Genocide: the deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group. The crime against humanity, that is genocide, has plagued the world for thousands of years. Although there have been many genocides since the beginning of time, the word "genocide" was first used in 1944. Polish Jewish scholar Rachael Lampkin coined the term first. The term genocide derives from the Latin (genos=race, cide=killing) and means literally the killing or murder of an entire tribe or people. The most prolific genocide to date is the Holocaust. The Nazi Genocide of the Jewish people lasted from 1933-1945. The book Night is based on an account of a Jewish boy, being dehumanized by the holocaust. All genocides throughout history have ended up with mass murders of a civilian race.
Genocide is not a new 20th century phenomenon. Not all known instances of genocide have been recorded, but genocides have occurred many times throughout time. In 1637, the Pequot Indians were the unfortunate recipients of genocidal wrath when the Colonists exterminated them, and their village was set on fire in Connecticut. The colonists shot everybody; men, women, and children. In the 19th century, the Aboriginal population of Tasmania was annihilated. The Native Americans at Wounded Knee were another example of genocide. The Armenians, in 1921, were also the unlucky bystanders of the genocidal tendencies of the Turks. Ten years later, the Jews were being exterminated like ants in Germany. Genocide still happens to this day. From 1990-1995 the Bosnian Serbs committed genocide on the Rwandan Muslims and Tutsis in Rwanda, slaughtering thousands. As late as 1998, Yugoslavia was committing genocide to the Ethnic Albanians of Kosovo. The Serbs called it an "ethnic cleansing". Where will the next genocide occur?
The holocaust was so terrifying, so horrible, and so destructive, that the crime that Hitler and the Nazis committed deserved a new name. The word genocide was created because word that previously described it, "mass-murder", did not adequately describe what happened to the Jews because it failed to account for the crime, which arose solely from racial, national or religious considerations and had nothing to do with the conduct of war. The holocaust is the most noteworthy act of genocide because it was committed to a large religious group, in a technologically advanced and modern country such as Germany, and was systematically carried through with the collaboration of the German government, industries, and train systems. Many holocaust victims documented their horrific experiences. A few turned their accounts of the holocaust into literature. Ann Frank wrote a published diary about the holocaust. Ellie Wiesel wrote a book called Night, based on his experiences of the Holocaust.
Ellie Wiesel, the author of Night, writes a highly graphic and realistic account of living in the middle of the Holocaust. Wiesel goes into much detail during many instances about holocaust life, luring the reader into his ...