Genocides in the Twentieth and the Twenty-First Centuries

An excellent, comprehensive sourcebook on modern and ancient genocides: incitement and resistance, perpetrators and victims, cultural memory and representation, international institutions and laws, and the influence of mass killings on music, literature, and art. Includes a large selection of primary sources.

An important text that influenced the direction and aims of the scholarship undertaken by researchers in Genocide Studies in the latter part of the twentieth century. Kuper examines the legal definition of genocide as articulated in the the UN Convention on Genocide (1948).

An invaluable introduction to the subject of genocide, explaining its history from pre-modern times to the present day, with a wide variety of case studies.

The book examines the differing interpretations of genocide from psychology, sociology, anthropology and political science and analyzes the influence of race, ethnicity, nationalism and gender on genocides.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this in-depth book examines genocide from the Iron Age to the recent past: Iron Age warfare, the end of the Ottoman Empire, Stalin and the Soviet Union, genocide and religion, Japanese military brutality during World War II, and how we remember the past.

Through powerful first-person accounts, scholarly analysis, and compelling narratives, the book details the causes and ramifications of the genocides perpetrated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

A comparative analysis of the genocides, politicides and ethnic cleansing of the twentieth century, which are estimated to have cost upwards of forty million lives

The first comprehensive survey of the history and sociology of genocide committed from antiquity to the present. 

The authors present a typology of genocide according to the motives of the perpetrator: to eliminate a perceived threat; to spread terror among real or potential enemies; to acquire economic wealth; or to implement a belief, theory, or ideology.

A collection of in-depth articles by leading genocide studies scholars in North America and Europe that examine gendered discourses, practices and experiences of ethnic cleansing and genocide in the twentieth century.

It includes essays focusing on the genocide in Rwanda, the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire, the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing and genocide in the former Yugoslavia.

A major international journal dedicated to the study of the Holocaust and other genocides, containing research articles, interpretive essays, and book reviews. Published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Peer-reviewed.

An interdisciplinary and comparative approach to the study of genocide and related topics, including crimes against humanity, war crimes and violence against civilians, and humanitarian intervention. Peer-reviewed.

Scholarly analyses of the multiple dimensions or processes of colonial destruction and their aftermaths in Canada.

Various acts of genocidal violence are covered, including residential schools, repressive legal or governmental controls, ecological destruction, and disease spread.

Woolford analyzes the formulation of the “Indian problem” as a policy concern in the United States and Canada. He examines how the Indigenous boarding schools were implemented in Manitoba and New Mexico through complex chains that included multiple government offices, a variety of staff, Indigenous peoples, and even nonhuman factors such as poverty, disease, and space.

A comprehensive, growing collection of audio-visual interviews with witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides, including the Nanjing Massacre, genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Armenian Genocide, Guatemalan Genocide, and the Cambodian Genocide.

The testimonies preserved by the VHA were recorded in sixty-two countries and forty-one languages.

The document collection is the largest single source of information on the atrocities committed against the Turkish Armenians between 1915 and 1916 by the Young Turk regime. 

Also known as The British Parliamentary Blue Book on The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, the dispatches were collected by Lord Bryce (1838–1922) on the request of the British government to gather information on the genocide. 

A diverse array of photographs secretly captured by Wegner (1886–1978), a pacifist and an officer in the medical corps of the German army.

His archive is a major visual evidence for studying the reality and extent of the devastations inflicted by the Turkish government on the Armenian minority.

A groundbreaking study of the Armenian Genocide, derived from archival documents and first-person accounts.

Awarded the Raphael Lemkin Prize for the best scholarly book on genocide by the Institute for Genocide Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY Graduate Center.

In a study that compares the major attempts at genocide in world history, Melson creates a framework that links genocide to revolution and war.

He focuses on the plights of Jews after the fall of Imperial Germany and of Armenians after the fall of the Ottoman as well as attempted genocides in the Soviet Union and Cambodia.

A definitive narrative history of the genocide, analyzing the nationalist myths, propaganda, and denial to provide a critical account of why the atrocities of 1915–16 were committed.

Suny explores the psychological factors as well as the international and domestic events that led to genocide, drawing on archival documents and eyewitness accounts.

An exhaustive introduction to the study and scholarship on the Holocaust, with detailed essays organized topically into five parts, from examining the broader contextual conditions that preceded the Holocaust to its aftermath and the impact on politics and ethics, education and religion, national identities and international relations, the prospects for genocide prevention, and the defense of human rights.

A curated list of the artifacts and the documents housed in the collections of the museum, arranged by topic and types of items, including resistance, concentration camps, diaries, and photographs, and others. Many artifacts are digitized and can be accessed online through the list, as indicated under the “Digital Availability” heading.

Levi (1919–1987), a research chemist in Milan Italy and a member of an anti-fascist group, was captured by the Germans and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Originally published under the title If This Is a Man in 1947, the memoir and its sequel, The Truce (later retitled The Reawakening in 1958) chronicle Levi’s story of surviving concentration camp life.

Includes each of the versions of Anne’s world-famous diary including the “A” and “B” diaries and the definitive text edited by Mirjam Pressler.

The anthology also contains Anne’s letters, family and personal photographs, reminiscences, daydreams, essays and notebook of favourite quotes. Scholarly essays explore such topics as the diarist’s life, her family, and the publication history of her diary.

Among the conditions that made the mass extermination of the Holocaust possible, according to Bauman, the most decisive factor was modernity itself. Bauman’s provocative interpretation counters the tendency to reduce the Holocaust to an episode in Jewish history, or to one that cannot be repeated in the West precisely because of the progressive triumph of modern civilization.

A comprehensive, multifaceted picture both of the destructive dynamic of the Nazi leadership and of the attitudes and behaviour of ordinary Germans as the persecution of the Jews spiraled into total genocide.

A selection of digitized primary sources and artifacts from the archives of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, a research institute and the largest repository of printed documents and other original historical materials associated with the Democratic Kampuchea regime.

A collection of eyewitness accounts from the survivors of the genocide.

The book documents the atrocities and the aftermath through personal interviews with victims and perpetrators, discussions with international and NGO officials, journalistic accounts, and government sources.

It also examines the failures of the international community to confront the genocide.

Chandler, a world-renowned historian of Cambodia, examines the Khmer Rouge phenomenon by focusing on one of its key institutions, the secret prison and interrogation centre outside Phnom Penh known by the code name “S–21.”

A comprehensive, growing collection of audio-visual interviews with witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides, including the Nanjing Massacre, genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Armenian Genocide, Guatemalan Genocide, and the Cambodian Genocide.

The collection includes indexed and archived video testimonies of witnesses of the Guatemalan Genocide, gathered by Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala (FAFG), a Guatemalan forensics organization.

Examines the legal and historical case that genocide occurred in Guatemala and analyzes the events of 1981–1983 through the legal definition of genocide and crimes against humanity.

In this compelling and thorough study, Cigar sets out to prove that genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina is not simply the unintentional result of civil war nor the unfortunate by-product of rabid nationalism.

Genocide is, he contends, the planned and direct consequence of conscious policy decisions taken by the Serbian establishment in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

A critical analysis of the the largest single war crime committed in Europe since the end of World War II, examining the failure of the Dutch UN troops to prevent the massacre from occurring.

Bećirević, Professor of Security Studies at the University of Sarajevo and a survivor of the genocide that occurred in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 through 1995, examines the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Serbs against Bosnian Muslims, arguing that the atrocities fully meet the criteria for genocide established after World War II by the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948.

She also contextualizes the East Bosnian program of atrocities with respect to broader scholarly debates about the nature of genocide.

A comprehensive, growing collection of audio-visual interviews with witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides, including the Nanjing Massacre, genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Armenian Genocide, Guatemalan Genocide, and the Cambodian Genocide.

The testimonies preserved by the VHA were recorded in sixty-two countries and forty-one languages.

The only eyewitness account published in English of eyewitness account of the refugee camps in Zaire, where many Hutu refugees were trampled and murdered.

Others died from hunger, exhaustion, and sickness, or simply vanished, ignored by the international community and betrayed by humanitarian organizations.

Amidst this brutality, day-to-day suffering, and desperate survival, Umutesi managed to organize the camps to improve the quality of life for women and children.

The author is recognized as one of Africa’s best-known intellectuals. He analyzes the historical, geographical, and political forces that made it possible for so many Hutu to turn so brutally on their neighbors.

He finds answers in the nature of political identities generated during colonialism, in the failures of the nationalist revolution to transcend these identities, and in regional demographic and political currents that reach well beyond Rwanda.

The most widely cited academic examination of the genocide. Prunier demonstrates how the struggle for cultural dominance and subjugation among the Hutu and Tutsi was exploited by Europeans.

An ethnographic account of collective violence in which the doctrine of ahimsa—or nonviolence—and the closely associated practices of vegetarianism became implicated by legitimating what they formally disavow.

Ghassem-Fachandi demonstrates how the vegetarian sensibilities of Hindus and the language of sacrifice were manipulated to provoke disgust against Muslims and mobilize the aspiring middle classes across caste and class differences in the name of Hindu nationalism.

Explains what lies behind the conflict in Western Sudan, its origins, causes, and relevance to the future of Africa. The third edition features a new chapter covering events through mid-2008.

The political, economic, environmental, and social factors that gave rise to the current humanitarian crisis are discussed in detail, as is the course of Darfur’s rebellion, its brutal suppression by the Sudanese government, and the lawless brigands known as janjawid.

This book is comprised of essays from contributors who were involved in designing the Darfur Atrocities Documentation.

Based on their investigation, US Secretary of State Colin Powell formally announced that “genocide has occurred in Darfur and may still be occurring.”

Other contributors are US government and nongovernmental organization (NGO) officials involved in the genesis of the project as well as the analysis of the data and numerous scholars, not all of whom were directly involved with the project, who critique aspects of the documentation project as well as its significance.

A wealth of material documenting the violence and repression that the Rohingya people are currently experiencing under the Myanmar government.

News reports, dispatches, and videos published by Human Rights Watch, a research and advocacy organization that monitors abuses in more than seventy countries around the world.

An interactive exhibition documenting how the Rohingya, a religious and ethnic minority in Burma, became targets of a sustained campaign of genocide. It includes photographic evidence and personal stories chronicling the Rohingya experience in Burma.

he Rohingya are a Muslim group who live in Rakhine state (formerly Arakan state) in western Myanmar (Burma), a majority Buddhist country. According to the United Nations, they are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.

They suffer routine discrimination at the hands of neighboring Buddhist Rakhine groups, are denied citizenship rights in the country of their birth, and also face severe limitations on many aspects of an ordinary life, such as marriage or movement around the country.

Provides a history of the ethnic persecution of the Rohingyas in Myanmar and their disputed ethnic and national identity.

It focuses on how the crisis has morphed into a geopolitical encounter between Bangladesh, China, India, and Myanmar. It further explores the moral, ethnographic, and public policy issues in the humanitarian response to the crisis of the Rohingya people.