Preventing Genocide

Preventing Genocide

By:

All through history, people have killed other people. Usually, this is just because of hatred of that one person. Unfortunately, sometimes people can have a deep-rooted hatred of an entire group of people. This hatred of people leads to genocide. Everybody knows about genocide, few know how to define it, and even fewer know what to do about it. Everyone also knows about at least one genocide: the Holocaust. However two other not-so-widely-known genocides were the Armenian genocides in Ottoman Turkey and Azerbaijan. In all three of these genocides, one thing and one thing only could have stopped them: armed intervention.

The first genocide I will talk about is the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. This is a genocide that not too many people know about. It took place in 1915, and was the killing of "the Armenian people by the Turkish-Ottoman government." (The Genocides) The reason for this killing off of innocent people was religious differences. However, because this genocide was already at stage eight, (slaughter), the only prevention could have been armed intervention.

Chronologically, the next genocide is the big one: the Holocaust. Almost everyone knows about this genocide, even if they know of no others. Everyone knows that Adolf Hitler was in charge of the Nazis, whose primary job was killing the Jews. Because everyone knew about this, this genocide was stopped much sooner than the Ottoman genocide. In fact, if the Ottoman killings were noticed sooner, the Holocaust might not have happened. Hitler was once quoted while persuading his troops that the holocaust