1. Defining Genocide: What’s in a Name?

2. “While society sought protection against … crimes directed at individuals, there has been no serious endeavor to prevent and punish the murder and destruction of millions…” “Genocide is not only a crime against the rules of war, but also a crime against humanity.” - Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, 1944

3. “Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator.”
—Chalk, Frank. “Genocide in the 20th Century: Definitions of Genocide andTheir Implications for Prediction and Prevention,”
Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 4(2), 151.

4. “Genocide is ‘any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in while or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.” This includes:
a) killing members of a group
b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another
group.’”
—1948 UN Genocide Convention

5. - Colorosso, A Brief History of Genocide… and Why It
“What happens when people explain that the killings…were due to background “circumstances”: deeply entrenched inevitabilities of economic, tribal, cultural, religious differences;…’excesses of crowds gripped by fear and ancient hatreds’; ‘man’s inhumanity to man’; or the collateral damage of armed conflict [?]…”
“…A consequence…is that ‘collective guilt’ leaves us with no one to blame: no one admits to having chosen to become… a Nazi…Therefore, so the argument continues, genocides…fall into the same category of disaster as volcanic eruptions or earthquakes…”
- Colorosso, A Brief History of Genocide… and Why It
Matters (Viking Press, 2007, p. 16)

6. “Genocide is a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups, as homicide is the denial of the right to lives of individual human beings… When racial, religious, political, and other groups have been destroyed entirely or in part….”
—Initial UN Resolution (1946) prior to the creation of the 1948 Convention
(Totten, p. 60)

7. “Genocide can include… the destruction of the entire creative
heritage of a people: its literature, its architectural monuments,
its arts, its entire legacy, in short, its culture.”
—Huttenbach, Henry R. “Defining Genocide: Issues and Resolutions,” in Samuel Totten, Ed. Teaching About Genocide: Issues, Approaches, and Resources. Greenwich, CT:
Information Age Publishing, 2004, p. 85.

8. The term genocide is “…more and more an empty vessel, a word in search of its meaning.”
—Huttenbach, Henry R. “Defining Genocide: Issues and Resolutions” in Samuel Totten, ed. Teaching About Genocide: Issues, Approaches, and Resources. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing, 2004, p. 84.

9. Genocide is “the wanton murder of human beings on the basis
of any identity whatsoever that they share—national, ethnic, racial, religious, political, geographical, ideological.”
—Charney, Israel. “Genocide, the Ultimate Human Rights Problem,” Social
Education, 49(6), 1985, pp. 448–452, in Totten, p. 66.

10. “…Carl Jung is quoted as saying, ’The devil has always been around
“…Carl Jung is quoted as saying, ’The devil has always been around. He was there before the advent of human being and he is the eternal principle that has corrupted them…Thus blaming the devil … is a providential convenience.’...”
“Where then lies guilt and responsibility if blame is laid on the devil,…on circumstances or on destiny? – certainly it cannot lie with any individual human beings.”
- Colorosso, A Brief History of Genocide…and
Why It Matters (Viking Press, 2007, p. 17)

11. Your Task…
Read over the slides/quotes with their varying views on what
Genocide is/means
From the quotes, pick out a minimum of 10 words, terms and/or
short phrases (3-4 words max.) that you feel are important (or
intriguing) to think about/include when considering what “genocide” means
Make a “word map” like the one on the title slide but using your
key words/phrases to surround the large word “genocide”.
Your diagram can be hand-drawn or made on computer, then
printed out as a hard copy for me.
Be ready to discuss/explain the word choices that ended up on your word map.
See the rubric for the evaluation of your word map.