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

An important text in the study of genocide. Horowitz asserts that genocide is not a sporadic or random event, nor is it necessarily linked to economic development or social progress. Instead, he argues that genocide is a special sort of mass destruction conducted with the approval of the state apparatus.

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.

Merasty was one of an estimated 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Metis children who were taken from their families and sent to government-funded, church-run schools, where they were subjected to a policy of “aggressive assimilation.” As Merasty recounts, these schools did more than attempt to mold children in the ways of white society. They were taught to be ashamed of their Indigenous heritage and, as he experienced, often suffered physical and sexual abuse.

An important collection of essays that expands the geographic, demographic, and analytic scope of the term genocide to encompass the effects of colonialism and settler colonialism in North America, including Indigenous boarding school systems imposed by both the Canadian and American governments on Indigenous children.

Published in collaboration with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR), the book gathers key material from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada reports to present the essential history and legacy of residential schools.

Using previously unreleased government documents, historian John S. Milloy provides a full picture of the history and reality of the residential school system.

The book demonstrates that the residential system was chronically underfunded and often mismanaged, and documents in detail and how this affected the health, education, and well-being of entire generations of Indigenous children.

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.

A collection of recorded stories shared by the survivors of the Holodomor. The interviews were recorded on video and include captions in English. Transcriptions in both Ukrainian and English accompany each testimonial. The witnesses describe both survival and death from starvation, food being confiscated from the suffering families, and the intimidation that the Soviet government perpetuated against the farmers. The sponsors of the project, created to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the famine, was sponsored by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Ukrainian World Congress, with many supporting partners.  

Naimark challenges the widely held notion that Stalin's crimes do not constitute genocide (which the United Nations defines as the premeditated killing of a group of people because of their race, religion, or inherent national qualities). He analyzes Stalin's systematic destruction of Soviet citizens in light of other genocides in history, from the liquidation and repression of the so-called kulaks, the Ukrainian famine, the purge of nationalities to the Great Terror.

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 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.

A collection of testimonies from the survivors of the genocide.

In this comprehensive study of the Pol Pot regime, the author (Professor of History and Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University) describes the violent origins, social context and course of the revolution, providing an answer to the question of why a group of Cambodian intellectuals imposed genocide on their own country.

Hinton (Associate Professor of Anthropology, Rutgers University) focuses on the devastation that took place in Cambodia from April 1975 to January 1979 under the Khmer Rouge in order to explore why mass murder happens and what motivates perpetrators to kill.

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.

An online exhibition organized by the University of South Florida Libraries including drawings by Darfuri children living in refugee camps in Eastern Chad. They represent eyewitness accounts of atrocities committed by the Janjaweed militia group and Sudanese government forces as they attacked unarmed civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan from 2003 through 2006.

The book looks at the role of states and international organizations in their attempts to prevent the genocide in Darfur, from early warning to limited action in the field of humanitarian assistance, mediation, sanctions and peace-keeping.

Studies the crisis in Darfur within the context of the history of Sudan and examines the world’s response to that crisis.

This updated edition of this important book contains essays by prolific genocide scholars from a range of disciplines (social history, art history, military history, African studies, media studies, literature, political science, and sociology) to provide a cohesive and nuanced understanding of the international response to the crisis in Western Sudan.

Contributing authors are Eric Reeves, Frank Chalk, Eric Markusen, and Samuel Totten, among other academics.

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.

The report, published on April 3, 2022, details the violations committed by the occupying Russian forces against Ukrainian civilians in occupied areas of the Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Kyiv between February 27 and March 14, 2022.