Comparative Analysis of the Genocidal Process: Holocaust and the Genocide against the Tutsi

Introduction

Genocide is a denial of the right of existence of an entire group of human beings. Such denial shocks human conscience and devalues the humanity of such groups. The term “genocide” was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), a Polish-Jewish jurist, who combined the Greek word genos, for race or tribe, with -cide, derived from the Latin word for killing. Lemkin introduced this new concept to describe the Nazi policy of systematic destruction of European Jews. In proposing this new term, Lemkin had in mind a coordinated plan aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. He saw genocide as:

the effort to destroy the essential foundations of the life of national groups whose objectives would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions of culture, language, national feelings, religion, economic existence, of national groups and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. (Totten & Parson, 2009, pp. 3–4)

While there are various definitions of genocide, the internationally accepted definition is found in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNCPPCG), which was approved by the UN General Assembly on December 9, 1948 following the Holocaust. According to that convention, genocide means “any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” (UNCPPCG, 1948, Article 2). ¹

Although many cases of group-targeted violence have occurred, international bodies affiliated to the UN have recognized only three genocides in the course of human history: the Holocaust committed in Germany, in countries of Europe and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) from 1941 to 1945; the Bosnian genocide committed in Bosnia–Herzegovina during the Bosnian War of 1991–1999; and the genocide against the Tutsi committed in Rwanda in 1994. As the Holocaust and the genocide against the Tutsi targeted an “ethnic” group, it is possible to analyze similarities and differences of their genocidal process.

Preparation

In times of crisis, all cultures intending to commit genocide distinguish people in terms of ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality. Society is divided into classes: “Us” versus “Them.” According to Gregory Stanton, this practice is called classification, a primary technique of dividing society and creating a power struggle between groups. It is a decisive prerequisite for genocide. In dividing the population, Jean-Michel Lecomte (2001) states that “them” are defined as a group of persons who were so radically different and that they had to be exterminated (p. 47).

Regarding the Rwandan history, Hutu and Tutsi populations were defined (or redefined, as many argue) as opposite groups. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Tutsi were classified by colonists and missionaries as a non-African race of Caucasian descent and were depicted as aliens in Rwanda (Dannebaum, 2009, p. 79). The Rwandan political leaders further perpetuated this depiction of Tutsi people during the First Republic (1961–1973) and Second Republic (1973–1994) following independence in 1962. The leaders of these regimes considered Hutu to be more Rwandan and Tutsi to be invaders; these leaders were constantly, almost obsessively, concerned with keeping updated versions of individuals’ ethnic profiles (Mukimbiri, 2005, p. 5).

Whereas the Hutu and Tutsi classifications were based almost solely on race, that of the Jews was based on race, religion, and culture. In Germany, citizens were divided into “Aryans” and others, with the latter being “Jews”, “foreigners”, “gypsies”, and “anyone else who did not conform to Hitler’s definition of a Jew” (Stanton, 1998) ² . While Hutu hated Tutsi because they believed them to be invaders, German Nazis hated Jews with a demonological anti-Semitism. Nazi leaders and soldiers who clubbed, whipped, shot, starved, and systematically gassed Jewish people to death, saw this population as the source of all evil, dangerous criminals who plotted to rule Germany and the world. Often, Nazi paranoia was expressed in pseudo-biological terms: “The Jews were racial inferiors, sub-humans who defiled Aryan blood and corrupted European culture” (Perry & Frederick, 2002, p. 1). In addition, Christians have historically associated Jews with deicide and according to the interpretations of Christian Gospel, the Jews are depicted as “the Christ killers.” The crime of “deicide,” of “murdering God” turned the Jews into the embodiment of evil, a “criminal people” (ibid., p. 18). However, the Gospel does not actually present Jews standing united in opposition to Christ; Jewish people as a whole did not crucify Him, only certain religious leaders and rougher elements of the population did so.

Although there was much cohesion and integration among Rwanda’s Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa groups, ³ colonists ascribed different physical and behavioral characteristics to each of these groups so as to distinguish them from one another. Although these groups shared the same founding myth, traditional religion, social and political organization, and language, lived side-by-side and often intermarried, the colonists differentiated them in stark terms:

The Mutwa presents a number of well-defined somatic characteristics: he is small, chunky, muscular and very hairy with a monkey like flat face and a huge nose; he is quite similar to the apes that he chases in the forest. The Bahutu are generally short and thick-set with a big head, a jovial expression, a wide nose and enormous lips. They are extroverts who like to laugh and lead a simple life. The Mututsi of good race has nothing of the Negro apart from his colour. He is usually very tall, 1.80 m at least, often 1.90 m or more. He is very thin, his features are very fine: a high brow, thin nose, and fine lips framing beautiful shiny teeth. Gifted with a vivacious intelligence, the Tutsi displays a refinement of feelings which is rare among primitive people. He is a natural born leader capable of extreme self-control and of calculated goodwill. (Prunier, 2005, p. 5)

These definitions of Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa were calculated to ridicule and dehumanize some individuals and praise others.

Similarly, historical literature documents how Jews were discriminated against because of their physical qualities and differences. It was often assumed that “Jews have large hook-noses, thick lips, dark-colored beady eyes” (Rowe, 2011, p. 7). In European culture, prior to the twentieth century, red hair was commonly identified as the distinguishing negative Jewish trait (Leonid, 2010). Physically, Jews were portrayed as menacing, hirsute, with boils, warts, and other deformities, and sometimes with horns, cloven hoofs, and tails (Jensen, 2006, p. 156). Such imagery was used during the Nazi propaganda claiming the Jews belonging to an “inferior race.” ⁴ In addition, the portrayal of Jews as enemies of Christianity constitutes the most damaging anti-Jewish stereotype and they were often depicted as satanic consorts (Wistrich, 1999, p. 50), or as devils themselves and “incarnations of absolute evil” (Gerstenfeld, 2007). These stereotypes were intended to divide and cause hatred, jealousy, and animosity between the populations. They became a foundation upon which conflicts and genocide flourished in Rwanda and Germany.

Furthermore, identity cards were issued and used both in Rwanda and Germany as a tool of segregation. The identity cards which mentioned the ethnic group reinforced ethnicity practices in Rwanda. For the Jews, they were given identity cards with the mark “J” against their names. “J” stands for “Juden” meaning “Jew.” They were also identified by the Star of David ⁵ and prior to the Holocaust, they were required to wear this identifying mark on armbands or sewn onto their clothing. This mark was placed on individual Jews as well as on businesses, shops, and workshops owned or operated by the Jews (Lecomte, 2001, p. 48). In Rwanda, identity cards served as an ethnic recording system and these universally assigned cards, which individuals were obligated to carry at all times, forced all Rwandans to publicly declare their ethnic groups. Government officials used these cards to facilitate their administrative work and regulate even the most minor movements a citizen made beyond his native hill. The identify card was the Rwandese version of the Star of David.

In both the German and Rwandan cases, dehumanization was a crucial element of the genocidal process. Dehumanization denies persons individual identities and is a necessary precursor to genocide as it renders pity for the “other” impossible and positions the extermination of such others as a rational action. In Rwanda, Tutsi were called inyenzi (cockroach) and this term became ingrained in the public sphere through the actions of print media sources such as Kangura, ⁶ hate radio such as Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), ⁷ and outspoken politicians claiming to defend Hutu power, all of which referred to Tutsi human beings as cockroaches. All Tutsi men, women, and children were no longer citizens of a nation but cockroaches. In the same way, all Tutsi were gradually associated with being spies of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) during the liberation war (1990–1994), qualifying them as enemies to be killed. To spread bigotry and hatred of the Tutsi population, an editorial in Kangura argued that the Tutsi, like a cockroach, use the cover of darkness to commit crimes. The editorial was titled “A Cockroach Cannot Bring Forth a Butterfly” (Ngeze, 1993, p. 17). Under the genocidal government, all Tutsi became inyenzi and equating Tutsi with cockroaches meant that Hutu would not have to think twice about killing and attempting to exterminate such vile, dirty, and sneaky beings. From politicians to the ordinary farmers, Hutu united to eliminate the cockroaches, working together to exterminate their Tutsi friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family members. Many perpetrators who confessed during Gacaca courts have spoken of “wiping out the cockroaches” during the killings of Tutsi in the genocide, evidence that the process of dehumanization had been successful in Rwanda (Tiefenbrun, 2010, p. 124).

In Germany, the Jews were called the inferior race and accused of being the reason behind all of Germany’s economic and social problems. Whereas, the Tutsi were taken as dangerous creatures, the Jews under the Third Reich (1933–1944) were taken for lice, typhus, vermin, and Koch bacilli (Institute of Research and Dialogue for Peace, 2006, p. 25). The Nazi government decreed that Jews were an “inferior race” and that is how they were treated; Jewish businesses were boycotted and Christians were not allowed to marry Jews. Under the Nazi race laws, even long-standing Christians were condemned to death if they were considered to have sufficient Jewish ancestry to be legally characterized as Jews (Bazyler & Feinstein, 2008). Jews could not move freely throughout the country and strict curfews were enforced upon them. Any Germans who sympathized with the Jews were also punished. As written by John A. Berry and Carol Pott Berry, “for the leaders of the First and Second Republics in Rwanda, as for the leaders of the Third Reich in Germany, the incitement of racial hatred was a deliberate political technique used to rally their supporters and distract attention from the real domestic problems of the country” (Berry & Berry, 1999, p. 3).

Historically, genocides have only been planned and executed under state governments and it would arguably be impossible for media outlets such as press organizations and radio stations to spread hostile, divisive, and dehumanizing propaganda against one group of society without the tacit or open approval and support of the state. In Germany, the Schutzstaffel (SS), ⁸ Hitler’s special guard of policemen and soldiers, developed a plan to exterminate the Jews. Some of its officers were anti-Semites who accepted the view that the Jews were Germany’s most dangerous enemies. The German army assisted the Nazis in capturing victims. Volunteers from conquered Eastern European countries served as auxiliary police and as guards in the camps. Occasionally, local mobs in Poland, the Baltic States, and the Ukraine killed their Jewish neighbors, with German encouragement. According to Samuel Totten and William S. Parsons (2009, pp. 129–130), “the Holocaust was masterminded and implemented by the Schutzstaffel.” While Hitler’s special guard of policemen and soldiers were the main actors of the Holocaust, extremist Hutu and militiamen (Interahamwe) committed genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. These extremists attended trainings offered in every Rwandan former commune and these trainings were accompanied by the distribution of arms to civilians in the whole country.

Throughout both the genocidal processes, extremists created divisions between targeted groups and other citizens. Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda and laws forbid intermarriage and social interaction. In Rwanda, the Hutu Ten Commandments of 1990 forbade intermarriage and social interaction with Tutsi, and threatened anybody who would disobey them. The first commandment states: “We shall treat as a traitor any Hutu who marries a Tutsi woman, who will have a Tutsi woman as a concubine, who will employ a Tutsi woman as a secretary or who will help her in any way possible.” The fifth commandment adds: “Any important post, political, administrative, economic, and military and of security must be given to Hutu alone.” The seventh commandment clarifies: “The Rwandan army must be composed of Hutu only.” Commandments nine and ten call for national and international Hutu solidarity and ideology (Ngeze, 1990, p. 8). They clearly threaten and warn any Hutu who would contravene these directives and the Hutu extremists turned this hostility into acts of permanent aggression against the Tutsi. In addition, Jacques Morel (2010, p. 206) expressed that the national radio and the RTLM broadcasted every day that the Tutsi and the RPF wanted the death of the Hutu. Therefore, the Tutsi were regarded as eminent enemies responsible for the problems of society and likewise, Hitler and his government blamed the Jews for every conceivable issue in Germany.

Execution

From 1933 to 1945, the Jews became victims of numerous anti-Jewish discriminatory and divisive laws (Rittner et al., 2000, p. 37). Many laws were passed to exclude the Jews from society and the comprehensive anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws were introduced in September 1935 which denied their basic human and citizen’s rights in particular, leading to their extermination in what is commonly known as the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” Jews were condemned to death without a single exception.

The genocide against the Tutsi is among the well-planned genocides of the twentieth century. Expert and witness analyses of the genocide against the Tutsi emphasize that “it was extremely well structured and centralized” (Morel, 2010, p. 628). During the execution of the genocide, attacks were initiated through the use of those firearms by gendarmes, policemen, military or militias. Grenades were used especially in closed areas. In most cases, militias attacked Tutsi with traditional weapons. The militias stopped killings in the evening, leaving bodies to the dogs and sometimes were thrown in mass graves.

Throughout the genocide, the Interahamwe posted roadblocks across the country. At the roadblocks, identity cards made it easy for the killers to know who was a Tutsi or a Hutu. An identity card with the word Tutsi was like a death certificate. To facilitate the work of the killers, lists and names of the victims had been drawn beforehand. Jacques Morel (2010, p. 653) revealed that “there had been lists from the moment they were passing from house to house from the first days in order to kill people. And from 7 April 1994 the organizers distributed lists of names to the killers.”

During the genocide, Tutsi women married to Hutu were also killed. Killers argued that they would produce Tutsi children, regardless of the ethnic group of their husbands (Human Rights Watch, 1999, p. 345). Some of these women were even killed by their own Hutu husbands. Such animosity shows the magnitude of cruelty and extreme hatred with which the genocide against the Tutsi was committed. A great number of ordinary people participated in the genocide against the Tutsi. After militia attacked Tutsi, peasants often formed a circle to surround the victims, killed those trying to escape, finish off the wounded, and looted the bodies of all valuable objects. After killings, the killers were rewarded with drinks and have the right to take home the loot from their victims. The peasants ate cows of the Tutsi and looted their homes freely.

The Holocaust was also well planned. On July 31, 1941, Hermann Göring ⁹ gave written authorization to SS-Obergruppenführer (Senior Group Leader) Reinhard Heydrich, ¹⁰ chief of the Reich Main Security Officer (RSHA), to prepare and submit a plan for a “total solution of the Jewish question” in territories under German control and to coordinate the participation of all involved government organizations (Browning, 2007, p. 315). On the same date, Adolf Eichmann, ¹¹ at the request of Reinhard Heydrich, stated:

Fulfilling the requirements of the decree of 24 January 1939 asking you to adopt the most favourable solution to the Jewish question according to the circumstances, through emigration or evacuation; I am now instructing you to take all the necessary preparatory measures, including organization, execution and material means for obtaining a total solution to the Jewish question in the German zone of influence in Europe. All the other government organs must cooperate with you in this. In addition, I am requesting you to give me very soon a general plan on the preparatory measures to take regarding organization, execution and the necessary means to realize the desired final solution of the Jewish question. (Rutembesa, 2009, p. 28)

On November 29, 1941, Heydrich organized the Wannsee Conference to be held on January 20, 1942, at which the Nazis would discuss “the last solution of the Jewish question.” The aim of the Wannsee Conference was to devise ways and means of accelerating the rate of exterminating Jews in Europe. Among the possibilities, a report made in 30 copies declared shooting and gassing as solutions. It is later on that “Gas chambers” were invented and used. The “Wannsee Conference” evaluated the number of Jews to be eliminated at 11 million, including those of the territories not yet occupied. It underlined:

During the final solution, the Jews of the East should be mobilized for the work with the desired aim. The Jews who are capable of working, divided into big columns of workers, separated by sex, will be brought to construct roads in those territories, which will without doubt naturally reduce their number. Finally, it will be necessary to treat accordingly those who will remain, because there will be those who resist, and who will be a gem for a new Jewish generation if we leave them free. (Protocol of the Wannsee Conference, 1942, p. 6)

When Schutzstaffel leaders prepared to participate in Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, they created four mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen for the purpose of liquidating the Jews. Killers in these four squads shot and buried in mass graves between one and two million Jews during the course of the war on the Eastern front. However, their methods were considered slow and inefficient, particularly if all 11 million European Jews were to die. Hence, Herman Göring placed the formulation of what was to become the Nazi’s final solution to the Jewish problem in the hands of Heydrich, the most powerful Schutzstaffel leader after Heinrich Heinmler. Heydrich’s plan was to concentrate all the Jews under German control in Eastern European ghettos and labor camps, where those capable of doing slave labor for the Third Reich would be worked to their death. Those who could not work or who were not needed would be sent to special camps for immediate extermination (Totten & Parsons, 2009, pp. 130–131). The plan was submitted to the conference of top Nazi officials at Wannsee and was accepted.

The Jews in the ghettos and forced labor camps were overcrowded, overworked, and underfed. In 1944, the Schutzstaffel shut down the last of the ghettos and sent the rest to camps in Germany or extermination centres. All the six extermination centres were on Polish territory and these centres ended the lives of three million Jews. Four of these centres Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were strictly killing centers, where victims were gassed immediately they arrived. The Nazis already possessed the technical expertise, having employed poison gas to kill Germans in a “euthanasia” program between 1939 and 1941 (Totten & Parsons, 2009, p. 131). The extermination centres of Auschwitz and Majdanek were both killing and slave labor camps. By the time the strong enough were selected for work in various military industries, the rest were consigned to the gas chambers and firing squads. Others were subjected to painful medical experiments.

When Soviet forces overran Poland in late 1944, the Schutzstaffel sent the survivors of the various camps to Germany, where they were dumped in already overcrowded concentration camps and slave labor centres. As they were deprived of the most elementary needs, thousands died of malnutrition, tuberculosis, typhus, and other diseases. At the end, the liberating allied armies found the camps littered with unburied corpses, and many of those still alive were too ill to be saved.

As the perpetrators of the genocide against the Tutsi often described their violent actions through euphemism (such as referring to killing as work (gukora) or cleaning (gutemaibihuru), the German Nazis also used deceptive phrases to mislead global spectators. Positive stories were fabricated as part of planned deception. One booklet printed in 1941 glowingly reported that in occupied Poland, the German authorities had put Jews to work, build clean hospitals, set up soup kitchens for Jews, and provided them with newspapers and vocational training (Luckert & Bachrach, 2011, p. 130). These were lies spread to make sure that the outside world did not learn about what was happening. When the Jews were being deported, they were also deceived about the intentions of their killers. Steven Luckert and Susan Bachrach wrote:

Prior to the deportations of Jews from their homes to ghettos and transit camps, and from the ghettos and camps to the gas chambers at Auschwitz and other killing centers, German officials stamped “evacuated,” a word with positive connotations, on the passports of Jews deported from the Reich to the “model” ghetto at Theresienstadt, near Prague, or to ghettos in the East. Deportations from the ghettos were characterized as “resettlements,” though “resettlement” usually ended in death. (ibid., p. 130)

The Jews were killed with cruelty, humiliation, and mockery. In the early killing operations, Eric D. Weitz states that Jews were led out to the killing site on foot or loaded into trucks. Then they had to strip completely, and place each item of clothing in a different pile. In many instances, Jews were made to stand or kneel over a ditch they had just dug. The force of the bullets sent their bodies into the ditch (Weitz, 2003, p. 137). Likewise, victims of the genocide against the Tutsi were also thrown in ditches after being killed. However, since bullets were expensive, most Tutsi were killed with other weapons such as machetes or clubs. Many were tortured before being killed, often by neighbors who knew them well. Since the government had already established the names and addresses of nearly all Tutsi living in Rwanda, the killers were able to go door to door and slaughter the Tutsi.

Sexual Assault

Women received unique kinds of torture in both the Holocaust and the genocide against the Tutsi. Violence during the genocide against the Tutsi took a gender-specific form. Hutu men raped Tutsi women across the country because of both their gender and their ethnicity. Rape was used as a destructive weapon against Tutsi women. Tens of thousands of Tutsi women were individually raped, gang-raped, and raped with objects such as sharpened sticks or gun barrels (Totten, 2009). As stated by Catherine Bonnet (1995), Tutsi women were sexually abused, a tactic that humiliated and degraded them, causing moral, cultural, and psychological suffering. It is in this regard that in prosecuting Jean Paul Akayesu at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), incidents of sexual violence have been legally recognized for the first time as a crime of genocide (Prosecution vs. Akayesu, Case ICTR–96–4–T 1998). During the Holocaust also, Jewish women faced not only sexual abuse, but a specific kind of sexual humiliation before dearth. For female Jews, prior to gassing, their genital areas were revealed in what was arguably a symbolic final assault on their sexuality. Steven Luckert and Susan Bachrach (2011, p. 138) claimed that “the Nazis wanted to ensure that no other Jewish children would emerge from the bodies of these women and to confirm that they could no longer entice German men from the path of Aryan rectitude to the sin of Rassenschande (racial defilement).”

Recognition

The Holocaust committed in Germany, in other countries of Europe, and in the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945 was first officially recognized as genocide by the Nuremberg tribunal. This tribunal was created by the United Kingdom, France, the USSR, and the United States in 1945. As the United Nations was created in 1945, in response to the Second World War, it is from the Holocaust that the UN derives its definition of genocide. Later, it was in reference to this definition that the UN recognized the genocide against the Tutsi committed in Rwanda. The genocide against the Tutsi was first recognized in the report of the Human Rights Commission of June 28, 1994 (Report on the situation, 1994, p. 11). Thereafter, through Resolution 955 adopted on November 8, 1994, the UN Security Council created the ICTR with the mandate to “only judge the persons presumed responsible of acts of genocide and other serious crimes of international human rights committed on Rwandan territory and the Rwandan citizens presumed responsible of such acts or violations committed on the territory of neighboring states, between January 1 and December 31, 1994” (United Nations, 1994, Article.1). On June 16, 2006, the Appeal Chamber of the ICTR issued a judicial notice concluding that it was “a fact of common knowledge” that “between April 6 and July 17, 1994, genocide was committed in Rwanda against the Tutsi ethnic group,” recalling that more than 1 million people were killed in this genocide [ICTR–98–44–AR73 (C)].

Conclusion

The comparative analysis of the Holocaust and the genocide against the Tutsi has shown that they have similarities and differences as regard to their preparation, execution, and recognition. These genocides were committed under the cover of war—during the Second World War for the Holocaust and the Liberation war in Rwanda. However, each had specific features. The genocide against the Tutsi was based on racism and was committed by fellow citizens against their countrymen. The killers included people of all walks of life, from ordinary citizens to high ranking military, security, and civilian leaders. The Holocaust was based on racism, but also on religion and culture. The Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime and its collaborators. The Holocaust lasted from 1941 to 1945 and claimed approximately 6 million people. The genocide against the Tutsi lasted only three months from April to July 1994. In this short period of three months, it claimed more than a million people. The genocide against the Tutsi used both modern and traditional weapons. The Jews used modern weapons, gas, euthanasia, and hard labor. The UN agencies have recognized these genocides of the twentieth century as such, and in both cases specific tribunals have been set up to try perpetrators. Although some Jewish Holocaust survivors remain in Germany, many left the country. However, after the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the majority of survivors continue to live among their killers.