Colin Loughman

SSO 306 45 and 76 Genocide in Comparative Perspective

Dr. O’Dell

February 26, 2020

The Holocaust and Rwandan Genocide

 I am a blue-eyed, blonde hair, Caucasian male, and come from a middle-class family that

lives in a suburb in Pittsburgh. I am as pretty normal as it gets and have never been persecuted

for anything in my life. This may make you think I am unable to have a good opinion on

genocides in which people are persecuted for many reasons. After taking Genocide in

Comparative Perspective, I believe I have learned a great deal of what goes into genocides and

why they have happened. For this paper I will not be looking at genocides as a whole, but only

the Rwandan genocide and the Holocaust. The Rwandan genocide occurred in a small country in

Africa called Rwanda. It’s home to seven million people consisting of many different ethnicities.

The genocide occurred from April 8th to July in 1994. Around 800,000 people were killed. The

Holocaust started in January of 1933 when the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. The

Holocaust was the state-sponsored killing of Jewish people. Over six million Jewish people were

killed. I believe and will be arguing that both of these genocides occurring has a lot to do with

ethnicity. I will talk about the ethnicities persecuted and the reasoning behind why each ethnicity

was being persecuted. During the Holocaust there was mainly one ethnicity persecuted, while the

Rwandan genocide has many ethnicities persecuted. An ethnicity is defined as, “a social group

that shares a common and distinctive culture, religion, language, or the like.” I will be taking a

look at why these ethnicities were persecuted, what groups did the persecuting and how they

persecuted the victims.

The first genocide I will be discussing is the Holocaust. The ethnicity that was persecuted

in the Holocaust was mainly the Jewish population. The group that committed this horrendous

crime was the Nazi party of Germany. Before the Nazi party came to power Germany was in a

very dire situation. Barry Eichengreen says, “Second, the Versailles Treaty enshrined-indeed, it

gave legal content to-the conventional wisdom that to the victor go the economic spoils by
imposing that self-same reparations burden on Germany and the other defeated Central Power.

More than that, the treaty gave moral content to this financial obligation through its notorious

war guilt class (article 231), assigning to Germany and its allies all responsibility for wartime

loss and damage and, by implication, for the war itself.” Germany’s economy was struggling

paying back the damage they caused in World War I. The Germans needed somebody to blame

and a way to strengthen their economy. Germany in turn blamed the Jews for the problems and

wanted to turn the country against them. Hitler the leader of Germany started creating laws

targeting Jews. He was using his political position to achieve the future he wanted. Hitler’s goal

was to create a pure Aryan population without the inferior ethnicities like the Jewish population.

Wiesenthal a Jewish Holocaust survivor says, “At the end of World War II, thousands of Nazis

who participated in the systematic murder of some 6,000,000 Jews and millions of Gypsies,

Poles and other “inferior” peoples, slipped through the Allied net and escaped to countries

around the globe, where many still live in freedom.” (“About Simon Wiesenthal”) The Nazis felt

that their ethnicity was superior and that they had to get rid of other “inferior” ethnicities. The

Nazi party portrayed the Jewish ethnicity very poorly. This made it socially acceptable to many

Germans to abuse and persecute Jews. The propaganda used was a large movement to influence

the German population through the radio, magazines, music, and films. These images and

messages depicted the Jews as the problem to the German citizens and government. They used

their position in power to turn the population of Germany against the Jewish people which made

the German people okay with the Jews being persecuted. A famous propaganda video the Nazi

party created was the Eternal Jew. It displayed the Jew as deformed and begging for money

making the Jew look cheap and greedy. The Nazi party was dehumanizing the Jewish population

making it seem like they were inferior to other ethnicities. An example of how extreme it was the
fact that they started to restrict marriages in Germany. In the youtube video The Path to Nazi

Genocide it says, “… German citizenship is restricted to persons of German blood or kindred

blood, marriage between Jews and citizens of German kindred blood are forbidden.” (“The Path

to Nazi Genocide”, youtube) A German was not allowed to marry anyone who was Jewish. This

also dehumanized the Jews making it seem like they didn’t have the same basic human rights as

other ethnicities. Overall, I think the Holocaust happened due to economic problems, and the

false sense the Aryan race was superior to the Jewish ethnicity.

The Rwandan genocide occurred in Rwanda from April 8th to July of 1994. The Rwandan

consists ethnically of mostly Hutus, and a small number of Tutsis. The Tutsis were being killed

by every-day civilians because the government was encouraging it. This wasn’t the first time the

Tutsis were persecuted. Previously Tutsis were being killed, but the deaths were only considered

ethnic cleansings. The killing began at the start of the Hutu Peasant Revolution and didn’t stop.

The Rwandans who fled the country started the Rwandan Patriotic Front and began a civil war

against the Hutu controlled government of Rwanda. Eventually the United Nations stepped in

trying to create peace between the two groups and ended up signing the Arusha Peace

Agreements in 1993. However, there wasn’t much enforcing of the agreement and the agreement

didn’t do what it was supposed to do. After the President of Rwanda passed away from his plane

being shot down, it created fear and instability in the country. The Hutus wanted to have a pure

nation state consisting of only the Hutu ethnicity. The Hutus were using their political positions

and power to persecute the Tutsi ethnicity. Gourevitch says, “There was no difference between

the ethnic and the political.” (Gourevitch, p.98) The Hutus that controlled much of the politics

and government had goal of eliminating the Tutsi ethnicity. The government used many tactics

to convince the population that the Tutsis were a problem. Before the genocide even happened,
the Tutsis had it very rough. An example that Gourevitch uses is, “In 1973, after her brother-in-

law rejected her, she kept walking, home to Kinunu.” (Gourevitch, p.69). This was about a girl

who was expelled from her own school because she was Tutsi. Then she went to her own family

for refuge and was rejected because she was a Tutsi while part of her family was Hutu. This was

a terrible tragedy and was very similar to past genocides.

After learning about the Holocaust and Rwandan genocide, I learned that they are very

similar. A definition of genocide I found was, “the actualization of the intent, however

successfully carried out, to murder in its totality any national, ethnic, racial, religious, political,

social, gender, or economic group, as these groups are defined by the perpetrator, by whatever

means” (Katz, p. 131) The intention and how both groups carried out each genocide resembled

one another. If you look you see that both governments were controlled by certain ethnicities that

persecuted other ethnicities. The Germans persecuted the Jewish population, while the Hutus

persecuted the Tutsi population. The Germans and Hutus also had the same goal. Their goal was

to create a pure ethnicity for the country that wouldn’t have any other ethnicities involved. They

both did this by turning the country against the specific ethnicity making it seem like the Tutsis

and Jews were the enemy. They did this by using their positions in the government and creating

propaganda against the smaller ethnicities. The Hutus controlled the government due to the

population difference with the Tutsis. The Nazi party controlled the German government because

Hitler promised many good things to a struggling Germany hiding his real intentions by covering

them up with bigger things. The Nazi party and the Hutus created a very strong sense of

nationalism. The Nazi party brought the Aryan population and Germany together having a strong

sense of nationalism that became evil. They used that strong sense of nationalism against

ethnicities that they felt were inferior because they were different. The Hutus did the same thing
with the Tutsis. The Tutsis and Jews were persecuted for a wrong sense of nationalism and their

ethnicities because they weren’t the same as everyone else in their own country.

The Holocaust and Rwandan genocide showed many clues leading up to a genocide that

we can learn from. One thing we should be aware of is who is in power in the government. In

Germany the Nazi party was in power with Hitler as the head. Hitler showed many extremes and

even had a plan for what he was going to do. It was ignored by a lot of the population because of

the good he promised and wars that distracted from what really was happening. The Rwandan

government was controlled by one ethnicity the Hutus. They were 84% of the population which

made it easier for them to have a much larger say in what went on. We should make sure not one

ethnicity controls a government and every part of the country has a fair say. Another example of

a sign that we could learn from is the discrimination of an ethnicity. Both Germany and

Rwandan used propaganda and turned the population against the Tutsis and Jews. If a

government starts to discriminate the people in power need to change and allow everyone to be

equal. Lastly, I think we should also look for previous persecution in genocides. For example,

the Hutus were ethnic cleansing the Tutsis even before the Rwandan genocide occurred. If we

can see many of the warning signs, we may be able to prevent awful events in history like this

from every happening.

Even though I have never personally faced persecution I know it’s a terrible thing. To be

persecuted for being who you are as an ethnicity is very wrong and we should do everything in

our power to prevent such future atrocities. A survivor in a story from the Holocaust says, “I still

clung to the belief that the world one day would revenge itself on these brutes.” (The Sunflower,

p.60) They felt the people who persecuted them deserved to be punished. If we have stricter laws

and do a better job at detecting these horrible acts, we can prevent people from feeling like this.
Ethnicities facing persecution deserve to know that the people responsible will be held

accountable. There are many things and it’s not a perfect science in preventing tragedies, but we

can learn from previous mistakes and not make the same ones in the future.
 Work Cited

Eichengreen, Barry. “Versailles: The Economic Legacy.” International Affairs, vol. 95, no. 1,

Jan. 2019, pp. 7–24. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1093/ia/iiy241.

“Ethnicity.” Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com. Accessed February 26, 2020.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ethnicity.

“About Simon Wiesenthal.” Simon Wiesenthal Center. Accessed February 26, 2020.

http://www.wiesenthal.com/about/about-simon-wiesenthal/.

“The Eternal Jew (1940 Film).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, February 25, 2020.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheEternalJew(1940_film)#/media/File:PlakatderewigeJude,1937.j

pg.

“Rwanda, Genocide, Hutu, Tutsi, Mass Execution, Ethnic Cleansing, Massacre, Human Rights,

Victim Remembrance, Education, Africa.” United Nations. United Nations. Accessed February

26, 2020. https://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/rwanda/historical-background.shtml.

Katz, S. T. (1994) The Holocaust in Historical Context, Vol. 1: The Holocaust and Mass Death

before the Modern Age, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

White, Dean. “An African Holocaust.” History Today, vol. 64, no. 6, June 2014, pp. 40–

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Weitz, Eric D. A Century of Genocide. Princeton University Press, n.d.

Wiesenthal, Simon, and Harry J. Cargas. The Sunflower: on the Possibilities and Limits of

Forgiveness. Brantford, Ont.: W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library, 2017.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “The Path to Nazi Genocide.” Youtube ,”13 Jan
2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRcNq4OYTyE. Accessed 25 Feb. 2020.