Genocide or Partition: Two Faces of the Same Coin?

Slavic Review ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 755-761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan L. Woodward
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
Legal Standing ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Robert Hayden ◽  
Massive Scale ◽  
History Of ◽  
International War

Robert Hayden is not alone in wondering why the expulsion of Serbs from Croatia in 1991 and 1995 was labeled a population transfer and even justified by the logic of nation-states, while the expulsion of Muslims by Serbs in 1992-96 from an area of Bosnia and Herzegovina that the Serbs claim for their state was labeled genocide and justified establishing an international war crimes tribunal. Hayden wants to protect the term genocide, and its legal standing internationally, for truly exceptional instances—to wit, the Holocaust, and nothing else until, God forbid, there should be another such instance. By contrast, he argues, population transfers, even on a massive scale and forced, are not pathological. "Ethnic cleansing" of territory in the former Yugoslavia, whether of Croatia or of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is unexceptional, a normal part of the history of the twentieth century. Although final solutions are not inevitable—Hayden criticizes Croatian President Tudjman for writings that seem to have justified the Serb expulsion as such—"ethnic cleansing" is a part of the history even of states that now sit in moral condemnation of the Balkan horrors and the Bosnian Serbs.

History of the Comfort Women Movement

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-48
Author(s):  
Eika Tai
Keyword(s):  
Japanese Society ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Public Attitude ◽  
Comfort Women ◽  
Sexual Slavery ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
International War ◽  
Sincere Apology ◽  
Historical Periods

I trace the history of the comfort women movement, describing what activists in Japan have done collectively for the movement’s major objectives, the Japanese government’s sincere apology and legal compensations. In doing so, I provide sociopolitical contexts for understanding the activist narratives, which are about what they have thought and felt personally. The activists have modified strategies according to the shifting positions of the government and the international community and the changing public attitude in Japanese society toward the issue. I discuss seven topics chronologically ordered with some overlaps in their historical periods: the rise of the movement; the spread of the movement; the Asian Women’s Fund; the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery; lawsuits; legislative resolution; and fighting in isolated Japan.

Holocaust Research in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. An Inventory

Südosteuropa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marija Vulesica
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Holocaust Studies ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mass Killings ◽  
Second World

AbstractThe Holocaust and other mass killings committed during the Second World War in the Yugoslav territories play a more significant role in current public debates than they do in education and research. 85% of Yugoslavia’s Jews were annihilated in the period between 1941 and 1945. In socialist Yugoslavia, it was Holocaust survivors in particular who collected materials that documented the execution of exterminist policies. How has the examination of the Holocaust changed since the dissolution of Yugoslavia; and how have the newly established states of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as Serbia coped with this part of their history? The author asks whether an exclusive exploration of Jewish suffering is possible—or even desirable—in today’s post-Yugoslav societies. She gives an overview of the evolution of a specific ‘Yugoslav’ approach to the history of the Holocaust, and depicts recent Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian efforts in this field. Furthermore, she looks at what kind of attention the Holocaust in Yugoslavia has received in international Holocaust Studies.

»Selbständiges verantwortliches Handeln«. Generalleutnant Hans Graf von Sponeck (1888–1944) und das Schicksal der Juden in der Ukraine, Juni–Dezember 1941

2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-50
Author(s):  
Erik Grimmer-Solem
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Close Cooperation

Abstract While the crimes of the Wehrmacht in the Russian campaign have been critically reappraised over the last 20 years, General Hans von Sponeck’s command over units of the 11th Army in the Ukraine in 1941 has been obscured by legends that serve his public commemoration as a military resistance hero and victim of the Nazi regime. The well-documented war crimes of the 11th Army and their units’ close cooperation with the SS in genocide in the summer and autumn of 1941 raise the question of Sponeck’s involvement in them. An analysis of the orders and a reconstruction of events within the area of Sponeck’s command reveal that Sponeck and his units participated actively in the struggle against »Jewish Bolshevism« and thus enabled the Nazi regime’s policy of »ethnic cleansing« in the Soviet Union. That this has until now been unknown and that von Sponeck continues to be commemorated as a resistance fighter raises renewed questions about the public‘s awareness of the role of the Wehrmacht in the Holocaust.

scholarly journals The power of memory and the heritage of the World War Two in When You Return by Anna Mitgutsch

2021 ◽  
Vol 145 ◽  
pp. 45-62
Author(s):  
Aneta Jurzysta
Keyword(s):  
Family History ◽  
Sudden Death ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

The article is devoted to the image of World War Two in When You Return (Wenn du wiederkommst) (2010) by Anna Mitgutsch, a moving story of love, trust and betrayal, devoted to the protagonist’s response to the sudden death of her Jewish-American ex-husband Jerome. The article discusses the attitude to Jewish roots and the problem of remembering past events, especially memories of World War Two. In her novel the author combines family history with the history of the country, refers to the issue of cultural and collective memory, and especially to the specific Austrian memory of the events of the Holocaust and the long-standing tendency to diminish the guilt and to negate the participation of Austrians in war crimes.

scholarly journals ConfrontingDuch: civil party participation in Case 001 at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia

2011 ◽  
Vol 93 (882) ◽  
pp. 503-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Stover ◽  
Mychelle Balthazard ◽  
K. Alexa Koenig
Keyword(s):  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
War Crimes Trials ◽  
History Of ◽  
Victim Participation ◽  
International War

AbstractThe Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) is unique because it is the first international criminal tribunal to allow victims of alleged crimes to act as civil parties at trial. This means that victims can have a role at the ECCC beyond being called as witnesses. After presenting the history of victim participation in national and international war crimes trials, this article examines how civil party participation shaped the trial proceedings at the ECCC, and how the civil parties viewed their interactions with the court. It concludes by reflecting on the positive and negative aspects of civil party participation in theDuchtrial, and what implications such participation may have for future trials at the ECCC and other international criminal courts.

Instrumentalising the Holocaust: Israel, Settler-Colonialism, Genocide (Creating a Conversation between Raphaël Lemkin and Ilan Pappé)

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Docker
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Prime Mover ◽  
Genocide Studies ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Important Challenge ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

With the appearance in 2010 of an essay by Martin Shaw, ‘Palestine in an International Historical Perspective on Genocide’, Holy Land Studies has taken the hermeneutic initiative in bringing together into the one field of analysis two areas that have usually been kept separate, genocide studies and studies of the history of Palestine-Israel. In an important challenge to contemporary scholarship, Shaw makes a cogent critique of the notion of ‘ethnic cleansing’ as euphemistic and perpetrator-inflected. I follow Shaw in translating ‘ethnic cleansing’ as ‘genocide’ of a group or society by deploying the terms and argument of Raphaël Lemkin, the creator of the concept of ‘genocide’ and prime mover in the 1948 UN Convention on genocide.

scholarly journals Women a(t) Battlefield

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
MA. Albana Gërxhi
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
Legal Provisions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Accountability

Sexual violence against women on the war setting has reached shocking dimensions being recorded as an intentional tool strategically used to achieve military objectives. A means to an end! This paper explores arguments on the evolving of the sexual violence into a weapon of war responsible for some of the most severe crimes. A picture of the legal provisions and the international legal instruments ruling over it is considered; shedding light on the history of an old crime with just some recent records on legal accountability. Historical facts and two cases of war rapes; respectively that of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo are analysed drawing remarks on how and why rape was an effective tool of war to achieve ethnic cleansing and territorial gain. Using a comparative approach between the cases it is argued that, despite the progress done on the recognition of sexual violence as a crime of war and crime against humanity, such aggression remains largely unpunished and not prosecuted.

„Jest wielu Kainów pośród nas”. Polski wymiar sprawiedliwości a Zagłada, 1944–1956

2013 ◽  
pp. 157-172
Author(s):  
Andrew Kornbluth
Keyword(s):  
War Crimes ◽  
Local People ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
District Courts ◽  
Judicial Process ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Post War

From 1944 to 1960, Poland held at least 32 000 trials for war crimes and collaboration; in particular, those records generated by the investigations of crimes against Jews have been the basis for ground-breaking studies of the Holocaust in Poland for over a decade now. While Poland was a society without a Quisling, these studies have shown that the country was still very much part of a pan-European continuum in which local people took part in ethnic cleansing inspired by the Nazi occupation. The question remains, then, of how effective the postwar judicial process against the collaborators was. This article makes use of the records of over 450 trials of accused collaborators, held between 1946 and 1949 at the district courts of Warsaw and Siedlce, of which about one-third are cases involving crimes against Jews. These trials are used as the starting point for a wider discussion of post-war justice in Poland.

scholarly journals The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Per A. Rudling
Keyword(s):  
Memory Management ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Security Services ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Massive Scale ◽  
Post War ◽  
Working Out ◽  
Cover Up

During the past decade, particularly under the presidency of the third Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko (2005–2010) there have been repeated attempts to turn the leading fi gures of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its armed wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) into national heroes. As these fascist organizations collaborated with the Nazi Germany, carried out ethnic cleansing and mass murder on a massive scale, they are problematic symbols for an aspiring democracy with the stated ambition to join the European Union. Under Yushchenko, several institutes of memory management and myth making were organized, a key function of which was to deny or downplay OUN-UPA atrocities. Unlike many other former Soviet republics, the Ukrainian government did not need to develop new national myths from scratch, but imported ready concepts developed in the Ukrainian diaspora. Yushchenko’s legitimizing historians presented the OUN and UPA as pluralistic and inclusive organizations, which not only rescued Jews during the Holocaust, but invited them into their ranks to fight shoulder to shoulder against Hitler and Stalin. This mythical narrative relied partly on the OUN’s own post-war forgeries, aimed at cover up the organization’s problematic past. As employees of the Ukrainian security services, working out of the offices of the old KGB, the legitimizing historians ironically dismissed scholarly criticism as Soviet myths. The present study deals with the myth-making around the OUN, the UPA, and the Holocaust, tracing their diaspora roots and following their migration back and forth across the Atlantic.

Mission to Sarajevo

1994 ◽  
Vol 9 (S1) ◽  
pp. S11-S12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernesto A. Pretto ◽  
Mirsada Begovic
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
International Effort ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Military Forces ◽  
Women And Children

Each of us has witnessed news reports and graphic television scenes of the willful targeting of innocent noncombatants by military forces; the displacement of tens of thousands of men, women, and children; and the diabolical genocidal tactics of “ethnic cleansing” of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. An international effort to establish a United Nations war crimes tribunal is being developed, but even this plan is running out of steam for lack of funding. These events are unfolding in “civilized” and “enlightened” Europe. We all know what is happening, yet world leaders have been reluctant to intervene.

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