Holocaust history and systematic persecution

Holocaust

Many historians and scholars contend that the Holocaust -- the mass slaughter of an estimated 6 million Jews, gypsies and others carried out by the Nazis in WWII -- was the worst example of genocide in human history. Others suggest the killing of Native Americans by European settlers (and the U.S. government) was genocide as well. On the subject of genocide, there is strong evidence that genocide is being carried out in Darfur, at this moment. Those issues will be presented in this paper.

Genocide in WWII and Genocide in 2012

The horrific pictures of starving prisoners in the Nazi death camps -- and photos of piles of bodies in ditches along with images of the ovens used to kill people -- tell the gruesome, inhumane story of Hitler's "final solution." Every American high school student has studied this mass slaughter and has been subjected to those hideous images. But there are mass killings going on in Africa that certainly can be called genocide. In Darfur, at the western edge of Sudan, genocide has claimed over 400,000 lives to date and 2,500,000 innocent people have been "displaced" by the violence, according to the United Human Rights Council (UHRC, 2012).

An estimated one hundred people die daily in Darfur and around five thousand die each month in Darfur, the UNRC explains on page 2. Why is this situation so deadly for so many innocent people? The history of this genocide goes back to 1989, when General Omar Bashir gained control of Sudan through a military coup. There ensued a struggle for control over Darfur, as two rebel movements -- the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) -- "took up arms against the Sudanese government, complaining about the marginalization of the area and failure to protect sedentary people from attacks by nomads" (UNRC, p. 2).

What did Bashir do in response? He sent vicious militias called "janjaweeds" (translation: "devils on horseback") to Darfur and they "…attacked hundreds of villages throughout Darfur" (UNRC, p. 2). More than 400 villages were destroyed by the janjaweed killers, and meanwhile the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted Bashir for "…directing the mass killing, rape, and pillage against civilians in Darfur"; he has not surrendered. About 2.7 million Darfur people are in "displaced persons camps" (many die daily for lack of food and water) and 4.7 million people in Darfur rely on humanitarian aid for survival (UNRC, p. 2).

The Fate of Native Americans Compared with the Holocaust

Certainly the Holocaust stands out in world history as among the most notoriously bloody and unconscionably cruel genocidal events ever recorded. But wait. According to the History News Network's reporting, there are many who believe that because Native Americans were slaughtered in far greater numbers, their plight should be considered genocide. To many, wiping out native peoples was viewed simply as Europeans settling into the "New World" -- and that the settling of America was "manifest destiny" because supposedly God wanted the Europeans to have a new place to plant roots and create a nation.

That said, reliable information indicates that at the end of the 19th century there were only an estimated 250,000 Native Americans alive in the United States (Lewy, 2007). The question that remains a mystery is how many native peoples were alive before the Europeans arrived? Ethnologist James Mooney believes there were 1,152,950 Indians at that time; another author suggests there were 5 million and other authors say up to 12 million Indians were here (Lewy). Many Indians (perhaps 80%) died from European diseases (for which they had no immunity) (Lewy). But notwithstanding the way in which native peoples died, their deaths were brought on by the European settlers.