Page 15 - Witness

Tragically, genocide has been perpetrated by the human race since the beginning of recorded history. The term was first coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew whose many family members were murdered during the Holocaust. In his younger years, Lemkin was troubled by the intentional mass murder of Armenians by the Turks in 1915 and later by the slaughter of Christian Assyrians by Iraqis in 1933. After painstakingly documenting the brutal Nazi treatment of conquered populations throughout Europe in WWII, Lemkin dedicated his life to having the word genocide accepted – and to the need for the world community to ban its practice.
With the rise of Nazi Germany in 1933, human rights became its foremost victim. Many groups were targeted – government opposition, trade unionists, communists, homosexuals, Roma, and the disabled – but none were more vigorously pursued than the Jewish people, who alone were ultimately subjected to the goal of total annihilation.
CLASSICAL VS. MODERN ANTI-SEMITISM
It is important to distinguish among the various forms of classical anti-Semitism (or anti-Judaism) that existed over the centuries, modern anti-Semitism (more racial in tone), and Nazi racial ideology. Classical anti-Semitism was often based on theological positions, cultural stereotypes, fear of the Other, economic competition, superstitious beliefs, or combinations of the above. While these forms of anti-Semitism were never pleasant – and often resulted in violence and even murder – the goal was never the complete annihilation of the Jewish people. Further, the Jews usually had two “escape routes” – conversion or expulsion.
Nazi racial ideology built itself upon the more modern 19th century anti-Semitism, with its additional emphasis on alleged racial differences. To the Nazis, the Jews were doubly cursed. Their blood was tainted, and their values were emblematic of everything wrong in the world: equality, morality, democracy. The Nazis made it their mission to rescue the world from the perils of Western Civilization. Destroy the Jewish people and everything that Judaism represents (such as the theories of Einstein and Freud), and the world will be safe again. While initially this meant total removal of Jews from society, it developed into the goal of their total removal from the world.
The Nazis dramatically changed anti-Semitism into the belief that the redemption of the world relied on the
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