Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

I
I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years—1933–1941 and I Will Bear Witness:
A Diary of the Nazi Years—1942–1945 by Victor Klemperer. I Will Bear Witness
(two volumes) (New York: Random House, 1998 and 1999, respectively) by Victor
Klemperer (1881–1960), a German Jewish classics professor married to an “Aryan”
woman, is one of the most detailed diaries produced during the course of the Nazi reign
of terror. It includes with one revelatory observation/fact after another in regard to the
Nazis’ declarations and actions, both in Germany and in the “East”; the ever-increasing
suffocation he experienced as a Jew in Germany; and the reactions of family members,
friends, neighbors, and a whole host of bystanders to the events of the day in Germany
and beyond.
IAGS. See International Association of Genocide Scholars.
ICMP. See International Commission on Missing Persons.
ICRC. See International Committee of the Red Cross.
Identity Cards, Rwanda. Under Belgian colonial rule in Rwanda, identity cards bearing
an individual’s ethnic group—Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa—were introduced in 1933. Not
only the ethnic background, but also the bearer’s place of residence was recorded on these
cards—and, over and above that, the name of the person on the card could not relocate
to another address without approval from the colonial authorities. After Rwanda’s independence
in 1961, the identity cards were retained as a means of “positive discrimination”
in favor of the Hutu majority. This was a complete turnaround from the previous Belgian
policy, which had been to elevate the Tutsi minority to positions of social, political, and
economic hegemony.
During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the identity cards became literally a death
warrant for their Tutsi bearers, though this was not new; for the previous three decades
(ever since 1959), but especially since the ascent to power of the regime of Juvenal
Habyarimana (1937–1994) in 1973, Tutsi had been continually segregated, persecuted
and, on occasion, massacred on account of their group identity, which was clearly
delineated on their identity cards. It can be argued that the existence of the cards was
an important factor hastening the speed and spread of the genocide, as the entire population
had been conditioned for generations to carry them and produce them when
required to do so. Thus, when the extremist Hutu demanded to see an individual’s
identity card and the latter was identified as a Tutsi on the card, he/she was almost