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The Genocide Portal

Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part.

In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.

The Political Instability Task Force estimated that 43 genocides occurred between 1956 and 2016, resulting in about 50 million deaths. The UNHCR estimated that a further 50 million had been displaced by such episodes of violence up to 2008. Genocide, especially large-scale genocide, is widely considered to signify the epitome of human evil. Genocide has been referred to as the "crime of crimes". (Full article...)

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Exterior of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum viewed from 14th St. SW.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is a national institution situated in a prominent location adjacent to The National Mall in Washington, DC (in between 14th and 15th streets SW); however, it is not a constituent institution of the Smithsonian Institution. The museum is dedicated to documenting, studying, and interpreting the history of the Holocaust. It also serves as the United States' official memorial to the millions of European Jews and others killed during the Holocaust under directives of Nazi Germany. While the United States government provided some funding for both the building and continued operations of the museum, a majority of the funding comes from private sources, Jewish movie director Steven Spielberg being amongst the most notable donors. The street that the museum is located on is named Raoul Wallenberg Place, after the Swedish diplomat who is believed to have saved 100,000 Jews in Hungary during the Second World War. The museum building sits on land that previously belonged to the United States Department of Agriculture. Two of the three annex buildings that sat on this property were demolished to build a museum whose design would be wholly about the Holocaust.

The US Congress authorized the creation of the museum in 1980. The building was designed by James Ingo Freed, of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. Though the building on the outside is rather monumental with clean lines, in keeping with the large governmental buildings in the immediate context, the interior was meant to provoke more intimate and visceral responses.

The facilities house a number of exhibitions, artworks, publications, and artifacts relating to the Holocaust. The museum collects and preserves material evidence, distributes educational materials, and produces public programming. The Holocaust Museum also holds annual Holocaust commemorations and remembrances.

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Israel W. Charny (born 1931) is an Israeli psychologist and genocide scholar. He is the editor of two-volume Encyclopedia of Genocide, and executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. (Full article...)

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"First they came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up."

— Martin Niemöller, from the poem First they came ...

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Selected images

Image 1Corpse of Soviet Famine victims transported to the cemetery. (Kherson)
Image 2Mummified victims of the Rwandan Genocide (1994) at Murambi Technical School. Photograph taken in July 2001 by Emmanuel Cattier.
Image 3Picture showing Armenians killed during the Armenian Genocide. Image taken from Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, written by Henry Morgenthau, Sr. and published in 1918.
Image 4Original caption states: "Deep gashes delivered by the killers are visible in the skulls that fill one room at the Murambi School." Aftermath of Rwandan genocide.
Image 5"A relic of the Armenian massacres at Erzingan", image taken from US Ambassador Henry Morgenthau's memoirs (1918).
Image 6Rwandan refugee camp in Zaire.
Image 7Gas canisters and hair of Holocaust victims from a Nazi concentration camp.
Image 8The bodies of the dead lie awaiting burial in a mass grave at the camp. (Bergen-Belsen concentration camp)
Image 9Bones of anti-Nazi German women still are in the crematoriums in the German concentration camp at Weimar (Buchenwald), Germany, taken by the 3rd U.S. Army. Prisoners of all nationalities were tortured and killed. 04/14/1945
Image 10Emaciated corpses of children in Warsaw Ghetto.

Did you know...

... that the first use of the phrase "crimes against humanity" in diplomacy was in a May 1915 Entente declaration condemning the Armenian Genocide?
... that historian Dirk Moses argues that The Problems of Genocide include "blinding us to other types of humanly caused civilian death"?
... that in Open Wounds, Vicken Cheterian argues that "by censoring the Armenian Genocide, its impact, traces and consequences do not simply disappear. It continues in various forms"?
... that in South Africa's genocide case against Israel, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to "punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza?
... that in his book, Uğur Ümit Üngör argues that the Armenian Genocide contributed to The Making of Modern Turkey?
... that the 1914 Greek deportations have been described as "a trial run for the Armenian Genocide"?

Genocide lists

International prosecution of genocide (ad hoc tribunals)

It is commonly accepted that, at least since World War II, genocide has been illegal under customary international law as a peremptory norm, as well as under conventional international law. Acts of genocide are generally difficult to establish, for prosecution, since intent, demonstrating a chain of accountability, has to be established. International criminal courts and tribunals function primarily because the states involved are incapable or unwilling to prosecute crimes of this magnitude themselves.

For more information see:

Genocide: International prosecution of genocide (ad hoc tribunals)

International prosecution of genocide (International Criminal Court)

To date all international prosecutions for genocide have been brought in specially convened international tribunals. Since 2002, the International Criminal Court can exercise its jurisdiction if national courts are unwilling or unable to investigate or prosecute genocide, thus being a "court of last resort," leaving the primary responsibility to exercise jurisdiction over alleged criminals to individual states. Due to the United States concerns over the ICC, the United States prefers to continue to use specially convened international tribunals for such investigations and potential prosecutions.^[1]

For more information see:

Genocide: International prosecution of genocide (International Criminal Court)

References
^ "Statement by Carolyn Willson, Minister Counselor for International Legal Affairs, on the Report of the ICC, in the UN General Assembly" (PDF). (123 KiB) November 23 2005