Genocide

• Genocide: the systematic and purposeful destruction of a racial, political, religious, or cultural group.

• There have been many acts of genocide throughout history

Armenians• Date: 1915-1917• Location: Ottoman Empire• Leader: Leaders of the

Ottoman Empire• Victims: Armenians,

Assyrians, and Greeks• Type of Genocide: Ethnic

• Total Deaths: Between 1 and 1.5 million

Armenian Methods

• Mass burning• Suffocation• Use of poison• Deportation

The Great Purge• Date: 1936-1938• Location: the Soviet Union• Leader: Joseph Stalin• Victims: government officials,

Communist party members, peasants

• Type of Genocide: Cultural

• There is a person - there is a problem, there is no person - there is no problem.—Joseph Stalin

Holocaust

• Date: 1938-1945• Location: Europe• Leader: Adolph Hitler• Victims: primarily Jews but also gypsies, Poles,

Soviets, and political opponents• Type of Genocide: Ethnic

• Total Deaths: 6 million Jews, 10 million peoples total

What led to the Holocaust?

• Totalitarianism combined with nationalism• History of anti-Semitism• Defeat in World War I and economic

depression blamed on German Jews• Hitler’s belief in the master race

1942: the Wannsee Conference

The Final Solution

• Hitler’s plan, decided during the Wannsee Conference, to systematically exterminate the Jewish race and other unmentionables in Germany

Step 1: Ghettos

Ghettos

• After Kristallnacht, many Jews emigrated• Hitler knew he couldn’t get rid of all Jews

through emigration– Sent Jews to ghettos – segregated Jewish areas– Sealed off with barbed wire and stone walls

Step 2: Trains

A Typical Boxcar

• 100 people would be loaded into one freight car

• Jews had to pay their own way

Step 3: Selections and Camp

Step 4: Camp Life and the Gas Chambers

Cambodia

• Date: 1975-1979• Location: Cambodia• Leader: Pol Pot • Victims: the educated, artists, government officials,

monks, and minorities• Type of Genocide: Cultural

• Total Deaths: 1.7 million people (~20% of the population)

Rwanda

• Date: 1994• Location: Rwanda• Leader: the Hutu majority• Victims: the Tutsi minority• Type of Genocide: Ethnic

• Over the course of 100 days, over 800,000 people were killed