Theoretical Paper:

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Genocide Studies has a short history, dating back at most to the end of World War II, prompted by the revelation of the acts of massacre committed by the Nazi State, in particular the annihilationist mass killings of European Jews. This confrontation with a reality that went beyond the parameters of traditional imaginations did not immediately register. Several years went by before scholars – at first numbed by the immensity of the killings – hesitatingly started to explore the phenomenon of the Holocaust in the late 1950s, by which time the term genocide had entered their vocabulary, as a result of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Till then, the only words at their disposal had been the more general “massacre,” designating large-scale killings; the more precise “Voelkermord” (“murder of a people”), applied by German scholars to the destruction of the Herero people in German Southwest Africa; and the idea of “Vernichtungskrieg” (“war of annihilation”), originally used by the German High Command after the 1871 unification and, increasingly, by advocates of a greater Germany prior to World War I.

While Holocaust Studies began to gain momentum during the 1960s and 1970s, the study of other genocides or near-genocides lagged seriously behind, almost to the point of invisibility, with a few dramatic exceptions. Literally all eyes were on the Holocaust, giving the false impression that it stood alone, apart from all other incidents of mass murder. Thus, even as the examination of other genocides began in the 1980s, the quantitative gap between Holocaust scholarship and genocide research widened, leading to the general conclusion that, in order to understand genocide per se, one need only probe the example of the Holocaust for a satisfactory answer. In the absence of sufficient non-Holocaust studies, the Holocaust became the paradigm for all genocides by default. This imbalance remains to this day, though the gap is no longer so overwhelming. Following the twin shocks of the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia and of the bloodshed in Rwanda in the 1990s, and now the dual genocidal threats in Sudan (in the South and West) – genocide studies has assumed a life of its own and has managed to get out from under the inhibiting shadow of the Holocaust.

Even as the Holocaust is being integrated into the study of genocide – as one genocide among many – two central issues have come to the fore. The first is acquiring sufficient knowledge about individual genocides in order to develop valid general principles and to gain meaningful insights on the subject; the second is accumulating enough insights in order to understand the phenomenon of genocide as broadly as interpretation permits. The former goal may be achieved through comparison; the latter rests on a multidisciplinary approach. Both require considerable progress. At present, much is said about genocide that is based on weak empirical data, and many statements on the subject are akin to improvisation rather than to disciplined logic and bona fide well-informed reasoning.

Given language requirements, it often is not possible to research more than one case of genocide in the same depth. More often than not, researchers attempting to compare them must rely on translated materials and secondary sources for the second case. An effective comparative approach must be based on more than two cases in order to allow us to try to build a framework for a typology of genocide, including sub-types, which clearly delineate differences and similarities. This, in turn, must rest on a detailed anatomy of genocide. Comparison must be based on an agreed-upon minimal structure of genocide comprising three phases: the pre-genocidal stage, the event itself, and the post-genocide stage. Each one must be broken down into different elements, such as ideology for phase one, the elite involved in carrying out the genocide for phase two, and trials for phase three. Each phase should include several categories and sub-categories, of course, which are not necessarily the same for each case of genocide. Some are more complex than others. In terms of instruments, for example, the génocidaires of the Final Solution were armed and equipped with a whole array of industrial techniques and weaponry, whereas those of Rwanda used the simplest of tools – machetes, clubs and often fire (arson).

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