Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

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Land of Wandering Souls. This 1999 film, which was produced by Rithy Panh, who, as a
teenager, fled the Khmer Rouge takeover in Cambodia, is about a group of survivors of the
Cambodian genocide (1975–1979). It depicts some Cambodian families digging trenches
amid “human minefields” (the wasted and the dead) in order to lay a fiber-optic cable network
from east to west. In doing so, the group not only travels across the countryside but
retraces their history.
Language and Genocide. The language and syntax employed by those engaging in
genocide ranges from the use of extremely blunt language to deceptive euphemisms. In
some cases, it is the combination of the two. For example, the Nazi phrase “The Final
Solution of the Jewish Question” (Die Endlösung des Judenfrage) embodies both elements.
The finality of genocide is often expressed in absolutes: annihilate, eradicate, destroy. Such
words convey the violence of physical destruction associated with genocide. In contrast, deportations,
resettlement, special treatment, and shower have all served as euphemisms for killing.
Most, if not all, genocides use a vocabulary to depict the hated target, the one to
be obliterated. For example, subhuman, cockroach, microbes, dogs, pigs, cancer, virus,
life-unworthy-of-life, and excrement were used by various perpetrators of genocide in the
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Although some of the latter terms depict a
target that is less than human, others depict something that is dangerous and harmful to
humanity and needs to be removed for the sake of humanity’s safety.
The language of genocide is always an egregious exaggeration of reality and fantasy, and
the genocidal mind expresses itself in apocalyptic terms and in polarized terms such as “us
versus them.” Indeed, it sees the world in terms of rival races, nations, religions, and
classes. In the language of genocide, there is also often an element of pornography, with references
to perversity as a means of further demonizing the stereotyping of the hate-object—
the easier to justify carrying out extreme measures.
Ultimately, the language of genocide serves as a prelude to physical violence; it is its
precursor, resorting to words that rationalize and exhort a population into accepting that
turning to violent means is legitimate. Given its two faces of extremism and euphemism, the
language of genocide can and does veer from the brutal to the benign, from the cruel and the
threatening to the seemingly condescending. Its practitioners are adept at both, creating an
atmosphere of profound uncertainty, insecurity, and isolation in the ranks of the victims.
Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and
the Camps, 1929–1944. Written by Herman Kruk (1897–1944), The Last Days of the