stumbled into genocide, as the strategy of asserting power by exterminating the Tutsi developed even as it was being implemented. The discussion carries echoes of the debate between intentionalists and structuralists in Holocaust studies, a disagreement over whether the genocide of Jews was the direct result of a master plan or grew out of the logic and structures of the Nazi state ( Mason, 1981 : 21–40; Browning, 2004 ). I discussed this issue with Des Forges shortly before her death, and she was inclined to agree with Guichaoua’s perspective, though in practice it
Threatens Lives , 12 July , HRW : Brussels , www.hrw.org/news/2017/07/12/eu-draft-code-sea-rescues-threatens-lives (accessed 7 October 2020 ). Krekó , P. ( 2011 ), ‘ Jobbik Needs Jews to Run the World ’, Political Capital Institute : Budapest , 15
and the Congo, or the British and Mau Mau, or the French in Algeria. As the Americans joined the fray post World War II (after Nazi Germany’s attempt to exterminate the Jews, and after the US dropped two atomic bombs on civilians without warning), we can fast-forward to the use of nerve agents in Vietnam, the mass bombing of civilians in Cambodia, the giving of a green light to the government in East Pakistan to commit genocide in what is now Bangladesh or the political support the US gave to Pinochet and the Khmer Rouge. We can go back to the
that manner. Yet Biafra also helped establishing the Holocaust as a genocide, singled out from Nazi crimes more generally: genocidal in nature, targeting minority groups and primarily the Jews. These references are thus interesting and insightful not only to get a better grasp of the Nigerian civil war, but they can also help us better understand the mechanics of Holocaust memory [ Heerten, 2017 , 280–4; Smith, 2014 ; Heerten and Moses, 2014 ]. Moreover
2441Chapter2 16/10/02 8:03 am Page 39 2 Instrumentalising the Holocaust: from universalisation to relativism For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them: e.g. men becoming builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics)1 Where once it was said that the life of Jews would be ‘a light unto nations’ – the bearer of universal lessons – now it is the ‘darkness unto nations’ of the death of
justify their atrocities. Of central importance was a ‘game of numbers’, or Ronnie Landau’s ‘grotesque competition in suffering’.1 Like the works of Stannard, Dadrian, Hancock, and others reviewed in the comparative genocide debate, Serbs and Croats used the Jews as the litmus test for historical suffering, while also trading genocide stories with each other. By inflating their own numbers of dead, and reducing the numbers of enemy dead, they conducted their own comparative genocide debate within Yugoslavia. Both Jasenovac and Bleiburg became emblematic of national
2441Chapter5 16/10/02 8:05 am Page 132 5 Masking the past: the Second World War and the Balkan Historikerstreit A very considerable part of the Croatian political elite, supported by the Catholic hierarchy and Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac himself, supported this national and religious intolerance, and strongly supported policies of clericalism and racism, marked by mass killings, forced conversions and the deportation of the Serbian Orthodox population as well the slaughter of the Jews and Gypsies. (Dušan Bataković, ‘The National Integration of the Serbs
directly related to the Second World War. Probably the most prominent is the role of Germany. Almost every issue covers at least one article in which this role is revised. This is done directly, e.g. by ‘proving’ that crimes generally ascribed to Nazi Germany were not as bad as is claimed. Several articles deal with the question of ‘How many Jews really died?’ (DNZ 7/6/91). In these articles the crimes against the Jews are not denied, but the number of (possible) victims is considerably reduced. Other articles try to prove that Germany did not start the war but was
-suffering, persecuted people, often likened to the Jews. ‘Kosovo’ and the development of Serbian consciousness Throughout the conflict, the myth of Kosovo was touted as a key shibboleth of Serbian identity. Kosovo figured as the locus of a historic defeat, but also symbolised the awakening of Serbian values and spirituality. The Kosovo Battle was fought in the year 1389 on St Vitus’ Day (28 June). The basic story surrounds Prince Lazar, an elected Serbian prince, who in legend was handed an ultimatum, whereby he was either to pay homage to the Turkish Sultan Murad I, relinquishing
Religion was all-important because it created the conditions for a series of covenants with the divine. Throughout this study, we have seen many examples of covenantal relationships, as described by Northrop Frye, Conor Cruise O’Brien,4 Donald Harman Akenson,5 Martin Buber,6 Hans Kohn,7 and others. Some good examples included the Serbian myth of Kosovo. Lazar’s choice created a heavenly people of the Serbs – a nation of martyrs. This covenantal relationship was often likened to that made between God and the Hebrew people. Both Serbs and Jews had to suffer in order to