Genocide

Genocide


     After Rodney King was beaten, and the white police officers were

aquitted, he said "Why can't we all just get along?"  A question asked by many

people.  Rascist and Genocidal acts such as this have been going on for many

years, and should not be tolerated.


     In international law, the crime of destroying, or committing conspiracy

to destroy, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group is known as Genocide.

It was defined in the Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of

Genocide, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9,

1948.


     The crime of Genocide has been committed or attempted many times in

recorded history. The best known example in this century was the attempt by Nazi

Germany during the 1930's and 1940's to destroy the Jewish population of Europe,

known as the Holocaust.  By the end of World War II, 6 million Jews had been

killed in Nazi concentration camps.


     The known objective of the Nazi rule was Jewish extinction.  In November

1938, shortly after the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris by a young

Jew, all synagogues in Germany were set on fire, windows of Jewish shops were

smashed, and thousands of Jews were arrested. This "Night of Broken Glass"

(Kristallnacht) was a signal to Jews in Germany and Austria to leave as soon as

possible.  Several hundred thousand people were able to find refuge in other

countries, but a nearly equal number, including many who were old or poor,

stayed to face an uncertain destiny.


     When war began in September 1939, the German army occupied the western

half of Poland and added almost 2 million Jews to the German power sphere.

Limitations placed on Polish Jewry were much worse than those in Germany.  The

Polish Jews were forced to move into ghettos surrounded by walls and barbed wire.

The ghettos were like jailed cities.  Each ghetto had a Jewish council that was

responsible for housing, sanitation, and production.  Food and coal were to be

shipped in and manufactured products were to be sent out for German use.  The

food supply allowed by the Germans was mainly made up of grains and vegetables,

such as turnips, carrots, and beets.  In the Warsaw ghetto, the amount of food

given provided barely 1200 calories to each inmate.  Some black market food,

smuggled into the ghettos, was sold at a very high price, and unemployment and

poverty were common.  The population was large, and the amount of people reached

six or seven persons in a room.  Typhus became common, and the death rate rose

to roughly 1 percent a month.


     At the time of ghettoization in Poland, a project was launched farther

in the east.  In June 1941, German armies invaded the Soviet Union, and at the

same time an agency of the Soviet Socialists, the Reich Security Main Office,

dispatched 3000 men in special units to newly occupied Soviet territories to

kill all Jews on the spot.  These mobile detachments, known as "Einsatzgruppen",

or "Action Squads", were soon engaged in nonstop shootings.  The massacres

usually took place in ditches or ravines near cities and towns.  Occasionally,

they were witnessed by soldiers or local residents.  Before long, rumors of the

killings were heard in several capitals of the world.


     Camps equipped with facilities for gassing people were being created on

the soil of occupied Poland.  Most prospective victims were being created on the

soil of occupied Poland.  Most prospective victims were to be deported to these

killing centres from ghettos nearby.  From the Warsaw ghetto alone, more than

300,000 were remove
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