In March 2019, the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad ran a four-part series examining antisemitism in the Netherlands and Europe. Published in the midst of global concerns regarding the rise of antisemitism and violent antisemitic attacks, the question of the resurgence of anti-Jewish sentiment is more pressing than ever. According to the Center for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI), there was a 19% increase in cases of antisemitism in the Netherlands from 2017 to 2018. In a survey conducted by the NRC, 70% of Jewish respondents (163 out of 800 identified themselves as Jewish) stated that antisemitism is indeed on the rise and 80% stated that while they have not witnessed antisemitism themselves, they are worried about its growth. This survey is backed by a recent investigation of antisemitism in twelve EU-member states. 89% of European Jews stated they experienced an increase in antisemitism in their home country, with another 38% responding that they have considered emigrating because they feel unsafe.

The Netherlands has a long and complicated history with antisemitism. During the Nazi occupation, 107,000 Dutch Jews were deported East to concentration and extermination camps. Despite the high deportation numbers, most analyses of collaboration and wartime behavior forgo an examination of the Netherlands in favor of Eastern European countries. This is due in part to the development of a postwar resistance narrative and the association between Dutch identity and tolerance. The resistance narrative, which states that the entire country resisted the imposition of Nazi rule and fell victim to its cruelty, has prevented the country from facing international scrutiny for its role in the Holocaust. While the field of Holocaust studies has certainly expanded in the Netherlands since the 1980s, the public has yet to fully move away from the resistance narrative. In addition, once the Shoah became the focal point of the Dutch Second World War experience, critics began accusing Jews of exploiting their victim status. The late historian Evelien Gans explains this phenomenon as secondary antisemitism or, “the conviction that the legitimate desire to draw a line under the past and move on to normalization is heavily obstructed by the frantic attention to the Shoah.” In addition, Muslim immigrants are often blamed for antisemitism in order to sidestep uncomfortable truths about Dutch treatment of their Jewish neighbors.

In the first article published in the NRC-series, political scientist Nonna Mayer remarked, “antisemitism is not back, it was never gone.” While antisemitism never vanished from Dutch society, the rise of far-right and populist political parties has contributed to the increased visibility of antisemitism. Right-wing rhetoric has not only emboldened antisemites but popularized antisemitic sayings and actions. The growth of antisemitism poses a serious threat to Jewish communities and by extension Holocaust memory. While the Jewish community in the Netherlands is far from homogenous, many feel that Jewish wartime experience has been marginalized. For example, the Jewish community faced a backlash in 2012 for speaking out against the broadening of the National Commemoration to include Dutch SS-volunteers. More recently, the Netherlands Auschwitz Committee has encountered numerous roadblocks to the building of a new Holocaust monument. After years of fighting local residents over a location, the city is now postponing the construction because they refuse to cut down 24 trees. It is clear that preserving Holocaust memory and supporting the Jewish community has taken on new importance within our political atmosphere. The NRC’s investigation of Dutch and European antisemitism will hopefully increase awareness of new forms of anti-Jewish sentiment and encourage people to speak out when they see it. At the very least, these articles reveal that silence is no longer the default reaction to Jewish persecution.

Jazmine Contreras is a sixth-year PhD candidate in the History Department at the University of Minnesota. Her dissertation examines contemporary historical memory of the Second World War and Holocaust in the Netherlands. She is currently instructing History of the Holocaust.

Twenty-five years have now passed since the Rwandan genocide. On the evening of April 6^th, 1994, the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana served as a final trigger for violence after decades of propaganda, animosity, and killing. Within 100 days, 800,000 Tutsis were dead, as were numerous Hutu political opponents of the genocidal state.

Many Rwandans and foreigners have sought to capture this moment through media coverage, memoirs, film, and documentaries. Images of the killings and of refugee processions, of machetes and of bullet holes, are familiar across the world. But for those who grew up in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, the pain of this violence is far more immediate than these decades-old snapshots have the capacity to show.

For many young Rwandans, the genocide continues to have a regular presence in daily life. As a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, I study this generational trauma, or the social effects of conflict that are experienced by the descendants of those who experience violence. I speak with Rwandans in their early twenties about the effects of past violence on their lives. The genocide separated families, destroyed communities, and left young children to make sense of this loss. As one interviewee poignantly put it, “Parenting when you are 28, 29 – you were never a kid. And you never knew how to do this, because you had no parents to teach you.”

For Rwandans born after 1994, this trauma manifests differently for each individual. I’ve met with young men and women who lost most, or all, of their family members during the genocide. As one such woman succinctly reflected, “You feel that gap that you have, always.” These young adults have had to navigate the past twenty-five years while carrying their loss, depending on peers or remaining family members as they find their way. Many young adults who lost loved ones seek to remember through annual commemorations or visits to memorial spaces – for others, the pain is too much to participate.

Some have sought out those responsible for the death of family members, seeking answers or closure. One young man who did so shared, “I [had] to go there and know what was in his mind.” Many children of perpetrators have too struggled in the aftermath of the genocide, with incarceration sometimes leaving responsibility for the household on the shoulders of young boys and girls. The genocide was communally-based and wide-reaching; most Rwandans are personally affected in some way, and they must seek to make sense of this past while they move forward with their lives.

While this trauma has marred the trajectory of so many young adults, our conversations don’t solely dwell in tragedy. Interspersed in our conversations about memory are their goals, joys, and desires for the future. Many hope to be involved with tourism, showcasing Rwanda’s beauty to visitors. Some seek to thrive in the nation’s bustling business sectors, while others seek to create art that captures their journey. And more than anything else, interviewees express a hope for happy families and for peace. As one woman expressed, “What you’re looking is a better country, a better life, a better future.” As we remember the 1994 Rwandan genocide on its 25^th anniversary, those depictions of the genocide, snapshots of the violence and suffering, again come to the fore. And the memory of those lost is essential. But we should also reflect on these next generations of Rwandans, those who live with these scars as they strive for their futures. And we must also reflect that no country is wholly defined by violence. In the Global North, many know Rwanda solely for the 1994 genocide. But these young adults are among Rwandans who are advocating for a future shaped, but not defined, by the country’s past.

Brooke Chambers is a PhD student in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Sociology. Her research interests include collective memory, cultural trauma, political sociology, genocide, and mass violence. Her current work examines generational trauma in contemporary Rwanda, with a focus on the commemorative process. She is the 2019-2020 Badzin Fellow in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

The 2019 Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival kicks off Thursday with more than two weeks of films from around the world spread across theaters in the Twin Cities and Rochester. Included in this year’s festival are a number of movies that have piqued the interested of several of us at the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.

Read on to get our picks for some of this year’s can’t miss films:

The Accountant of Auschwitz

Finally brought to trial more than seven decades after the Holocaust, this film follows the trial and sentencing of Oskar Gröning, a member of the SS responsible for sorting of personal possessions of those sent to Auschwitz. More than the following the trial of one individual, this documentary examines the extraordinary challenges of bringing those complicit in the Holocaust to justice decades after the fact.

Showtimes:

Friday, April 5, 2:20 PM – Saint Anthony Main Theater

Sunday, April 7, 9:15 AM – Saint Anthony Main Theater

Blood Memory

Filmmaker Drew Nicholas’ work focuses on the Stolen Generation, a generation of Native youth who were forcibly removed from their homes and put up for adoption in an effort to assimilate them. The film examines the generations’ attempts to overcome years of trauma and cultural genocide in order to reclaim their identities.

Showtimes:

Wednesday, April 10, 7:00 PM  – Saint Anthony Main Theater

Thursday, April 11, 4:15 Pm  – Saint Anthony Main Theater

Graves Without a Name

With his latest work, Rithy Panh’s film follows a young boy as his attempts to the find the graves of his relatives in the aftermath of the Cambodian genocide under the Khmer Rouge regime. The film is a graphic depiction the violence endured by the Cambodian people and its lasting legacy today.

Showtimes:

Friday, April 12, 1:40 PM – Saint Anthony Main Theater

Friday, April 19, 4:20 PM – Saint Anthony Main Theater

Afterward

Growing up in Jerusalem, Ofra Bloch was surrounded by memories of the Holocaust. Utilizing this experience, Bloch interviews survivors, activists, historians and others in Germany, Israel and Palestine to examine trauma in an effort to understand the fundamental questions of how do we overcome trauma, how do we heal and how do we forgive?

Showtimes:

Sunday, April 14, 7:10 PM – Saint Anthony Main Theater

Monday, April 15, 7:00 PM – Saint Anthony Main Theater

Joe Eggers in the Research & Outreach Coordinator for the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.

We’re at crossroads today: learning lessons from the Holocaust is fundamentally important. Understanding the dire consequences of hate and intolerance is more important today than just about any point in history. Unfortunately, it comes at a time when our memory of the Holocaust is fast fading. It seems as we continue to lose survivors and their critical connection to the past, we lose our willingness to apply their lessons to our own time. A year ago, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany brought this sobering reality to the forefront: Nearly half of millennials cannot name a single concentration camp. Nearly a third of Americans drastically underestimate the number of victims of the Holocaust. Most astounding, almost 70% of Americans say they don’t care about the Holocaust.

It’s a stunning revelation for an event only seventy years in our past. While it’s easy to be disheartened by the lack of awareness, there is hope. Teachers across the United States are willing and eager to bring lessons from the Holocaust into their classrooms (the success of the Center’s Genocide Education Outreach program and our annual teacher workshops are a testament to that), but teachers often face challenges in doing so. A lack of familiarity, access to resources and funding point to the barriers teachers face nationally.

To that end, CHGS is proud to be among more than seventy nationwide organizations calling on Congress for an expedited hearing for the Never Again Education Act.  The Act itself opens the door for public funds to be allocated for Holocaust education and pave the way for private organizational support for Holocaust education in the schools, ensuring educators and students have access to invaluable resources.

To view a copy of the letter, click here.

In the woods of northern Minnesota, tucked along the shores of Turtle River Lake, is a small German village called Waldsee. Waldsee, which translates to “forest lake,” is home to Concordia Language Villages’ (CLV) German-language isolation-immersion programs, one of fifteen such language villages sponsored by Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. Each summer, hundreds of staff and students pass through the village’s main building, dubbed the “Bahnhof,” or “train station,” to spend two or four weeks fully immersed in German language and culture. Until recently, most were completely unaware that the Nazis once used the name Waldsee as a euphemism for Auschwitz.

Indeed, it wasn’t until 2017, when Alex Treitler stumbled upon references to the Nazi Waldsee while researching the CLV immersion program out of curiosity, that the issue was brought to the attention of the village’s leadership. In an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dan Hamilton, dean of CLV Waldsee, was quoted: “Frankly, we were just not aware […] I’m a professor of international relations, so we were a bit embarrassed.” Despite this initial embarrassment, CLV quickly convened a twenty-member advisory committee made up of academic and community experts to examine the issue and make recommendations.

In a recent presentation at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, “A Tale of Two Cities: Concordia Language Village’s ‘Waldsee’ in the Crucible of History and Memory,”* Sonja Wentling, Professor of History and Global Studies at Concordia College and a member of the advisory committee, shared the story of the two Waldsees. Wentling presented alongside four of her undergraduate students, Allison Hennes, Samara Strootman, Jarret Mans, and Colleen Egan, who had taken part in Wentling’s fall 2018 “Introduction to Historical Thinking Class,” which specifically took up issues of historical memory around the name Waldsee. The class was part of Concordia College’s PEAK, or Pivotal Experience in Applied Learning, Program, in which students apply classroom learning to real-world issues. As a part of the class, students conducted historical and archival research, spoke with Treitler and advisory committee members, and interviewed staff and students at CLV Waldsee. During the presentation, these students shared their experiences of “doing history,” rather than merely learning about history.

During the presentation, Hennes shared how the iso-immersion camp program was the brainchild of Concordia College professors Gerald Haukebo and Erhard Friedrichsmeyer, who initially chose the name Lager Waldsee, or “Camp Forest Lake” (the term “Lager,” also evocative of Nazi Concentration Camps, which, in German, are termed Konzentrationslager, was later dropped from the name). The camp first opened to students in the summer of 1961, the same week that the construction of the Berlin Wall began and in the midst of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust. Though seemingly secluded in the Northwoods of Minnesota, Wentling said that she and her students soon discovered that Waldsee “was not isolated from the events that took place thousands of miles away in Germany and Israel.” While the division and reunification of Germany have loomed large at CLV Waldsee, the Holocaust has not been a regular aspect of the village’s programming.

Strootman discussed how the term Waldsee, used as a euphemism for Auschwitz by the Germans during the deportations of Hungarian Jews, was mostly unknown in the West due to Cold War-era divisions. Though, its use was undoubtedly known to many academics and survivors and started to emerge in more popular works by the mid-1990. Indeed, Imre Kertesz, the Hungarian writer and Holocaust survivor who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002, referenced Waldsee in the opening pages of his semi-autobiographical novel Fateless, which, though published in 1975, first appeared in English translation in 1992). Kertesz wrote: “I am completely ignorant how (but some adults did discover it) we learned that our journey’s end was a place named Waldsee. When I was thirsty or hot, the promise contained in that name immediately invigorated me.” An exhibit created in 2004, “Waldsee 1944,” put the Nazi deception on display, showing postcards that Hungarian Jews who were deported to Auschwitz sent back to relatives postmarked “Waldsee.”

The lecture concluded with a discussion of CLV’s ongoing and future efforts to address the Waldsee name. Egan discussed how the “Waldsee 1944” exhibit was prominently displayed at Waldsee’s Biohaus during the summer of 2018, may become a permeant feature of the camp. Mans spoke about the possibility of including an empty postcard rack in Waldsee’s Laden (village store) with a sign that might read “ask us why we don’t sell postcards here.” It would seem, however, that there is some trepidation around changing the name of the village. “We have begun pulling at a loose thread—and that’s been good—but we don’t want to unravel the whole cloth,” says CLV Executive Director Christine Schulze. Though CLV Waldsee will retain its name, efforts will be made to ensure students and staff are aware of the history. Wentling praised CLV’s “commitment to address history rather than run away from it.” Indeed, in a second statement to the community of current and former staff and students, CLV outlined several steps that will be taken in the coming year to address the Waldsee name and Holocaust education at the village and within the programming.

I worked as a credit instructor at Waldsee in the summer of 2008. At the time, I remember being surprised by this authentic-seeming microcosm of German culture in northern Minnesota, including listening to the German-language radio station, using Euros at the camp’s bank and store, and eating European-style bread made by German apprentice bakers at each meal. In retrospect, however, Waldsee seemed to lack the notion of an Erinnerungskultur (Culture of Memory), which is often used synonymously with Holocaust remembrance in Germany and Austria. At CLV Waldsee, where simulations are often used to help students understand a divided Germany during the Cold War or the current refugee crisis facing Europe, no one seems to want to undertake simulations of the Holocaust, nor should they! Though Waldsee presents students with a rich academic experience, it is also a summer camp, which makes discussions of the Holocaust seem somewhat out of place, albeit necessary. Hopefully, what began as a discussion over a name will lead to a meaningful look at how to best integrate Holocaust education into the Waldsee experience.

Wentling and her students’ presentations brought together an audience of students, professors, and community members, many with ties to CLV Waldsee, at a moment when the University of Minnesota community is debating changing the names of several buildings on its Minneapolis campus. One hopes that such debates, while necessary, similarly extend into conversations around learning about and from the seemingly absent episodes of the United States, Minnesota and the University’s difficult history.

* The lecture was sponsored by Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies with support from the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Global Studies, Center for Jewish Studies, Center for German and European Studies, Center for Austrian Studies, Department of History, and Department of German, Nordic, Slavic, and Dutch, as well as the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas. 

George D. Dalbo is a Ph.D. student in Social Studies Education at the University of Minnesota with research interests in Holocaust, comparative genocide, and human rights education in secondary schools. Previously, he was a middle and high school social studies teacher, having taught every grade from 5th-12th in public, charter, and independent schools in Minnesota, as well as two years at an international school in Vienna, Austria.

Teaching about Genocide (Volume I), the first of a two-volume series edited by well-known Holocaust and genocide education scholar Samuel Totten, provides cogent, practical advice for those wishing to bring this difficult topic into their classrooms. The book builds on Totten’s previous work but is unique in its specific focus on combining insights from both secondary and post-secondary educators in each volume. Roughly half of the chapters were written by secondary educators, with the remaining composed by post-secondary professors and instructors. This combination helps to bridge the persistent gap between academic genocide studies research and secondary classroom teaching about genocide. Indeed, as a high school teacher of a semester-long comparative genocide studies course, I have often struggled to find ways to approach various aspects of genocide with my students. This volume both reaffirms the importance of genocide education while providing practical support for classroom teachers.

The necessity for such a work at this moment is clear. While the Holocaust, especially since the mid-1990s, has become a mainstay of American K-12 school curriculum, teaching about so-called “other” genocides or “genocides other than the Holocaust,” has become increasingly common across the country. Though, despite this trend, few resources exist for educators, who, are often left to teach such difficult topics with little content or pedagogical support.

Henry Friedlander, quoted in the introduction, writes: “The problem with too much being taught by too many without focus is that this poses the danger of destroying the subject matter through dilettantism. It is not enough for well-meaning teachers to feel a commitment to teach about [genocide] they also must know the subject.” This is particularly true of secondary educators who must be masters of, and adept at teaching, a huge breadth of content. Teaching about Genocide gives voice to those educators who have struggled to develop ways to teach about genocide in their classrooms to inspire their fellow educators.

The 22 chapters in the work are divided into two sections: “Insights and Advice from Secondary Level Teachers” and “Insights and Advice from College and University Professors.” Both sections begin with chapters providing general overviews and rationale for teaching about genocide before progressing to more-specific case studies. Minnesota high school teacher, and long-time collaborator with the CHGS, Nancy Ziemer’s, “Advice on Teaching About Genocide,” provides an overview and suggestions pulled from her 25 years of experience teaching about genocide, while my contribution, “Why Don’t We Talk About Rape?” offers rationale drawn from my classroom experience for teaching about sexualized violence in genocide. While the chapters don’t provide specific, structured lesson plans, authors pair descriptions of classroom experiences with resources, such as Gregory Stanton’s 10 Stages of Genocide, providing inspiration for teachers to create their own lessons suitable for their students and contexts. In short, both beginning and experienced teachers alike will find this book useful in their classroom practice.

The latter half of the book, devoted to advice from professors and university instructors, provides chapters from well know genocide scholars, such as Israel Charney, Ernesto Verdeja, and Kjell Anderson. Drawn from a number of academic fields and research/teaching contexts, these chapters extend and supplement earlier chapters, providing advice and insights that are equally appropriate and useful for secondary contexts. Indeed, Kimberley Ducey’s “Survivors of Sexual Violence in Rwanda Speak: A Letter-Writing Assignment to Combat Psychic Numbing” provides a lesson idea and classroom anecdotes that pairs with my chapter on teaching about sexual violence. This and many other chapters have already informed my own planning and found their way into my teaching. The book closes with an annotated bibliography, pulling together additional genocide education resources.

While the book’s focus on curricular and pedagogical insights for secondary and post-secondary educators seems a logical choice, as, in many cases, there is little intellectual or emotional divide between upper-level high school and college-level students, this work fails to address the growing need for resources at the elementary and middle school levels. While Totten and other scholars have written persuasively against teaching about the Holocaust and genocide to students in the elementary, A growing number of middle school students encounter such content each year, with states like New Jersey requiring Holocaust and genocide education for students in grades 5-8. Many of my colleagues have voiced the need for similar work addressing the specific pedagogical demands of teaching younger students.

Teaching about Genocide (Volume II) was also published in late 2018. The decision to publish a second volume in the series, thereby reducing the cost of both volumes, makes this an affordable book for educators.

George D. Dalbo is a Ph.D. student in Social Studies Education at the University of Minnesota with research interests in Holocaust, comparative genocide, and human rights education in secondary schools. Previously, he was a middle and high school social studies teacher, having taught every grade from 5^th-12^th in public, charter, and independent schools in Minnesota, as well as two years at an international school in Vienna, Austria.

Last week, two students from Minnetonka High School in suburban Minneapolis posted a photo of themselves giving a Nazi hand salute accompanied by an antisemitic sign. This incident is just the latest of a number of similar instances, with photos surfacing from Indiana and Wisconsin showing students giving the Nazi salute. Understandably, each case has sparked calls for more and better Holocaust education in schools. This latest photo prompts the question: what do students in Minnesota’s public schools learn about the Holocaust?

Gauging the state of Holocaust education in the United States is no easy task. The decentralized nature of American public schooling means that state departments of education, local districts, and individual classroom teachers decide what to teach and how it is taught. No comprehensive survey of the state of American Holocaust education exists, and such an assessment would be nearly impossible to conduct. The New York Times recently reported on an unsettling survey, which found that while the majority of Americans believe Holocaust education is important, many people, especially millennials, lack even a basic awareness of the history of the Holocaust. In 2013, Rhonda Fink-Whitman’s viral YouTube video showing American college student’s lack of knowledge of the Holocaust renewed a push for Holocaust education legislation in Pennsylvania and across the country. Indeed, Pennsylvania joined a growing list of states that have passed Holocaust education legislative mandates.

While no such mandate exists in Minnesota, the Holocaust is included in state social studies standards for both middle and high school students. One might reasonably assume that most students in public schools encounter the Holocaust at least once in the course of their education. Indeed, Minnetonka High School leadership, as well as the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas has reported that Minnetonka students do receive instruction in the Holocaust, and many students had even heard local survivor Judith Meisel speak during the last year. Indeed, Judith (Judy) Meisel also spoke last year with high school students in my comparative genocide and human rights elective course about her experience during the Holocaust, as well as her later involvement in the civil rights movement in Philadelphia during the 1960s. Judy spoke very powerfully about the dangers of both antisemitism and racism. Though a powerful experience for my students, without the context of the history of the Holocaust and other the genocides we’d been studying all semester, I wonder what my students would have taken away from Judy’s talk if it had been their only exposure to the Holocaust. Perhaps, in light of the photos that have surfaced, we should not only be calling for more but better, more purposeful Holocaust education in Minnesota and across the country. Though in the midst of making such calls, we should bear in mind that what’s needed is more robust education on the history of the Holocaust, rather than lessons solely focused on tolerance.

Too often it seems that in classroom practice, the history of the Holocaust is eschewed in favor of lessons that aim to shock or moralize, to instill in students, according to Holocaust education researcher Simone Schweber, “the moral lessons most people want conveyed to students from rigorous study of that history – that racism is abhorrent, that interceding on behalf of the unjustly oppressed is necessary, and that every single person can make a difference in the world.” While, on the surface, these are admirable educational outcomes, Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer writes that “the Holocaust is too often turned into vague lessons of the danger of hatred or prejudice at the expense of really trying to understand the reasons and motivations for the genocide.” Though it seems an obvious statement, in order for Holocaust education to be effective, it must be done well; students must learn about the history of the Holocaust, its antecedents, the breakdown of the democratic state, the mechanisms of othering and persecution, and its aftermath. It is also important to remember that, even when it is done well, Holocaust education is not a panacea for all of the ills of contemporary society, but it can, in conjunction with learning about other topics, help create more knowledgeable, thoughtful, and tolerant students.

To be clear, the photo posted by two Minnetonka High School students is repugnant. It speaks to the need for more and better Holocaust education in Minnesota. Students need more exposure to the history of the Holocaust. Single-day lessons and isolated visits from Holocaust survivors, while powerful experiences, will likely do little to educate students about the roots of the Holocaust and help them recognize and challenge contemporary antisemitism. In our calls for more Holocaust education, we should also call for more teacher support. Teachers need increased professional development, especially social studies and English language arts teachers, who in Minnesota, are not required to learn about the Holocaust or Holocaust education as a part of licensure. Most states that pass Holocaust education mandates go on to fund the creation of a robust curriculum for students, increase funding and opportunities for teacher professional development, and develop partnerships with Holocaust museums and educational organizations. Perhaps it is time for Minnesota to consider a Holocaust education mandate.

Editor’s Note: For over 20 years, the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies has offered world class resources and workshops for educators looking to bring lessons about genocide and mass violence into their classrooms.

George Dalbo is a Ph.D. student in Social Studies Education at the University of Minnesota with research interests in Holocaust, comparative genocide, and human rights education in secondary schools. Previously, he was a middle and high school social studies teacher, having taught every grade from 5^th-12^th in public, charter, and independent schools in Minnesota, as well as two years at an international school in Vienna, Austria.

One hundred years ago this month, facing defeat and pressure from the Allied powers than won WW I, the Ottomans began attributing blame for the massacre of its Armenian and Greek citizens. Putting the Three Pashas (Talat, Enver & Djemal) on trial with other leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress, the Turkish Military Tribunals found the defendants guilty and sentenced to death. However, , the Pashas were able to flee Turkey and escape punishment (for some time, at least). The allies, frustrated by the perceived ineffectualness of the Turkish courts, in turn established the Malta Court to prosecute war criminals. By 1922, though, the Turkish defendants were repatriated to Turkey, largely due to the absence of a legal framework for prosecution. The lack of justice from the international community would spur a young Raphael Lemkin toward a lifelong goal of pursuing legal safeguards to prevent massacres like those of the Armenians from reoccurring.

In a 1949 broadcast interview, Lemkin said “As a lawyer, I thought that a crime should not be punished by the victims, but should be punished by a court, by international law,”  He first coined the term ‘genocide’ in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. That framework would be used to help prosecute Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg Tribunal . In 1948, Lemkin had largely fulfilled his goal when the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the document enshrining much of the jurisprudence he had seen lacking more than two decades before. On December 9th last year, the Genocide Convention marked its 70th anniversary.

Although the Genocide Convention was passed in 1948, it would not be until 1998 when it was used in force by an international tribunal when Jean-Paul Akayesu was convicted for genocide and crimes against humanity for crimes committed in Taba, Rwanda where Akayesu was mayor.  Since then, the Genocide Convention has been used by courts around the world to prosecute perpetrators of mass violence, including international courts and tribunals established in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and Cambodia. Courts elsewhere have convicted individuals, either using universal jurisdiction (as with the trial of Adolfo Scilingo, who was convicted in 2005 by Spanish Courts for crimes against humanity for his role in Argentina’s State terror against political dissidents in the 1970s. A charge of genocide was eventually dropped) or by a state addressing crimes (as with the 2001 conviction of Petras Raslanas by a Latvian court for his role in a 1941 massacre while a member of the NKVD).

While courts continue to prosecute genocide and test its legal boundaries, scholars have continually explored definitions beyond the one inscribed in the UNGC, for instance including terms such as politicide or feminicide . They have also studied ways to predict and thus prevent genocide. In 1996, Gregory Stanton published his landmark work “The Eight Stages of Genocide” which charted the gradual steps towards genocide. Since then, several agencies, including the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Aegis Trust, have invested countless resources in predicting genocide around the globe. Today, scholars are looking towards Lemkin’s more expansive definition of genocide to better understand crimes of the past, and provide a better framework for understanding events unfolding today. The massive devastation of sites around Iraq and Syria at the hands of ISIS recently have provided a sobering reminder of Lemkin’s description of a crime that robs the affected communities, and humanity, as whole of cultural treasures, and adds an incentive for bridging the divide between academic study of genocide and its legal definition.

Seventy years since it’s adoption, the Genocide Convention remains a testament to the perseverance of one man’s vision for the protection of the physical and cultural integrity of the group under international law. Lemkin’s concept and the law that followed has been used by victims around the world to call attention to the crimes and trauma experienced by countless communities. Far from set in stone, our idea of genocide will likely continue to evolve to meet contemporary challenges.

Joe Eggers is the Research and Outreach Coordinator for the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies. His master’s thesis explore differences between Lemkin’s original concept of genocide and the one found in the Genocide Convention.

In October, the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies welcomed Hasan Hasanovic to campus to discuss his experience as a survivor of the Srebrenica genocide. Mr. Hasanovic was 18 when Bosnian Serbs systematically murdered more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in July 1995. Since then, Mr. Hasanovic has written an account of his story, Surviving Srebrenica (The Lumphanen Press, 2016), and spoken around the world on the topic of Srebrenica and genocide more broadly. For the last decade, he has served as a curator at the Srebrenica Memorial.

Joe Eggers: I’ve watched several of your interviews on television and especially your presentations at schools. What’s one message you hope they take away after you speak?

Hasan Hasanovic: It’s interesting. After the Holocaust, the whole world said “never again.” And very similar things were [still] happening afterwards—in Rwanda, Darfur, Cambodia, Bosnia. It’s happening here and now with Rohingya Muslims. Now we have this situation in China with Muslims—one million are being held in labor camps. Somehow we don’t have a mechanism to prevent these atrocities. We talk about them after ten, twenty years, and we feel sorry for victims and we try to say something about it and try to educate people, and that’s it. But what is lacking is that global mechanism, which should be the United Nations. Sadly, world powers have different interests and those interests are standing the way of global intervention and prevention of mass atrocities. I’m trying in a way to make a point that we need to talk about it and to make sure we keep that memory alive and to educate people, but at the same time remember that it’s still happening. And my hope is that when I talk to these audiences—that some of them will become politicians, some of them will pursue other professions—they will use this story and other stories of other atrocities in their lives, as a lesson, and they will become better individuals, better politicians, more humane politicians. And if they get a chance…to decide something that they will make an appropriate decision, thinking from a humane perspective, rather than the perspective of the interests of their political party or the interests of that power.

Thinking more collectively about humanity?

Yes.

To that point, I watched one of your presentations you did at a school in London back in 2015 and there was a lot of talk about the dangers of othering people. How have things changed in Bosnia in the last 23 years? Are communities still divided? Is Islamophobia still something you’re experiencing in Srebrenica?

You know, the war ended with the signing the Dayton Agreement, which actually divided the country into two sections. One is the Republic of Srpska governed by Serb political parties. Bosniaks-Muslims and Croats are minorities, so they don’t even have a voice there. They are basically treated like second-class citizens. In the other section, it’s a mostly Muslim-dominated autonomy and 20% Croats. There are different perspectives of what happened during the past. Serbs have their story, Croats, Bosniaks-Muslims, et cetera. The war ended without a winner, so all the three sides are writing their own history. Each one of them have their own perspective of what happened, which actually prevents us from having one common narrative and to build a brighter future for our children. We are faced with the constant denial of the genocide, like the downplaying of war crimes in Bosnia, through political media and academic elites from Serbia and this Bosnian-Serb autonomy. An entire new generation of Serbs are being taught the wrong historical facts. They are being taught that the ICTY [The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia] is biased, that it’s anti-Serb, that the whole Western world is against them, and that what happened in Srebrenica is nothing, that it’s not genocide, which actually prevents them from going through the process of trying to admit what happened and consequently hinders the process of reconciliation. Without a genuine confrontation with the past, it’s impossible to go towards any reasonable reconciliation.

Now in Bosnia, the situation is like this: the country is divided, perspectives of the past are different. I’m still waiting for some sort of international intervention in this case, to bring people together as we should be again: Bosnians. We should have one Bosnian identity. That’s what the international community was supposed to work on: bringing us back together. If people in Rwanda could get back together after 800,000 people were killed, what about us in Bosnia? We are the same race, basically the same ethnicity! We got separated only because of different and divisive political interests over all these years. When we line up say 10 people—Muslims, Croats, Serbs—and you mix them up and put them in a line and ask an outsider “could you identify their race, their ethnic background?,” that individual would say these guys are the same race, the same ethnicity. We have more things in common than we have things that break us apart, so we should work on that, and this work should be encouraged by the international community. Because we had a terrible war, we had to recover from the war, and now is the time to work on this issue, because these issues are very important for our children!

If we don’t confront our past, we cannot build a better future. It’s impossible to forget about the past, and because it has been 24 years since the war, I think now is the time to start facing what happened. I think once the situation changes in Serbia politically, then it will affect the Bosnian-Serbs and that would be better for all of us. Sadly, I think those in the current government have never given up on the ideology of wanting to have a greater Serbia, which is the biggest problem and the key problem of the entire situation. They still have aspirations to have that Bosnian autonomy governed by Serbs (as a part of that project of a greater Serbia). That would be a big problem. It would probably ignite in other conflicts, which we don’t want, that would be probably a much bloodier war than the previous one, which was much bloodier than the Second World War. Humanity has in a way progressed with science, technology, everything, but in our mindsets, we have regressed. We keep coming back and repeating the same mistakes from our past, killing one another, and we don’t do anything about it. The question is: How is it possible? What is wrong? This is a very difficult question. So what is wrong with us as a world, as humanity, that we keep letting these things happen. We have big universities all over the world, we try to educate people, but these things are repeating again, all over, all over again! That’s why it’s very, very important that we educate young people. I just find it very important that we teach these young people—some of them will become politicians, some of them will run this state and other states—about the Holocaust, about subsequent genocides, as much as we can. Just to make them understand and have a connection with the current situation here or globally. That they can have a global picture and understanding of what is happening. That is very important.

You’ve talked a bit about reconciliation, but I wonder for you personally, being a survivor and losing so much during the genocide, what does forgiveness look like to you? Or is it something you’ve really thought about?

Because of this situation with the denial of genocide and continuation of Serbian political program of wanting a greater Serbia, we have never been approached by anybody to ask for forgiveness. So nobody asked me for forgiveness, and I don’t have anything to forgive basically. I can possibly forgive what was done to me individually, but I have the right not to forgive on behalf of my father and my twin brother, because I don’t know what happened to them. I don’t know how they were killed, how much they suffered, if they were buried alive in mass graves. So who am I forgive in their favor? When you ask Holocaust survivors about this, all they say is that it’s very difficult to forgive, almost impossible to forgive. But it would be easier if the people we are talking about would have admitted it, if they would have approached to us and said okay, the Milošević regime did it. I never talked about Serbs as a people but about the Milošević regime and the Bosnian-Serb army and the militants from Serbia. It would be unfair to stigmatize the whole nation for the wrong-doings of the regime. If someone, from the current government (in Serbia ), would say, “it’s Slobodan Milošević, they feels sorry! What can we do to maybe rectify some things, to build a better future for our children,” it would be easier for me really to think about that, but they don’t even give me a reason really to think about that.

In 2010, the Serbian government apologized for the “massacres” of Srebrenica but stopped short of calling it a genocide. For you, why is it important for it to be called a genocide?

Because of the way my father was killed, how my twin brother and how my uncle were killed; the circumstances under which they were killed were judicially established by the ICTY, the ICJ [International Court of Justice], and the Bosnian party. Calling it other crimes would mean that they were killed under different circumstances. So, I don’t know why there is a problem for Serbia to accept the judicially established truth. The truth is much worse than even the tribunal has established. The tribunal never get to know the real human suffering. They only deal with facts and numbers and what happened. They never talk about the suffering of people, not just when they were being killed and wounded, but afterwards what happened with mothers, with sisters, with wives, with me, with survivors. There is no verdict in this world which would be enough, good enough, for those killed. So I think it’s a political thing you know, because genocide is a source of shame. So probably, knowing that Serbs, as a part of the Bosnian-Serb Army and Police, committed the genocide, is a big stigma for the entire nation. I am afraid that they will never accept it as genocide unless they are really pressured by the European Union, from Americans. Without this acceptance, I’m sure we will have a continuation of unfriendly relations among Bosniaks-Muslims, and Serbs in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Without recognition of this as genocide, I don’t see that there would be genuine reconciliation between these two peoples. I think probably the key issue of solving the crisis in the territory of the former Yugoslavia is the relations between Bosnians and Serbs. Of course, there are lots of problems with Kosovo and with Croatia, and Serbia has a lot of these issues it hasn’t been able to solve. But I say again, it shouldn’t be a problem.  If the two highest (UN) tribunals have established it as genocide, everybody is, in a way, obligated to respect it. If you are a member of United Nations, you are obliged to respect the conventions and the verdicts of that tribunal.

If they don’t accept the verdict from these two tribunals, how would they accept my story? My individual story? They would say, “Okay you are making things up. Where is the proof?” So basically, when people want to deny, they do so many foolish things. Sometimes they don’t know even what they are denying and they deny it. It’s often being presented by media and sometimes in political rhetoric and it gets in people’s minds, and they think those things. They don’t even know what it means, because they never got to go to Srebrenica, they never got to meet survivors, they have never met the mothers, the victims, who have suffered the most. And then, from their one village in Serbia, they are saying, “Srebrenica—it was not genocide.” How do you know? I mean, you don’t know! You are repeating what politicians say from television. My hope is our young people, people who travel from Serbia from here or elsewhere or in Serbia even! There are really good human rights organizations like the Helsinki Counseling Committee of Serbia, Women in Black, Humanitarian Law Fund… even a number of MPs in the Parliament who admit the genocide, they advocate for it! They are seen as traitors, anti-Serb, pro-Western, but they are, you know, normal human beings. And they are really influencing many young people. Sadly they don’t get access to public institutions like faculties, schools; it’s all still being controlled by the government, as every government…

In the West we have this very legalese perception of justice, that justice is administered through the courts. But as a survivor, do you feel there has been a sense of justice through the ICTY and tribunals, even though denialist rhetoric is still commonplace?

That’s a really good question. I would say that justice hasn’t been served completely. We were given some justice. Everybody had expected the ICTY to bring complete justice, to bring people back together, to reconcile people. Those expectations were not real. How could someone expect such a small institution to fulfill such a massive mission? But they’ve done amazing work in establishing judicial facts, which are now, in my understanding, the only independent source [on the genocide].

You have these different narratives from different groups, and you have the ICTY’s independent source of information, judicially established information. In this sense, the work of the ICTY is precious. They brought only a small number of people to trial for Srebrenica, only 18, not 80, to speak for Srebrenica. Most of them were convicted of genocide and for some other crimes against humanity, a group of them were convicted for being members of a joint criminal enterprise, which means that behind the genocide, there has to be a system, either state or, in this case, the Bosnian autonomy called the Republic of Srpska, which is a very, very important verdict.

Most of the criminals, probably 95%, will never face justice, because we would need hundreds of these tribunals and millions of dollars and victims are dying and witnesses are dying. It’s difficult to testify—the standards when it comes to these tribunals are very high. It’s very difficult to convict someone; you have to see that someone killed someone. It’s not just enough for basically someone to say, “I saw someone who was a soldier in Potočari, in Srebrenica during the genocide.” It’s not enough to get even an indictment, not to mention a conviction. Because of this, many people got discouraged and have said they’re not going to testify because it’s very difficult to get a conviction. At the end of the day, though, I think what is important is that the ICTY established amazing archives of judicially established facts, which we can use in many ways now to learn what happened, so academia can use it as a source on Srebrenica, to learn about that. And another thing was that what happened was established as a genocide. It’s very important, it’s another source of comfort for the victims.

Another important thing to note is that most of the victims were found in mass graves and excavated and identified by the ICMP and the International Commission of Missing Persons. Eventually it led to the memorial which was established by the international community in Potočari and near Srebrenica. We have international recognition of what happened, we have those archives of information, of judicially established truth, we have the place for memorial where we can keep the memory alive. The issues I have mentioned before—denial, unreadiness from Serbia and the Bosnian autonomy to admit—prevent us from reaching a greater sense of justice–and I don’t know when, or if, that would ever happen. But I thought that [Ratko] Mladić and [Radovan] Karadžić would never be arrested, I thought only a couple thousand would be identified and buried, but now we have almost 7,000. 7,000 who were identified through scientific DNA, which is exact science, common sense cannot deny it. It’s unbelievable! So we have many achievements and we also have many expectations in terms of wanting Serbia and Bosnian Serbs to accept it as genocide and for us to be able to move on with reconciliation.

I’m curious about the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial. Memorials really serve two main purposes; allowing a place for families and communities to mourn and honor victims, and educating the public. How does the memorial and museum in Srebrenica balance these two goals?

I think it fulfils both. It honors victims; it has a cemetery where they were buried; there is a museum there where their stories are told and where there is a narrative of what happened. Thousands of people from all over the world come to visit the memorial, and people are being educated about what happened. And of course, we need to connect more globally. It is a very young memorial—the genocide happened in 1995; Auschwitz and other memorials took a long time to start being developed and built. I believe that the Srebenica Memorial is growing and that, with time, we will have more things there and will connect it with other, similar memorials and attract more people. We will focus even more on educating young people, trying to affect them, trying to make them think more of what happened for their own good.

One thing I’m always interested in is how memorials are reflections of the communities. How would you say the Srebrenica Memorial is a reflection of your community?

With Srebrenica memorial and the cemetery, I would say 99.9% of victims memorialized there are Muslims, because they were targeted. There are not Serbs in the Memorial because they were not in Srebrenica during the siege. At the start, it was very difficult to even establish the memorial and it was basically created by a decree from the international community, from the High Representative. The American government and the American embassy has always been a big supporter of the memorial.

What has the local response to the memorial been?

 Local Serbs follow what their position, the Serbian government and the Republik of Srpska government, says on television—they didn’t like the memorial being established there. I think, as years go by, they have accepted it. We have never had any incidents. I’ve been working there almost ten years and nobody has even said an insulting word to me. They know everybody knows me and I work there and I have a lot of public exposure. I think they know what happened and they are very much afraid to admit it, because if you admit it, there would be consequences. Because it is a small space and Bosnians aren’t a big population, and if you say something—for instance, admit what happened in Srebrenica—you may lose your job: as a professor, as a teacher, as anything. And if you lose a job, it is difficult to find one later. At the same time, being called a traitor, you’ve betrayed your ethnicity. It’s too much for people! Someone will say, probably in private, “yes it’s happened,” but I cannot afford to lose a job, I cannot afford for my family to go through this torture of me being called traitor and then people talking about me. Then Bosniak-Muslim community there is mainly families of victims. People almost never got to talk about what happened. I call this a culture of silence. People talk about sports, weather, agriculture, but almost never about the past because we know what to expect from one another. You don’t want someone to spoil your day if you ask what happened? And they say, “It didn’t happen.” There is no point even in arguing about this, especially if you are a survivor or a mother. People don’t really talk about this because they know what to expect.

When I was in Armenia in 2015 during the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, I was shocked by how absent the Genocide was in the public conversation. That was an event a century ago; I can’t imagine what it’s like only 20 years later in Srebrenica.

This is a problem. We still feel this burden of the past on our shoulders. An outsider, someone who comes to Srebrenica, and says, “Oh it’s beautiful!” by which they mean it’s a beautiful town, and the countryside, it seems almost unreal; the setting and it is so surreal. And at the same time, someone will say, “Oh people are functioning. What is the problem here? Everybody’s talking.” But it actually takes a number of days, month and months—I don’t know how many days—for an individual to spend with people and really immerse themselves with the community to understand these things that I’m talking about.

Many members of survivor communities, especially those who fled, swore never to return home. I’m thinking of survivors of the Holocaust. Why was it important for you not only to return but to be present and active in Srebrenica? 

When I buried my father and twin brother, that hit me very hard. It actually changed my life forever. When that happened, I was unable to deal with that as a human being and I had nobody to talk to, and because the country was destroyed after the war, there were no such services that could help for free. So later, surviving my trauma and surviving my dreams and being hunted in my dreams, I decided to go back to the actual place at the root of the whole thing. That’s how I thought I would heal myself. And I think now I am much stronger than I was when I buried my father and twin brother, that was 2003 and 2005. Ever since, I have done so many things, travelled globally. It’s not a job for me, it’s a mission. That’s what I owe to brother and my father and my uncle and everybody else because they are speechless. I did not survive because I was better. I think I survived to tell what happened to me and especially what happened to them. I feel that moral responsibility, that I should not escape and get away from that. I could have gone, I could have escaped, I could have gotten a job easier anywhere, anywhere in the world. And just to get away from there and say, you know it’s too much, I cannot live there. But what if we all run? What if we all leave these people and nobody would talk about them? It’s very easy to get away from problems, but it takes courage and dedication to do something as noble as a job at this Memorial here (Srebrenica genocide Memorial).

Moving forward, how do you envision the West helping raise awareness and recognition of what happened in Srebrenica?

There is this charity in London called Remembering Srebrenica. In 2013, I went there with three survivors, and we met with the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, in his office to educate him and others. Ever since, they’ve been educating people, organizing over 450 events throughout the UK every year. They work with schools, they talk in schools, they educate teachers, they encourage them to teach children about what happened. They organize Memorial Week in July there, where top politicians come to attend to hear survivors’ stories. They bring children and professors and politicians to Bosnia, to Srebrenica, to learn and some of them will be affected and they will pledge to do something. They intend to build an education center and global memorial in Birmingham where students in the UK will come to learn. This is what every country, especially big ones, should do for any genocide: Armenian genocide, Bosnian genocide, Rwanda, Darfur. Memorials and education about Holocaust has been developed everywhere, so in a sense, it’s finished—almost. We should never forget it—genocide as crime against humanity, as much as it concerns me, it should concern you and every human being on this planet. It’s not the type of thing to say, “Okay it happened in Bosnia, I don’t care.” No, no. It concerns you because it happened against human beings and we should all be concerned.

That’s why I say this big country, the United States, should have such a center, maybe to have all these major genocides in one center where children will be taken from schools to visit. It could be a project for the government. I don’t know who should initiate it or how, because it’s difficult to get people to listen to you and take an idea and support an idea. I think it would be the best thing that anybody could do for humanity and for these children and for the students.

Joe Eggers is the Research and Outreach Coordinator for the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.

Since the 1990s there has been a virtual academic consensus that a genocide was perpetuated by Germany during the Herero and Nama War. But the question of responsibility and continuity are still being debated.

In the last two decades, the Herero and the Nama have sought justice, recognition and reparations from the German government for the genocide they endured at the beginning of the 20^th century. Recently, they have taken their struggle to an American court, which started hearing their case a few weeks ago. The German government officially referred to the 1904-1907 events as a “genocide” only recently (in 2016) and still refrains from dealing with who was responsibility and rejects calls for reparation. Instead, Germany has attempted reconciliation through other channels, such as providing aid to the Namibian government and returning victim remains that were stored in Germany after the genocide.

The historiography of German colonialism and Namibian history has witnessed fierce debate regarding the events that took place in Southwest African between 1904-1907. Still today, some historical questions remain. This short essay will try to identify the main debated issues of this genocide and will highlight the most important ideas of the historians who have researched this subject.

What have Historians Discussed?

Historiographical discourse about the genocide only began in the 1960s in East Germany, where archives as well as political motivations facilitated academic interest in German colonialism. The meager academic occupation with the war was still evident in the 1980s, when American historian Jon Bridgman stated that “this war has, in a little more than two generations, disappeared from history”.[1] Nevertheless, the scholarship of the genocide has surged since the 1990s. The ongoing historical debate about the roots of the Holocaust, most prominently around the argument for a German ‘special path’ (Sonderweg), as well as the independence of Namibia (1990) and the 100^th commemoration of the war (2004), all contributed to the increasing interest in the genocide. The Herero and Nama War was now described as “the first German Genocide,”[2] “the first anti-partisan war in the history of the German Army,”[3] and “the first German attempt to establish a racial state.”[4] These epithets mirror the transformation of the genocide into a key issue, even a milestone, within the broader history of Germany.

It is important to note that the historical writing about the genocide has mostly been done by German scholars based on German sources. With few expectations, most of these scholars unfortunately largely ignored the perspectives of the Herero and the Nama.

In the last few decades, historians have been engaged with three key questions. The first question is the debate whether the Herero and Nama War qualifies as a genocide (and not, say, a typical, though quite ruthless, colonial war). The second question revolves around the motivations for the genocidal violence and the importance of the ideas that stood behind it. Strongly related to this is the issue of the genocide’s inevitability, and its place within the broader history of Germany. The third question regards the responsibility for the genocide, and is crucial for the current claim for reparations.

First Debate: Was the Herero and Nama War a genocide?

Since the 1960’s, main-stream historiography tended to accept that a genocide was perpetrated during the war, notwithstanding some debate about this issue at the end of the 1980’s and the beginning of the 1990’s.

The first historian to provide a comprehensive research on the genocide was Drechsler in his 1966 monograph Südwestafrika unter Deutscher Kolonialherrschaft: Der Kampf der Herero und Nama gegen den deutschen Imperialismus.[5] Drechsler was the first scholar to claim that the German army perpetrated a genocide (then a relatively recent term coined by Rephael Lemkin in 1944) during the war, and that its atrocities were far more brutal than previously believed. German policies and motivations, coupled with the high death rate, are proof that the events were tantamount to genocide. Drechsler claimed that although a surprise, the war was aligned with the colonial goals of Germany, and enabled the colonialists to use it as an excuse to fulfill their greedy and power-hungry ambitions. Drechsler pointed out that the groups who benefited the most from the war were the big corporations, land and shipping companies, and war-related industries. Drechsler’s work fitted in the East-German criticism of West-Germany and capitalism in general, drawing a connecting line between Imperial capitalism, the Third Reich and the West-German Federal Republic.

Even if Drechsler’s Marxist agenda was at times looked upon with suspicion, his conclusion that the war entailed a genocide was a historiographical breakthrough, adopted by Western historians and remained widely accepted in the academic community today. This virtual academic consensus supported the U.N. decision to declare as early as 1985 that the “German massacre of the Herero in 1904” qualifies as a genocide, and therefore as the first genocide of the 20^th century.[6]

The most significant challenge for this consensus appeared in the second half of the 1980s. In 1985, anthropologist Karla Poewe claimed that the language of extermination used by the military leadership during the war was part of a psychological war, and did not reflect authentic genocidal intent.[7] In 1989, Brigitte Lau, a German-Namibian historian, published an essay that rejected the now widely accepted claim that the Germans perpetrated genocide during the war.[8] Lau argued that the historians of the war viewed it through an Europocentric lens, for example by describing the Herero and the Nama as helpless natives, and the German army as supposedly undefeated. Lau doubted the number of victims calculated by Drechsler and others, and noted that most of the relevant documents about the war were lost during WWI.

Lau’s essay evoked a fierce reaction among scholars, who responded with a new wave of publications that aspired to reaffirm the common historiographical stance about the genocide.[9] The challenge posed by Lau and others, thus, was beneficial for developing and complicating the analysis of the genocidal nature of the war. Scholars paid growing attention to the question of genocidal intent and planning, the use of genocidal discourse, collective responsibility and the participation of the state’s apparatuses in the killing. The solid evidence to support the genocidal nature of the war was summarized, clarified, rethought and refined, and ultimately weakened the revisionary claims of Poewe and Lau, whose arguments were now marginalized and widely denounced.

Second Debate: What were the motivations behind the genocide? Was the context local and specific, or broad, systematic and embedded in German/European culture?    

This question can be divided to two. The first is about the specific reasons that led Germany to conduct a genocide in Southwest Africa. While it is virtually agreed that both ideological and military-realistic aspects existed in the background of the genocide, different scholars have tended to emphasize one over the other. Some scholars stressed the prominent weight of racist beliefs among the architects of the genocide, mostly General Lothar von Trotha and Field-Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen, as well as the genocidal tendencies of the German administration and settlers in Southwest Africa. Conversely, other scholars have accentuated the military and realistic sides of the genocide. These scholars claim that the genocide was not pre-planned and the racist views, albeit prevalent, were secondary within the strategic and tactical war policies. Instead, the genocide was caused by the escalation and radicalization of the German military campaign, that happened largely because of the difficulty and frustration of fighting a guerilla war without the right theory or experience to do so. A recent contribution to this argument is the work of Susanne Kuss. Kuss compared the Herero and Nama War to two other German colonial conflicts that were fought in the first decade of the 20^th century – The “Boxer Rebellion” and the Maji-Maji War. These two conflicts, though violent and brutal, did not end up as a genocide. By comparing these three cases, Kuss argues that German colonial military policy depended mostly on local circumstances, and the genocide in Southwest Africa was a result of “the collapse of a carefully planned orthodox military strategy” and not a deliberated intent.[10]

The second issue within this debate about the motives behind the genocide relates to the place of the genocide within the broader history of Germany. This question has been a platform for a heated scholarly debate in the last two decades. The proponents of placing the war within the framework of German historical continuity focus on highlighting the war’s influences on and links with later parts of German history, i.e., the First World War, the rise of Nazism, the Second World War and the Holocaust. One of the leading scholars to argue for continuity is Jürgen Zimmerer, who published in 2011 a monograph named From Windhoek to Auschwitz. Zimmerer claimed that the genocide committed in Southwest Africa marks a historical turning point from ‘traditional’ colonial massacres, committed largely by local or private actors, to state-organized, centrally-planned and bureaucratized mass killings, such as those perpetrated in the Holocaust. Zimmerer stressed the immense importance of ideological precedents that emerged during the war, such as the realization of the previously-fantasized race war and the post-war establishment of a ruling system based on social engineering and ethnic hierarchies, which potentially enabled a foundation for a racial utopia.[11]

Another perspective on the continuity of German history is provided by Isabel Hull. Hull emphasizes German-Prussian military thought as the main reason for the radicalization of violence during the war.[12] She demonstrated how the immense independence of the German Military within the decision-making process in the Empire and its free access to the Kaiser, were crucial factors for the unfolding genocide. By doing so, Hull has put the onus on German militarism, rather than German racism, and thus highlighted the war’s links to the First World War, rather than Nazism or the Second World War.

On the other hand, some scholars have questioned the claim that the genocide represents a German peculiarity, pointing out to the broader imperial and settler-colonial context. Some claimed that the local and regional contexts of an asymmetric war conducted in a settler colony were more relevant than the German peculiar system. For instance, one of the first West-German scholars of the genocide, Helmut Bley, asserted that “South-West Africa offers many parallels to development in other European colonies, and in its outline German expansion followed a well-established pattern of colonial growth.”[13]

Others pointed out that the genocide was not significant in Nazi thought, and that there was a stark difference between the Herero and Nama genocide and the Holocaust. Birthe Kundrus, for instance, argued that “the way from Windhoek to Nürnberg was far, very far.”[14] Parallelism between the Herero and Nama genocide and the Jewish Holocaust is methodologically dangerous, since it may reduce German colonialism “to a mere precursor of National Socialism.”[15] She claimed that European antisemitism and colonial racism have different roots and attributes, and they are two distinct experiences.

Third Debate: Who was responsible for the genocide? 

Even though most scholarship agrees on the fact that genocide happened in Southwest Africa, the question of who to blame is still highly debated. Was annihilation mostly a personal initiative of the military commander in charge, General Lothar von Trotha? And by extension – was it a military initiative independent of, and even defying, the German political leadership? Or, on the contrary, the military policy was only an execution of political orders or – at least – mindset?

Most historians agree that either way, General von Trotha’s role was extremely significant to the unfolding of the genocide. It is also agreed that German military high command favored, or at least did not actively oppose, von Trotha’s tactics. It is also commonplace that the German government in Berlin and the administration in Southwest Africa had reservations about the genocidal violence, but the stances of the Kaiser, Wilhelm II, are still contested.

The evidence is ambiguous. On the one hand, it was the political authority that ordered to halt the extermination policy conducted by von Trotha and supported to a large degree by the German military high command in Berlin. There were also strong voices in the German government, the colonial administration and among German settlers that vehemently opposed the mass killings, and blamed von Trotha personally.

On the other hand, as mentioned, von Trotha had the support of high officials in Berlin, and claimed that the Kaiser himself gave him the green light to suppress the Herero revolt by any means. Scholar Jeremy Sarkin elaborated on the issue of the preexisting genocidal intent, and claimed that the orders for genocide were given to von Trotha by Wilhelm II before the former was sent to the colony.[16] Sarkin was criticized for basing his argument on scant material and overinterpretation, but his claim is significant as it raises the question of responsibility and therefore contributes to the present debate about reparations.

In addition, as Bley contended, the second phase of the genocide which included mass confinement in concentration and labor camps was mostly committed by civil authorities and not by the German military.

Conclusion: New Directions?

The scholarship about the Herero and Nama War has evolved and grown in the last two decades. Memory of the war has not disappeared as was claimed in the 1980’s. Yet, many aspects of the war still require a better scholarly focus.

First, there are still some more “classic” issues which have not yet been explored. Biographies, especially full scale and academic ones, of the main figures behind the war are still rare. Comprehensive biographies of Lothar von Trotha or Hendrik Witbooi are warranted.

Second, some historical groups still have not received appropriate attention. Especially the victims. Only two significant works were published about the Herero and only one about the Nama. The German settlers, a prominent group during and after the genocide, hardly received designated focus by scholars, who tend to focus on the German authorities and institutions. The role of the settlers in the genocide is crucial, since it is intimately connected to the question of responsibility. In addition, the role of other indigenous groups, such as the Ovambo, during the genocide are also largely unexplored.

Furthermore, granting the war and Southwest Africa in general more global as well as local perspective is necessary. The war has been well researched vis-à-vis the German metropole, and is well-placed within the framework of German history. Nevertheless, it was hardly put in the global context. Comparative research is still very limited, and the war was not fully positioned within the broader history of Settler Colonialism as well as the history of global colonial wars. The war is also required to be examined in relation to the local histories of Southern Africa and Namibia specifically. Scholarship has yet to examine the war’s long term, post-German implications on the balance of power in the broader Namibian society, as well as the influence of the war on other societies in the region, native and European alike.

Asher Lubotzky is a PhD student in the History Department at the University of Indiana, focusing on Africa

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[1] Jon Bridgman, The Revolt of the Hereros, Los Angeles, CA, University of California Press, 1981: p. 1. More than a decade later, Bridgman’s statement was criticized by Gesine Krüger for his disregard of the Herero memory. Krüger, pp. 14-15.

[2] Gesine Krüger, Kriegsbewältigung Und Geschichtsbewusstsein, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999: p. 7.

[3] Walter Nuhn, Feind überall: Der Grosse Nama-aufstand (hottentottenaufstand) 1904-1908 In Deutsch-südwestafrika (namibia): Der Erste Partisanenkrieg In Der Geschichte Der Deutschen Armee, Bonn, Bernard & Graefe, 2000.

[4]  Jürgen Zimmerer, Von Windhuk nach Auschwitz?, Berlin, Lit, 2011: p. 23.

[5] Horst Drechsler, Südwestafrika unter Deutscher Kolonialherrschaft: Der Kampf der Herero und Nama gegen den deutschen Imperialismus (1884 – 1915), Berlin, Akad. -Verlag, 1966.

[6] See paragraph 24 of the UN Whitaker Report, 1985: “UN Whitaker Report on Genocide, 1985, paragraphs 14 to 24, pages 5 to 10”, <http://www.preventgenocide.org/prevent/UNdocs/whitaker/section5.htm#p17> [accessed 10 December, 2017].

[7] Karla Poewe, The Namibian Herero: a History of the Psychosocial Disintegration and Survival, New York, E. Mellen Press, 1985. Poewe relied on a questionable publication by Gert Sudholt which appeared in 1975, and has been since harshly criticized by most of the experts of German colonialism.

[8]  Brigitte Lau, “Uncertain Certainties. The Herero–German War of 1904”, Mibagus, 2 (1989).

[9]  See for example: Tilman Dedering, “The German-Herero War of 1904: Revisionism of Genocide or Imaginary Historiography?”, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1993): pp. 80-88; Werner Hillebrecht, “‘Certain Uncertainties’ or Venturing Progressively into Colonial Apologetics?”, Journal of Namibian Studies, 1 (2007): pp. 73-95.

[10]Susanne Kuss, German Colonial Wars and the Context of Military Violence, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2017. p. 4.

[11] Jürgen Zimmerer, Von Windhuk nach Auschwitz?, Berlin, Lit, 2011.

[12] Isabel Hull, Absolute Destruction, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2005.

[13] Ibid: p. xvii.

[14] Kundrus, Phantasiereiche: p. 126.

[15] Kundrus, “From the Herero to the Holocaust”: p. 300.

[16] J. Sarkin, Germany’s Genocide of the Herero: Kaiser Wilhelm II, his General, his Settlers, his Soldiers, Woodbridge, Currey, 2011.