, 871.
[20] Staub, Bar-Tal, 721-722.
[21] Staub, Bar-Tal, 721.
[22] Lasker-Wallfisch, 2.
[23] Staub, 872.
[24] Mutanguha, 4.
