Obama, not likely to stop genocide
The Museum started a sort of book club — which is really more of a topic-based discussion group — and during our first meeting (last night) I made a comment that I don’t think went over well. The subject of this first meeting was Samantha Power’s A Problem From Hell, and in a broader sense the United State’s lack of involvement in cases of genocide.
During this discussion, I commented that I suspect that very little is actually going to be done by the Obama administration to curtail the ongoing genocide in Darfur. The reason for me saying this is actually enumerated in Power’s conclusion:
Knowledge
Obama is certainly coming into the job with a tremendous amount of knowledge about the current situation. Even if he weren’t receiving an intelligence analysis, it would be hard to overlook the various national activist groups that have organized around stopping this particular genocide. Nonetheless, for reasons I’ll discuss a few points down, I suspect this administration will wind up hiding “in the fog of plausible deniability.”Influence
As Power points out, perpetrators are often keeping their eyes on Western reactions in order to gauge if they should take the next step. Having seen little reaction from Washington over the last five years, it’s unlikely that Sudan is going to suddenly reverse course because of a new administration. If the United States decides to do anything less than overt (which I think is highly doubtful) Khartoum is going to continue unfettered.Will
This is, without question, the real problem. Regardless of whether Obama’s administration has the “moral will” to act, his policy makers are going to have an incredibly tough time convincing Congress to commit to ending this, or any other, genocide. Even if they could, the real crux of a solution in Darfur lies with China.Basically, no force, sanction, or relief is going to be successful without the backing or cooperation of China and, unfortunately, the United States has little leverage to apply in order to make this happen. Not only has China rebuked any attempt through the United Nations, but their continued oil interests in the region makes force and sanctions utterly untenable from a diplomatic and economic standpoint (to say nothing of the physical).
Accountability
This last point is probably not even worth mentioning. No sitting President has been held politically accountable for inaction and considering the economic and domestic problems, it certainly won’t be starting with this administration.
Truly, this is one of those times when I’ll happily be wrong. I hope that Obama does intervene in Darfur; and I would be lying if I said I hadn’t voted for him with the hope that he would reverse our position on stopping genocide. But at the same time, I approach this from the long lens of a genocide researcher, and it’s from that vantage point that I suspect no real impact will come from a new administration.
Five “must read” Holocaust books
As a research librarian for a Holocaust museum, I’m often asked for advice on what to read. If you have an interest and don’t know where to start (or would like to know more), here are five Holocaust books I think everyone should read:
The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy September 1939-March 1942 by Christopher Browning. [1]
In my opinion, this is the definitive guide to the Nazi’s evolving policy towards the Jews of Europe. While not easily digested in a weekend, it is well written and provides a detailed account of each of the stages that lead to the “Final Solution.” If you’ve already read Origins (or a similar survey[2]) you may want to try Browning’s The Path to Genocide instead.
Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi.
Even though Anne Frank and Elie Weisel are well known, Levi has never attained the same level of popularity in the United States. For those who have a real interest in the Holocaust, Survival in Auschwitz is actually a far richer memoir, as Levi presents a detailed description of his time in Buna.
Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945 by Raul Hilberg.
Hilberg has long been recognized as one of the preeminent Holocaust scholars. While he’s best known for The Destruction of European Jews (a comprehensive three volume set), Perpetrators Victims Bystanders is a series of essays that gives an amazing amount of detail about each group in a fairly concise way.
The Theory and Practice of Hell: The German Concentration Camps and the System Behind Them by Eugen Kogon.
Dozens of books examine the concentration camp system but The Theory and Practice of Hell remains an important work because of its comprehensive analysis of prisoner life. Kogon, a political prisoner from 1939 - 1945, used his experiences to present this massive report on the operation and daily routine of Buchenwald.
Rethinking the Holocaust by Yehuda Bauer.
In this collection of essays, Bauer reflects on the history of the Holocaust and how the field has been shaped by discoveries and discourse over the last half century. While it’s not the perfect book for someone new to the subject, it is an insightful guide for those who are interested in the broader themes of Holocaust studies.
[1]If you have difficulty with Browning’s Origins and would like something slightly easier, I would suggest Yehuda Bauer’s A History of the Holocaust.
[2]Friedlander’s The Years of Extermination or Gilbert’s The Holocaust or Kershaw’s Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution, for example.
Hate groups on Facebook
Daniel posted a comment today which I felt should be upgraded to a full entry. It concerned a Serbian nationalist hate group who are using Facebook to advocate anti-Muslim views and genocide denial.
Reuters’ reported the story earlier this week:
The group, created on Monday under the name “Close Group Noz Zica Srebrenica,” alerted administrators about the language of hatred against Muslims on the site.
“Administrator, we ask you to close the group ‘Noz, Zica, Srebrenica’, which glorifies the acts of genocide that took place in Srebrenica, where 8,000 men and boys were murdered,” read the Bosnian group header on Facebook.
“In addition, this group propagates hatred to all Muslims,” it said. Muslims or Bosniaks account for nearly half of the population of Bosnia, which they share with Roman Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs.
Like many sites of its kind, Facebook does have an extensive Terms of Use policy, which states that the user must agree not to:
*upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;
*intimidate or harass another;
Even though the story was published four days ago, the group remains active on Facebook. While it’s likely that none of the administrators can actually read the posts in Noz, Zica, Srebrenica, you would assume a different stance when it comes to American hate groups, particularly considering the above mentioned “Terms of Use.” Yet, after only a few minutes of searching I easily uncovered four active hate groups[1] on Facebook — American Vision, League of the South, The Knights Party (Ku Klux Klan), and multiple variations of White Pride.
We’ve known for years that the Internet gives hate groups and deniers the same exposure that non-profits and grassroots organizations have experienced. It does, however, raise questions about how they should be dealt with as well as how social networking spaces will ultimately be managed.
You can read Daniel’s full entry at his Srebrenica Genocide Blog.
[1] As defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Ordinary Men : Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
Christopher Browning, one of the better known Holocaust scholars today, used evidence from the post-war investigations of Police Battalion 101 to create an image of the “ordinary men” who participated in the massacre of Jews in Eastern Europe. By examining testimony, documents, and diary excerpts, he pieces together a chronological history of the unit’s participation and involvement in the Nazis’ “final solution.”
Even though Browning is writing as a scholar, with the intent of persuading through academic argument, his writing is clear and uncluttered. He approaches the subject with an easy-to-follow framework, providing a balanced look at how the battalion went from routine duties in occupied territories to the violent slaughter of Jewish civilians.
Throughout Ordinary Men, Browning provides a window into the daily life of the unit and its purpose in the hierarchy and structure of the Third Reich. The often personal glimpses demonstrate the slow and methodical change in Nazi policy towards Jewish civilians, as the German leadership shifted towards the Final Solution.
It’s this tapestry of documentation that pulls together a remarkable look at how the extermination of European Jews occurred: through an evolving policy rather than a pre-determined course. Combined with the personal accounts of battalion members, it is easy to see the slow progression of anti-Jewish doctrine, as well as the frequently unmentioned nuances of its executioners, the most revealing of which — the lack of disciplinary action for those who refused to take part in the massacres and “Jew hunts” — reveals a great deal about the make-up of the actual perpetrators.
Afterword: The more recent edition of Ordinary Men has an afterword from Browning dissecting his ongoing debate with Daniel Goldhagen (author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners). Personally, I’ve been surprised at how many people bought into Goldhagen’s rather contradictory and ill-conceived thesis, and yet, because of that, Browning decided to add this clear-cut statement about his own conclusions in order to refute Willing Executioners’ assertion that Germans are anti-Semitic by their very nature.
Mapping the Holocaust
Alberto Giordano, an associate professor at Texas State University-San Marcos, and Anne Knowles, a geographer at Middlebury College in Vermont, have been awarded a $430,000 grant to use computerized models to create a geographic analysis of the Holocaust. The two-year study will be examining “the evolution of the concentration camp system, the deportation of Jews from France and Italy, life inside the Budapest ghetto and the death marches from Auschwitz.”
The survey is hoping to address a number of questions, including:
Were Jews from certain cities or backgrounds more likely to survive?
Could people living near the routes where prisoners from Auschwitz were forced to march have seen more than they have acknowledged of this harrowing experience?
Which restaurants, cinemas and bath houses in Budapest could Jews frequent, and how did the shape of the ghetto evolve?
While the use of geographic representations of the Holocaust isn’t unique, the analysis will take into account variables that have never been examined before — terrain, weather, and elevation.
That’s not to say that the geography of the Holocaust has never been examined. For instance, the historian Martin Gilbert has published an atlas of the Holocaust with 316 maps tracing the destruction of Jewish communities.
Giordano and Knowles plan to incorporate elevation records, quasi-three-dimensional modeling and cluster analysis, a method of determining patterns or groups, in their research and maps.
“By applying tools that were not imaginable even 20 years ago to massive amounts of data, we can study Holocaust history in a way we couldn’t in the past,” said Michael Haley Goldman, the director of the Holocaust museum’s Registry of Holocaust Survivors.
The Holocaust has been studied through various disciplines over the years — psychology, sociology, art, literature, music, and history — but new technologies are allowing researchers to look at events in radically new and detailed ways. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for instance, has been interactive maps for educational and awareness for the last several years.