Unit 7: Topic 8 - Mass Atrocities Flashcards
Genocide
Intentional killing of an ethnic group with the intention to destroy the group. When extremist groups came to power in the 20th century, genocide and other ethnic violence occurred. For example, the Armenian genocide when the “Young Turks” ruled the Ottoman Empire, and the Jewish genocide when the Nazis had control. Even after WWII, genocides continued to take place, with the Cambodian genocide with Dictator Pol Pot and with the Rwandan genocide that targeted killing of the Tutsi minority.
Death March
A forced march of captives where people are left to die along the way. It is common to have harsh physical labor and abuse on the prisoners, neglect of injuries and illness, intentional dehydration and starvation, and execution of those that can’t keep up with the march pace. Death marches are seen in genocides such as the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust, where the prisoners are marched to death camps or until all the prisoners die.
Ethnic Cleansing
The systematic mass removal of a religious or ethnic group. Ethnic cleansing attempts to create a homogenous society through methods like forced displacement, mass killings, and destruction of sacred spaces and objects. An example is the killing and forced removal of Bosnian Muslims from the Serbs.
Holodomor
Holodomor is also known as the Great Famine or the Terror-Famine. It was a Soviet Union man-made famine that killed millions of Ukrainian people from 1932-1933. The Holodomor was a part of the Soviet famine (1932-1933) that harmed the Soviet Union’s major grain-producing regions. The Holodomor was made more deadly than other parts of the famine by the Soviet Union’s deliberate political decisions that impacted only Ukraine.
Famine
A man-made famine took place from 1932-1933 in the Soviet Union. Peasants resisted Stalin’s policy of collectivization of agriculture and so they destroyed their crops and livestock instead of relinquishing them to state control. It is estimated that 7 million to 10 million peasants died from the famines. Ukraine was heavily affected as it was one of the Soviet’s major grain-producing regions and from deliberate political action from the Soviet government; the term Holodomor is used to refer to just the famine in Ukraine. And, though peasants died of starvation, the Soviet Union industry grew from the government taking the crops that were grown to use for industry or for industrial workers.
Final Solution
A plan the Nazis made, led by the SS, to kill all the Jews in Europe. The campaign started in 1942, when the persecution of Jews changed to mass killings. Nazi killing units would travel and murder Jews, and then bury them in mass graves. The Nazis then sent Jews to death camps, such as Auschwitz, or worked them to death in labor camps. The Jewish genocide, also known as the Holocaust, killed about six million Jews, under the idea of the “Final Solution”.
Auschwitz
A death camp that over a million Jews were forced into during the Holocaust. Part of the “Final Solution”, the Nazis would mass murder Jews in Auschwitz and similar death camps by methods such as gas chambers or shootings. Auschwitz in Poland was the largest of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps and held men, women, and children.
Khmer Rouge
Totalitarian regime (1975-1979) in Cambodia led by Pol Pot. Khmer Rouge had a radically communist government that left its people impoverished and brutalized. People were forced out of their city homes and millions of people were killed or displaced. The Cambodian genocide took place under Khmer Rouge rule and the genocide targeted mainly the ethnic Chinese, Cham Muslims, and intellectuals.
Hutu
The Hutu majority in Rwanda was involved in the Rwandan genocide. During Belgian colonization, the Hutus disliked the Tutsis, the Rwandan minority, because the Hutus were allowed less power. When Rwanda gained independence, the Hutus with the majority gained control of the government and discriminated against the Tutsis, and later targeted the Tutsis and some moderate Hutus in the Rwandan genocide that claimed up to an estimate of 1 million lives.
Tutsi
The Tutsi minority in Rwanda was targeted by the Rwandan genocide. The Hutus were the majority in Rwanda, and during the time of Belgian colonization of Rwanda, the Tutsis were given more power. After decolonization, the Tutsis were discriminated against by the Hutu-controlled government, and were later the target of a genocide that killed between 500,000 to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Pol Pot
Cambodian political leader of the Khmer Rouge totalitarian regime. The radical communist government left citizens impoverished, forced mass removals of people from cities, and displaced or killed millions of people.
Armistice Day
November 11, 1918 – the date when Germany surrended WWI. The United States, after entering the war in 1917, helped the Allies advance the war in their favor, and after three years of a stalemate in the war, the Allies efforts against the Central Powers forced a German surrender on Armistice Day.
Hamburg
German city that was firebombed by the Allies in 1943. About 50,000 people died from the Hamburg attack. The Allies used similar air warfare, which was a new type of deadly combat on civilians, on another German city, Dresden, and on Tokyo.
Dresden
German city that was firebombed by the Allies in 1945. About 25,000 people died and 15 square miles of the city’s historic city center were destroyed. The Allies used the new deadly air warfare on civilians in Hamburg and in Tokyo as well.
Tokyo
During WWII, the Allies firebombed major Japanese cities, including Tokyo. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians died from the bombings that strategically targeted civilian centers with high populations. The Allies also firebombed Germany, Japan’s ally.
