Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

RESERVE POLICE BATTALION 101
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profited economically from his business dealings with the Nazis, behaved immorally,
and treated his wife with disdain. Sempo Sugihara (1890–1976), the Japanese consul
in Lithuania, defied the orders of his superiors to save Jews, yet suffered disgrace and
humiliation upon his return home for doing so. Raoul Wallenberg (1912–1947?) of
Sweden rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews by issuing false documents, but he mysteriously
and horrifically disappeared into the Soviet prison system at war’s end.
Nation-states such as the United States, Britain, and Canada, while publicly proclaiming
their willingness to allow in large numbers of fleeing Jewish refugees during the war, were also
guilty of preventing Jews from arriving safely in their countries. This was due, in large part,
to isolationist policies by politicians, bureaucratic obstacles (difficulty and length of paperwork,
necessity of sponsorship), and active antisemites in key governmental positions (e.g.,
in the U.S. State Department) aggressively thwarting efforts to let refugees in.
Given the enormous numbers of murdered Jews in the Holocaust, somewhere close to
6 million men, women, and children, a fair and reasonable assessment is that far too many
individuals did far too little to save Jewish lives during this tragic period.
Reserve Police Battalion 101. A Nazi mobile killing unit that operated mainly around
Lublin in Galicia following the success of the German army (Wehrmacht) military campaigns
in 1943 and 1944. Battalion 101 was composed mainly of approximately 450 seemingly ordinary
men, primarily from Hamburg, Germany, some too old or ill-conditioned for frontline
service, but who proved all too ready and willing to murder and deport the Jews in their
catchment area in 1942. These men were responsible for the murders of thirty-nine thousand
Jews and the deportations to Treblinka death camp of forty-four thousand more. Their story
is the subject of an important 1993 book by American historian Christopher Browning
(b. 1944), published under the self-explanatory title of Ordinary Men.
Resettlement. When refugee experts use this term, it refers to the movement of refugees
from the country in which they sought refuge to another state that has agreed to allow them
to enter. Generally, the refugees will be granted asylum or some form of long-term residency
rights where they have a fair to good chance of becoming naturalized citizens.
Alternatively, the term resettlement can refer to the establishment of a new and safe area
of residence within the refugees’ own state for internally displaced peoples (IDPs).
For genocide scholars, the term often has a different meaning altogether. For example,
“resettlement” was a euphemism that the Nazis used for the so-called “deportation” of
people—frequently to overcrowded and squalor-ridden ghettos, slave labor camps, and
concentration and death camps. For example, beginning with Jews from Greater
Germany in September 1941 and continuing with Jews from Western Europe beginning
in late April/early May 1942, the Nazis “resettled” (meaning, forced upon the threat of
death) millions of Jews from their homes in countries all across Europe to ghettos and
concentration, work, and death camps in Poland. The Nazis used the term umsiedlerzüge
or “resettlement trains” as a euphemism for the trains that ran around the clock delivering
Jews from Grossdeutsch (German, “Greater Germany”) and Nazi-occupied Europe to
the death camps in Poland.
The term resettlement had previously been used, within a genocidal context, by the
Young Turks between 1915 and 1923 (and especially during 1915–1916), during the
forced evacuations of Armenians from their own districts within the Ottoman Empire to
places such as the Syrian desert, where they perished (due to outright murder, beatings, a
lack of water, and extremely harsh conditions) in the hundreds of thousands.