Genocide isn't past tense and the Nazi and Bosnian eras are not yet closed. The demonising of people as 'unworthy' and expendable is ever-present and the consequences are all too evident in the daily news. These fourteen essays by Australian scholars confront the issues: the need for a measuring scale that encompasses differences and similarities between seemingly divergent cases of the crime; the complicity of bureaucracies, the healing professions and the churches in this 'crime of crimes'; the quest for historical justice for genocide victims generally following the Nuremberg Trials; the fate of children in the Nazi and postwar eras; the 'worthiness' of Armenians, Jews and Romani people in twentieth century Europe; and the imperative to tackle early warning signs of an incipient genocide. Colin Tatz is a founding director of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, visiting fellow in Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University, and honorary visiting fellow at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. He teaches and publishes in comparative race politics, youth suicide, migration studies, and sports history.

Despite the catch-cry bandied about after the Holocaust, "Never Again", genocides continue to destroy cultures and communities around the globe. In this collection of essays, Australian scholars discuss the crime of genocide, examining regimes and episodes that stretch across time and geography. Included are discussions on Australia’s own history of genocide against its Indigenous peoples, mass killing and human rights abuses in Indonesia and North Korea, and new insights into some of the core twentieth century genocides, such as the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. Scholars grapple with ongoing questions of memory and justice, governmental responsibility, the role of the medical professions, gendered experiences, artistic representation, and best practice in genocide education. Importantly, genocide prevention and the role of the global community is also explored within this collection. This volume of Genocide Perspectives is dedicated to Professor Colin Tatz AO, an inspirational figure in the field of human rights, and one of the forefathers of genocide studies in Australia.

This book defines genocide, distinguishing it from mass murder, war crimes, and other atrocities; allows readers to grasp the magnitude of the crime of genocide across time and throughout human civilization; and facilitates an understanding of new and potential cases of genocide as they occur. Recently, the topic of intervention against genocide has received attention in global politics and the national political discourse of major countries. The challenges in confronting genocide and attempting to make a positive change are manifold. Simply establishing an agreement on the legal definition of genocide—and distinguishing it from genocidal massacres, war crimes, and other crimes against humanity—is problematic. This book provides a valuable resource for students, scholars, and journalists when public awareness of, and interest in, genocide has reached unprecedented levels. Written in an accessible way for a broad readership, the book makes use of case studies to enable an understanding of emerging and potential genocide with the necessary depth of coverage to evaluate critically the ways in which the United Nations and national governments engage them. Readers will understand the essential ingredients of genocide, from antiquity to the present, and grasp the extent of the crime across human history. A variety of case studies provides a means to measure genocidal magnitudes in terms of their intent and motive, geographical extent, pace, method, participants, outcomes, legacies, punishments, and reparations. A unique and crucial feature of the book is that it gives as much attention to the differences among genocides—for example, between a large-scale genocide like the Holocaust and the extermination of a 500-person Amazonian tribe—while still treating both within a single conceptual framework of genocide, without "discounting" the smaller case.

Plight and Fate of Children During and Following Genocide examines why and how children were mistreated during genocides in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Among the cases examined are the Australian Aboriginals, the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the Mayans in Guatemala, the 1994 Rwanda genocide, and the genocide in Darfur. Two additional chapters examine the issues of sexual and gender-based violence against children and the phenomenon of child soldiers. Following an introduction by Samuel Totten, the essays include: "Australia's Aboriginal Children"; "Hell is for Children"; "Children: The Most Vulnerable Victims of the Armenian Genocide"; "Children and the Holocaust"; "The Fate of Mentally and Physically Disabled Children in Nazi Germany"; "The Plight and Fate of Children vis-a-vis the Guatemalan Genocide"; "The Plight of Children During and Following the 1994 Rwandan Genocide"; "Darfur Genocide"; "Sexual and Gender-Based Violence against Children during Genocide"; and, "Child Soldiers." Contributors include: Colin Tatz, Henry C. Theriault, Asya Darbinyan, Rubina Peroomian, Jeffrey Blutinger, Amanda Grzyb, Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, Sara Demir, Hannibal Travis, and Samuel Totten. The editor and several of the contributors have personally investigated and witnessed the aftermath of genocidal campaigns.

Racism crushes bodies and souls. In Human Rights and Human Wrongs Colin Tatz – a world authority on racial conflict and abuse, a key figure in Aboriginal Studies in Australia and an author of major works on genocide, Aboriginal youth suicide, and Aboriginal and Islander sporting achievements – tells his personal story. Born and educated in South Africa, Tatz worked to expose and oppose that nation’s centuries-old apartheid regimes before leaving for what he thought would be a more enlightened nation, only to find in Australia striking parallels of that other dismal universe. As a researcher, writer and activist he has dedicated his life to confronting what people do to other people on the basis of their race or ethnicity. Here he also relates how alienation, his Jewishness and an intriguing problem with food have been, for him, propelling forces. Tatz’s story, ranging from Southern Africa to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Israel, is an important one for anyone genuinely interested in the struggle to achieve social justice for minorities and marginalised peoples.

We are a moral people and the very notion that Australians could have anything to do with genocide is unthinkableso claimed parliamentarians when Australia was asked to ratify the UNs Genocide Convention in 1949. The reality is that even decent democrats and people who consider themselves good colonists are capable of doing just thatkilling people because of who they were, forcibly removing their children in order to assimilate them and erase them from the landscape, and then, in the name of their protection, incarcerated them on reserves in a manner that caused them serious physical and mental harm. This confronting book addresses the whole issue of what happens to an indigenous minority who were considered other than human, an unworthy order of beings destined to die out.

At the heart of the field of Genocide Studies lies an active core of vigorous debate that has led to both heated disagreements and productive disputes. This new volume in the Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review series focuses on these, as well as other significant issues. Chapters in this volume focus on a number of issues: Did Peru’s Aché suffer genocide? What was the role of media propaganda in the Rwandan Genocide, and what more, if anything, could have been done about it? Have Rwanda’s post-genocide gacaca courts successfully promoted reconciliation? How has denial affected governmental recognition around the world of the Armenian, Hellenic, and Assyrian genocides? Why have some left-wing “progressives” engaged in denial of the Rwandan Genocide? Has anti-genocide activism had a meaningful effect in prevention of or intervention against genocide? In the pages of this book, readers can explore the various debates that have defined the study of genocide and that are redefining it today. This insightful and provocative volume will entice further discussion on the concept of genocide and will be a must-read for the field of genocide studies.

On April 25th 1915, during the First World War, the famous Anzacs landed ashore at Gallipoli. At the exact same moment, leading figures of Armenian life in the Ottoman Empire were being arrested in vast numbers. That dark day marks the simultaneous birth of a national story – and the beginning of a genocide. When We Dead Awaken – the first narrative history of the Armenian Genocide in decades – draws these two landmark historical events together. James Robins explores the accounts of Anzac Prisoners of War who witnessed the genocide, the experiences of soldiers who risked their lives to defend refugees, and Australia and New Zealand's participation in the enormous post-war Armenian relief movement. By exploring the vital political implications of this unexplored history, When We Dead Awaken questions the national folklore of Australia, New Zealand, and Turkey – and the mythology of Anzac Day itself.

Genocide Perspectives VI grapples with two core themes: the personal toll of genocide, and processes that facilitate the crime. From political choices governments and leaders make, through to denialism and impunity, the crime of genocide recurs again and again, across the globe. At what cost to individuals and communities? What might the legacy of this criminality be? This collection of essays examines the personal sacrifice genocide takes from those who live through the trauma, and the generations that follow. Contributors speak to the way visual art and literature attempt to represent genocide, hoping to make sense of problematic histories while also offering a means of reflection after years of “slow violence” or silenced memories. Some authors generously allow us into their own histories, or contemplate how they may have experienced genocide had they been born in another time or place. What facets contribute to the processes that lead to, or enable the crime of genocide? This collection explores those processes through a variety of case studies and lenses. How do nurses, whose role is inherently linked to care and compassion, become mass killers? How do restrictions on religious freedom play a role in advancing genocidal policies, and why do perpetrators of genocide often target religious leaders? Why is it so important for Australia and other nations with histories of colonial genocide to acknowledge their past? Among the essays published in this volume, we have the privilege and the sorrow of publishing the very last essay Professor Colin Tatz wrote before his passing in 2019. His contribution reveals, yet again, the enormous influence of both his research and his original ideas on genocide. He reflects on continuing legacies for Indigenous Australian communities, with whom he worked for many decades, and adds nuance to contemporary understanding of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, two other cases to which he was deeply committed.

This book explores the memory and representation of genocide as they affect individuals, communities and families, and artistic representations. It brings together a variety of disciplines from public health to philosophy, anthropology to architecture, offering readers interdisciplinary and international insights into one of the most important challenges in the 21st century. The book begins by describing the definitions and concepts of genocide from historical and philosophical perspectives. Next, it reviews memories of genocide in bodies and in societies as well as genocide in memory through lives, mental health and transgenerational effects. The book also examines the ways genocide has affected artistic works. From poetry to film, photography to theatre, it explores a range of artistic approaches to help demonstrate the heterogeneity of representations. This book provides a comprehensive and wide-ranging assessment of the many ways genocide has been remembered and represented. It presents an ideal foundation for understanding genocide and possibly preventing it from occurring again.