Recently I laid over at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, at which the Delta Airlines security agent checked my U.S. passport prior to boarding the plane to Minneapolis. Upon seeing my name and place of birth (Bosnia and Herzegovina), he asked in Serbian if I spoke “our language.” I responded with a “yes, of course,” and he completed the rest of the security procedure in ‘our language,’ revealing that he is a Serb who escaped to the Netherlands in 1991 because he did not want to have to fight the Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) or the Croats, as they are all “my people, our people.”

Coincidentally, this random interaction occurred only two days after the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, which took place on July 11, 1995. It made me ponder the use of the word ‘our’ in this brief conversation. We all clearly still have a lot in common: the primary, and perhaps strongest, connection being the language. ‘Our’ language, as the security agent used it, refers to Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. However, in ‘our’ language, there is still a contention over what happened in Srebrenica. Recently, Russia, Serbia’s ally, had vetoed the UN Security Council measure that labeled Srebrenica a genocide. Killing people based on their identity is a very basic definition of genocide, and denying that is to politicize it once again, and take away from the core of what this event should represent 20 years later, which is healing and hope for the future.

Leading up to the anniversary itself, much of the world media had been referring to the genocide as the worst case of mass violence on the European continent since World War II. The systematic killing of over eight thousand Bosnian Muslim men and young boys in what was considered a UN safe haven shows nothing short of failure on the part of Europe for not holding up the ‘never again’ promise. What remains at stake now is the way we remember this horrific event based on the language used to label it. Srebrenica has been labeled a crime, and a massacre, but why not genocide?

During the 20th anniversary commemoration ceremony, President Bill Clinton begged the international community to not treat this as a mere monument, but as a sacred trust for healing, implying that Srebrenica shouldn’t be a place of forgetting but of active remembering. Therefore, education is crucial to its memory. The members of various refugee communities scattered around the world have already done a lot in this respect, but education must continue for the sake of future generations of not only Bosniaks, but also Serbs and Croats. After all, it is something that marked all of “us.” We also shouldn’t forget that Bosnia is made up of many ‘little Srebrenicas’ that amount to many more victims and their grieving families. Ultimately, what Srebrenica must remind us of is our common humanity, and that conflicts rooted in identity continue to be a struggle for the world.

In April of this year, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies hosted an international conference on the 100 years of the Armenian Genocide, bringing the struggle over its acknowledgement to the forefront. For many like myself, this served as a reminder of the politicization around Srebrenica as well. The question is then, are we going to treat Srebrenica the same way in the upcoming century?

Erma Nezirevic is a Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic Literatures and Cultures at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. She specializes in 20th and 21st century Iberian literatures and cultures. Her dissertation studies the way Spain evokes the Balkan Wars of the 1990s in literature and other cultural production such as photography, and how in turn that provides a political, social and cultural understanding of Spain itself. Erma currently works in affiliation with the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, where she coordinates the HGMV Workshop.

Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur

By Joachim Salvesberg

 How do interventions by the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court influence representations of mass violence? What images arise instead from the humanitarianism and diplomacy fields? How are these competing perspectives communicated to the public via mass media? Zooming in on the case of Darfur, Joachim J. Savelsberg analyzes more than three thousand news reports and opinion pieces and interviews leading newspaper correspondents, NGO experts, and foreign ministry officials from eight countries to show the dramatic differences in the framing of mass violence around the world and across social fields.

The book is hot off the presses and is also available in its entirety online.

Professor Joachim Savelsberg is a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair, and affiliate faculty to the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Wahutu Siguru sat down with Dr. Joachim Salvesberg from the University’s Sociology Department to discuss his new book, Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur for the September edition of “Eye on Africa.” 

Wahutu: What was the main motivation behind this current book, Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur?

Prof. Savelsberg: You know that I have a longstanding interest in the way in which institutions of justice, and currently transitional justice, affect collective representations or collective memories of events, especially mass atrocities. And so, the motivation for this book on Darfur was to understand how interventions by the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court (ICC) affect how global civil society thinks about such events, the way people imagine such events. And, part of the original design was to do a comparative study of eight countries. Even though the ICC is a global institution, the kinds of messages that it sends out, the kinds of representation of events that it offers are filtered by national institutions, they are reinforced by carrier groups in one country, but less so in another country. They find more receptive audiences in a country that has maybe dealt with mass atrocities in the past than in another country that hasn’t. So that was the main motivation, to understand how interventions, in this case by the UN Security Council and the ICC, affect the representation of Darfur in the public sphere. Initially I only thought of news media, that’s why we did a comparative analysis of newspapers in eight countries. And then, in the course of the research, I became aware that representations do not just differ by country but also by social fields. I was interested from the beginning in how human rights activists, and I selected Amnesty International as an example, talk about Darfur. How they reflect on the interventions by the ICC and the UN Security Council. But in my interviews I also ended up targeting a humanitarian aid NGO , for which I picked Doctors without Borders. I additionally interviewed diplomats from foreign ministries, or state departments if you want, and I saw that different fields talk in quite different terms about the violence in Darfur. Just as I was interested in the country-specific conditions that lead to a selective communication of ICC representations, so I became interested in the field-specific conditions that affect communication about Darfur.

Wahutu: Previous work has not done this much data collection or analysis.  From what you have said, the data collection and analysis seems like a really important part of how you wanted to do this project.  Why was it important for you to do the interviews, to do the content analysis of news reports and travel to all of these countries?

Prof. Savelsberg: It was important for a number of reasons. The first reason is that we know that global institutions of justice like the ICC are extremely modern. Human history hasn’t really known them. We’ve known ad hoc courts in the twentieth century, but not a permanent international criminal court. We have very little systematic knowledge about the effects of these institutions. It would be desirable of course to measure the effect of ICC interventions on the future likelihood of genocide and crimes against humanity and war crimes. That would be a very tall order, and we will have to tackle this at some point. I wasn’t able to go that far, but one interim step is to think about how these interventions affect the way the world thinks about mass atrocities. It is not at all for granted that people in different countries take note of what is going on. Even if institutions like the ICC intervene, there is a long history of denial, of closing one’s eyes, especially if atrocities occur in a far-away place in the world. So it was very important to me to begin to systematically measure the effects of these sorts of interventions in a cautious way, by first looking at the impact they have on the degree to which and the way in which mass atrocities are represented and perceived.

Wahutu: What would you say was one of the most surprising findings that jumped out at you?

Prof. Savelsberg: There are a number of surprising findings. One of the things that really impressed me was when I conducted my interviews among diplomats who were interested in negotiating deals with the Sudanese government to establish peace; with humanitarian aid people who were interested in getting their aid on the ground and collaborating, say, with the Sudanese ministry of health; and with human rights activists. To see the seriousness with which all of these actors, many of whom impressed me deeply, pursued what they were doing. How at the same time their views of the violence differed depending on the role that especially the Sudanese state played in their respective fields. Diplomats need to negotiate with the Sudanese state, humanitarian aid workers need to collaborate with administrative units of the Sudanese state, and human rights activists don’t do that.  But many of these people had been to Darfur, they had worked on the ground, they had also – the same is true for Africa correspondents – left the comfort of their homes in Philadelphia or Berlin or London only to spend years in rather tough settings, to witness situations that are not easy for people to bear. So many of these people impressed me profoundly. At the same time, I took note that each of them had a different view of the violence on the ground. So this is, if you want, a kind of sociology of knowledge exercise. You see how the world and events in the world take different shape, appear in a different light, when seen through different lenses, through different frames. So that’s one thing that surprised me and then there were many little observations pertaining to national particularities. For example we found in our media analysis that the term genocide was used relatively rarely in German news reports, which to me was counter intuitive, given Germany’s history of the Holocaust. But, in the interviews I conducted, I got a number of suggestions as to how to interpret such a finding. One Africa correspondent for a prominent German newspaper said that when he thought of genocide, he categorised the Holocaust under that label, and while knowing how horrific things were in Darfur, he had a hard time placing Darfur under the same category where in his mind the Holocaust was already placed. Or, the director of a major national Holocaust memorial institution in Germany said that the Americans could draw parallels between the Holocaust and Darfur – and this is a man who is a Rabbi and a son of an Auschwitz survivor – but as Germans, he said, we could not do that because as soon Germans drew a parallel between the Holocaust and events such as Darfur people would accuse them of trying to relativize what happened during the Holocaust. So there are cultural sensitivities in specific countries — and this is just one example from the German part of the study — that  filter and generate caution towards the use of certain terms. Clearly Germany differs from the United States, for example, where the use of the term genocide and metaphorical bridging to the Holocaust was used very generously, and the explanation is relatively simple. It has to do with the strength of the Save Darfur movement in the US, and this strength had to do with the fact that there were a number of, in Weberian or Mannheimian terms, carrier groups that identified with the cause of Darfur. So there were African Americans who identified with the victims who were defined as ‘black Africans’. There were American Jews who, after the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington issued a genocide alert, identified with this cause, and there were evangelical Christians on the conservative side of the political spectrum who had done a lot of missionary work, not in Darfur but in South Sudan, but who therefore were quite sensitive to human rights violations in that country. So you have Germany and the United States as two examples where country specific sensitivities and carrier groups contribute to a different reception of the events in Darfur. At the same time both the United States and Germany were the two countries that stood out in terms of the intensity of reporting. German cultural sensitivities thus do not mean that German journalists didn’t take note, quite the opposite, despite their cautious use of the term genocide. The other noteworthy result is that indeed certain interventions by institutions like the ICC revived, every time they occurred, global interest in Darfur. The flattening of the pattern of attention that normally occurs soon after instances of mass violence was thus delayed by three or four years in the case of Darfur.  The other noteworthy finding is that definitions by the criminal justice system are more strongly reflected in  media reporting than the representation of events by diplomats or humanitarian aid organizations. Why this is the case is a separate question, and I have some ideas about this that I explore in the book. I have found similar patterns, by the way, on previous occasions like in my study on the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War.

Wahutu: What message do you hope a reader of your book gets from it when they read it?

Prof. Savelsberg: I think that the book would help people understand how mass violence that occurs in the global south, for example in Darfur, goes through a number of processes and filters before news about it reach us as member of civil society; understand the cultural and structural processes and the institutions that are embedded in different fields and that are associated with different countries; understand how that which happens on the ground, which almost none of us, very few people, will observe with our own eyes, reaches us as members of civil society, or maybe of global society; understand the process through which those events are filtered, or constructed if you want. So this helps us understand what it is that we learn about through public information about mass violence in the global south.

Wahutu: So what you are saying is that for a reader you hope that the message is that by the time they watch, read or hear about on going atrocities such as Darfur, they remember that it goes through several filtering processes to get to them. As such, is it then upon the reader to be a bit more active in seeking more information and seeking more diverse voices?

Prof. Savelsberg:  Yes, I think the book provides us with the critical tools that we need in order to be mature consumers of these kinds of news. We read the news and, having read this book about Representing Mass Violence, we are in better position to understand what processes the events as they were written about and described have gone through before they reach us.

Wahutu: What are some of the challenges in writing such a book? You talk to professionals and practitioners form such diverse walks of life who, as much as they are dealing with getting the message out, have different constituencies. So what are some of the challenges in trying to navigate that terrain?

Prof. Savelsberg: Well, the main challenge was the huge effort at data collection. The media analysis had five research assistants who analysed  more than 3000 news articles. To conduct the interview meant travelling to Berlin, Paris, London, Dublin, Zurich, Geneva, Vienna, Washington, New York, and so many other places. So it was a major effort just to collect the data. In the interview situations, it was important to capture the voices of these different actors that operate in distinct fields, not to impose of them my understanding of the situation, but to minimise the interviewer effect and to get their perception as clearly as possible. I think I succeeded in this, especially since people are so embedded in their fields; the way they see the world thus is so matter of course to them, and is reinforced by the institutions and educational process they have been exposed to.

Wahutu: So onto my last question. You book is available to download for free, what was the thinking behind that?

Prof. Savelsberg: For the publisher, the University of California Press, the thinking behind this was that books used to sell many copies to university libraries, which brought in their expenses, on the average anyway, so they didn’t run a deficit. University libraries have change their purchasing practices. They have smaller budgets now, they can’t buy as many books, and they buy more electronic sources than paper products. So the presses are really under pressure to come up with new models of funding publications. In my case they offered me either to go the traditional way or to use this innovative model, and I chose the innovative way for a number of reasons. An important reason is that I think this mechanism will allow for a better distribution of the book, and especially a book dealing with mass violence in the global south, in which many people who’d be interested in the subject don’t have an easy time to just write somewhere and order a paper copy and pay for it. So this model will increase availability particularly in those parts of the world that I would like to reach with my book but that may not as easily get a hold of the paper copy. Do I pay a price for it? Yes I had to waive any royalties, but that was easy for me to do.

Wahutu: Thank you so much for agreeing to do this.

Prof. Savelsberg: You are welcome, Wahutu.

Wahutu Siguru is Badzin Fellow in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and PhD candidate in the Sociology department at the University of Minnesota. Siguru’s research interests are in the Sociology of Media, Genocide, Mass Violence and Atrocities (specifically on issues of representation of conflicts in Africa such as Darfur and Rwanda), Collective Memory, and perhaps somewhat tangentially Democracy and Development in Africa. 

On the 2nd of April my home country, Kenya, suffered its bloodiest terrorist attack in recent history. The attack by Al-Shabaab was at a university in the town of Garissa, close to the Kenya-Somali border. While it would be tempting to rant and rave about the causes of the attack, the lapse in Kenya’s security forces, or even the almost non-existence of an official government response — not only to the attack but the victims’ and their families’ plight and suffering — I will not. Instead this month’s article is on the 147 students that died, the almost equal number of students considered missing, and the hundreds more that survived and will always have these scars.

No young person should have to worry that attending university may literally mean life or death. No parent should have to worry about whether or not sending their child to university and sacrificing pay for their tuition could mean exposing their child to terror. 147 is not just a number, it is brothers, sisters, children, nephews, nieces, grandchildren, boyfriends, girlfriends, future professionals and future parents. For the parents of the victims, 147 represents 147 bright futures now extinguished. As one parent tearfully said on television, “we sold everything to send our child to school, now that they are dead I am left with nothing.”

Was Kenya caught by surprise? No. The British embassy had issued a travel advisory to its citizens and one of the areas mentioned was Garissa. The U.S. embassy also mentioned that there was intelligence that a public university would be attacked. Indeed there are reports that there was a circular sent to all public institutions and eventually to students asking them to be extra vigilant. The government even sent police officers (albeit not enough) to the institutions. A simple Venn diagram would have highlighted the areas the government needed to put more emphasis on — this is not hindsight speaking, it is basic common sense.

Despite all of this, here I am writing about the death of 147 university students. Here I am writing about the erasure of Kenya’s diversity. Having attended university in Kenya, I, like several of my Kenyan friends, cannot shake the thought that I could easily have been amongst the 147. We were lucky, that’s all. As CHGS and the community commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, and as we say a prayer for victims of mass atrocities and genocides since and before 1915 (such as the genocide of the Herero of Namibia), light a candle for the 147 from Kenya.

Wahutu Siguru is Badzin Fellow in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and PhD candidate in the Sociology department at the University of Minnesota. Siguru’s research interests are in the Sociology of Media, Genocide, Mass Violence and Atrocities (specifically on issues of representation of conflicts in Africa such as Darfur and Rwanda), Collective Memory, and perhaps somewhat tangentially Democracy and Development in Africa.  

Six decades after he first coined the term genocide, Raphael Lemkin’s life has made it to the silver screen. In Watchers of the Sky director Edet Belzberg takes viewers through the efforts of Lemkin to get the crime of genocide recognized by the international community and the United Nations.

Throughout the movie, activists, scholars and experts share their reflections on the legacy of Lemkin’s tireless dedication to pursuing justice for victims of atrocities around the world. Among those interviewed is Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the UN and author of A Problem from Hell, which served as an inspiration for the documentary.

Watchers of the Sky is a beautiful film. Its use of animation brings to life the the largely untold story of the man who defined humanity’s most heinous crime. However, more important than the film’s visuals is its message. By juxtaposing the events that shaped Lemkin’s early life and views against modern crimes, including the former Yugoslavia and Darfur, Belzberg’s paints a clear picture: despite genocide being defined for more than 60 years, we’re no closer to preventing it now than Lemkin was during his own lifetime. With such a heavy message, it’s easy to write the movie off as a depressing look at history and humanity. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth.

In addition to introducing viewers to a more in depth exploration of Lemkin, it profiles four individuals who have dedicated their lives to continuing Lemkin’s work. In addition to ambassador Power, the film includes interviews with Benjamin Ferencz, a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials and Luis Moreno Ocampo, the first prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. However, it’s the interviews with Emmanuel Uwurukundo, the UNHCR director of refugee camps in Chad, which really stand out. Mr. Uwurukundo, himself a survivor of the Rwandan Genocide, oversees three camps housing thousands of refugees escaping the violence in Darfur. Despite his own experience and his work in the camps, two things are clear: his eternal optimism and his faith in humanity. Through these interviews with Mr. Uwurukundo and the others, Watchers of the Sky reinforces the need for hope and reason for optimism, even in the face of unspeakable atrocities.

If you missed Watchers in the Sky when it was released last year, you weren’t alone. Its limited release meant it was shown mostly at festivals and single event showings, including an event organized by World Without Genocide last December. However, the film has since been released on DVD and is available to rent or purchase online through Netflix, Amazon or Google Play.

Joe Eggers is a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, focusing his research on cultural genocide and indigenous communities. His thesis project explores discrepancies between the legal definition and Lemkin’s concept of genocide through analysis of American government assimilation policies towards Native Nations.

My name is Joshkin Sezer. I am a history major who is starting his third year at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. In the Spring Semester of 2015, I enrolled in History of the Holocaust, instructed by Adam Blackler. Near the end of the semester, we got the chance to hear a talk from a Holocaust survivor, Irene Berman. She had just published a book detailing her experience as a child in Norway during the Holocaust and how her family managed to survive.

After taking some time to think about Irene Berman’s talk to my class, I continue to be intrigued by what I learned about the Norwegian Jewish population and their struggles during the Holocaust. It is not a topic that comes up very often (if ever) in the United States. It was not until I enrolled in the History of the Holocaust at the University of Minnesota that I developed a better sense of what life was like for Jews who lived outside of Eastern and Central Europe.

Though the crimes of the Third Reich cast a long shadow, Irene’s story made that a reality for those of us who listened to her presentation. She gave a face to the victims of Holocaust. It is far too easy to become overcome by numbers and statistics when we think of the crimes committed by the Nazis. Is it possible to know the entire story? Certainly not, but learning a few of them will no doubt help to prevent a future Holocaust.

And it was not just Irene’s talk that provided a face to those that were lost. Adam also did a great job in offering a human element to the story. He was helped in part by his refusal to create black-and-white narrative. Indeed, saying, “all Germans were Nazis” and that “all Jews helpless sheep” does a tremendous disservice to the complexity and tragedy of the events that comprise the Holocaust. Nothing was inevitable. Conscious actors made decisions to participate. “How” and “why” are more difficult questions to answer, and as such were the central focus of Adam’s course.

But what form might this take outside of the classroom? In my opinion, museums are among the best examples that can provide a human element to history. Unfortunately, however, the most important audience — children and young adults — often avoid them out of fear of boredom, or only go as part of a class fieldtrip or family vacation. In June 2015, I traveled to Washington, D.C. to visit a friend. While there, we went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which Adam often referenced in class. When I got to the Museum, I saw the trouble with taking kids in 7th or 8th grade to the Museum. While there, I found out is that a lot of these kids do not actually care about the subject of the Museum. They are more interested taking selfies, talking loudly and laughing.

I took this class hoping to answer a basic question: “What exactly is the point of studying history?” As a history major, I get asked this question all the time, and I do not always have an adequate answer to it. After this class, though, I can honestly say that the point of studying history is to better understand the human condition. History is not a mere collection of events and social movements that inevitably occurred, but a collection of actions and consequence made by individuals. People who had hopes, dreams, and desires all of their own.

One day I hope to be a teacher, and everything I have learned in this class will be useful for teaching kids not only about the Holocaust, but also about how to consider history in a more nuanced way.

In July, I had the privilege of presenting at the International Association of Genocide Scholars‘ twelfth meeting in Yerevan, Armenia. The conference’s theme of comparative analysis of twentieth century genocides brought experts from around the world to Armenia’s capital city for five days of presentations, learning, and networking. More than 180 attendees, representing more than two dozen countries, shared their research and insight into many of the twentieth century’s most infamous atrocities.

The conference began on Wednesday, July 8^th with a welcome from Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to attendees. In his address, President Sargsyan discussed the legacy of the Armenian Genocide, not only for the Armenian people, but all of humanity. He also spoke about moving forward, highlighted by his announcement of the creation of a new biannual conference sponsored by the Armenian Republic that will discuss the lasting effects of genocide and how the global community can overcome episodes of violence. A full transcript of President Sargsyan’s address can be found on the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute’s website.

The conference kicked off Thursday morning with more than 20 breakout sessions exploring themes like prevention, intergenerational trauma, perpetrator justice, and gender and sexuality. I presented research I did this past spring, comparing themes of nationalism in pre-genocide late Ottoman and early American politics. University of Minnesota alumna and current Ohio State sociology professor Dr. Hollie Brehm presented her research analyzing rates of violence at a community level during the Rwandan Genocide.

My favorite session was the cultural genocide breakout. The presentations primarily focused on the continuing destruction and appropriation of Khachkars, ornate stone crosses, and Armenian churches that are scattered across modern Turkey. The presenters brought different and insightful perspectives to the session; an art historian talked about the effect the destruction from an artistic perspective and an Armenian PhD student shared her research from the viewpoint of the Armenian people. There was a great conversation that followed, discussing the limits of the legal definition of genocide versus Raphael Lemkin’s original ideas. The session was moderated by Dr. Adam Muller of the University of Manitoba. Dr. Muller will be visiting the University this fall to discuss his virtual museum project which sheds light on the residential schools for Canada’s First Nations people.
On Thursday evening, we were given a tour of the renovated Armenian Genocide Museum and Tsitsernakaberd, Armenia’s official memorial site. Visiting the museum had a tremendous effect on me. It was a reminder of the human toll of the first genocide of the twentieth century, something I had only experienced through books and documentaries. The museum recently opened its expanded exhibit with new photographs, artifacts, and testimonials in time for the commemorative events marking the 100^th anniversary of the genocide. The tour was led by Dr. Hayk Demoyan, the director of the museum and organizer of the conference.

The conference came to an end on Sunday with the unveiling of a stamp by the IAGS executive committee and the Armenian Postal Service, commemorating the conference. Sunday was also Vardavar, the Armenian water festival in which kids toss water on unsuspecting passersby. The soakings made for a refreshing end to an incredible, and hot, conference in Yerevan.

Created in 1994, the International Association of Genocide Scholars is one of the world’s largest groups dedicated to gaining a greater understanding of episodes of genocide and mass atrocities. In 2001, the University of Minnesota hosted the conference. IAGS’ next conference will be in July 2017 in Phnom Penh at the newly opened Sleuk Rith Institute which is Cambodia’s permanent research center dedicated to the Cambodian Genocide.

Joe Eggers is a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, focusing his research on cultural genocide and indigenous communities. His thesis project explores discrepancies between the legal definition and Lemkin’s concept of genocide through analysis of American government assimilation policies towards Native Nations.

A Good Place to Hide: How One French Village Saved Thousands of Lives During World War II

By Peter Grose

A Good Place to Hide is the story of an isolated community in south-central France, Le Chambon, that conspired to save the lives of 3,500 Jews under the noses of the Germans and the soldiers of Vichy France. It is the story of a pacifist Protestant pastor who broke laws and defied orders to protect the lives of total strangers. Powerful and richly told, the book speaks to the courage of ordinary people who offered sanctuary, kindness, solidarity and hospitality to people in desperate need, knowing full well the consequences to themselves.

On April 23-25 the Center for Holocaust and Genocide studies, along with the Human Rights Program, Institute for Global Studies and the Ohanessian Chair, marked the centennial of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 with a series of events. This included a keynote by Middle East scholar Bedross Der Matossian, an international student conference titled “One Hundred Years of Genocide: Remembrance, Education, Prevention”, a teacher workshop on World War I and the Armenian Genocide, as well as a guided tour of Bdote, a sacred Dakota site at Ft. Snelling State Park led by Professor Iyekiyapiwin Darlene St. Clair.

The three-day program was opened by the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Lecture, also serving as keynote for the international student conference, delivered by Professor Bedross Der Matossian, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His talk was titled “The Armenian Genocide Historiography on the Eve of the Centennial: From Continuity to Contingency”, and gave a comprehensive overview of the different approaches to studying and interpreting the Armenian Genocide, highlighting the importance of multi-causal interpretations and micro-historical approaches to understanding the emergence and execution of the genocide.

The international student conference on April 24 addressed the topic of one hundred years of genocide from different aspects, and saw student presenters from Armenia, Hungary, the UK, and US. It was moderated by Der Matossian and UMN professors Joachim Savelsberg, Barbara Frey, and Alejandro Baer. First, Angel Amirjanyan and Varduhi Gumruyan delivered their presentations on the psychological effects of genocide and posttraumatic stress in Armenia via Skype, identifying a clear thread of trauma as inherited. Both scholars spoke of the still notable effects of the genocide, even in their generation, manifesting in lack of confidence, inferiority complex, and hesitance to interact with Turkish youth. Both presenters also noted the importance of engaging in a dialogue about the past, and making connections with their Turkish counterparts, in order to minimize tension between the two communities. They also noted, however, that in order for healing to occur, a clear recognition of the events of 1915 as genocide on behalf of Turkey must happen. Peter Kranitz presented on the fate of Armenian refugees in Constantinople, including the problematic “repatriation” of displaced Armenians to the new Soviet Republic from former Ottoman territories.

The second session addressed Armenian and Turkish relations after the genocide. Vahram Ayvazyan spoke about the discrepancies between official state and unofficial, civic society, NGO discourse on the genocide and ways of moving forward, noting that the former is at times inflexible. Torkom Movsesyan raised the question of whether having international judicial bodies tackle the issue of the Armenian Genocide might help mediate the situation, and motivate Turkey’s recognition of the past events. Gevorg Petrosyan gave a presentation on Turkey’s current policy of genocide denial, carried out through the “Shared Pain” discourse, which does not recognize the Armenian Genocide as such, but rather wraps it in with other World War I tragedies, as merely a casualty of the war, among others.

The conference did not just address the Armenian Genocide, however. Lindsay Blahnik talked about the effects of punitive and restorative justice on social cohesion following the Rwandan Genocide, while Tom Dunn informed the audience about the problematic British intervention in the Sierra Leonean Civil War. Finally, Rebecca Shnabel presented on the problematic power relations associated with the translation process, as exemplified by Elie Wiesel’s Night, wherein the original was significantly abridged and modified to be less disturbing to a post-World War II readership.  The conference was wrapped up by presentations by Kayla Nomina, speaking on the possibility to determine causal agents of genocide, and the potential for prevention; and Joe Eggers, who presented a comparison of the Native American and Armenian genocides, looking at the role of nationalism in both contexts.

The discussions continued the next morning at Ft. Snelling State Park, where Professor Iyekiyapiwin Darlene St. Clair, St. Cloud State University, led a tour of Dakota sites and history connected to both the genesis and genocide of the Dakota people: “Bdote” is the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, the sacred site of Dakota creation stories and the location of Fort Snelling, where many Dakota were imprisoned and died in in the 1860s.

Concurrently, a Teacher Workshop on World War I and the Armenian Genocide was taking place on campus.  Sessions led by Der Matossian and UMN faculty, staff and community members illustrated various historical perspectives in Europe and the colonies at the imminent approach of World War I.

Over all, the three-day events highlighted the lasting traumatic effects of genocide, even several generations on, but also saw potential in new ways of dealing with the past, including recognizing micro-histories, establishing cultural exchanges, considering different and at times uneasy ways of approaching justice and reconciliation. While the conference also showed that each genocide is a unique event, some parallels were evident, even in contexts seemingly as distinct as US-Native American and Ottoman-Amenian relations.

Arta Ankrava holds an MA in Social Anthropology from Goldsmiths, University of London and is currently a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Minnesota. She is interested in diasporic identity, transnationalism, and collective memory. Arta is working on a dissertation about anti-Communism in the Latvian American exile community during the Cold War and through the collapse of the USSR. It is based on her research in the Latvian American Periodicals Collection at the Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota.

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Department of History are pleased to announce the 2015-2016 Bernard and Fern Badzin Fellow in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Yagmur Karakaya is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Minnesota. She is interested in collective memory, popular culture and narratives of history. Yagmur is currently working on her dissertation project on Ottomania, which focuses on contemporary interest in the Ottoman past in Turkey. She is interested in how different groups of minorities engage with the ways in which Ottoman past is recalled and how they situate themselves in this narrative. During her Badzin Graduate Fellowship year, she will focus on the commemoration of the Holocaust in Turkey, and the relative silence on the Armenian genocide situating both of these phenomena in the current political interest in the Ottoman past. This project will engage with current debates regarding memorialization and denial in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies within the context of Turkey. She will be focusing on two major non-Muslim minorities in Turkey: the Jewish and Armenian population, conducting interviews with the members.