Remembering Nazi Holocaust and taking a close look at other historical genocides
*⌛* Reading time: 8 minutes
January 27.... a day recognized as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day by all nations belonging to the UN organization. UN chose this day to honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of the Nazi regime because a day like today, but in 1945, the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated, freeing thousands of survivors who would later tell the terrible stories of their lives lived in that human flesh grinding machine.
It is a day to remember and learn and it is commonly used to bring awareness and to develop educational programs to help prevent future genocides.
Nazi Holocaust was terrible, no doubt about it. Numbers speak by themselves. According to https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org 6 million Jews were killed by different means throughout the whole period the Holocaust. However not only Jews suffered during this period as many other population groups and nationalities suffered the unpleasant consequences of the expansion of Nazism and nationalism at that time as we can see in the following table extracted from https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org
Fig 1. Current best estimates of civilians and captured soldiers killed by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.
The worst was not being concentrated and even displaced from their original places but the inhuman conditions and despicable treatment to which these people were subjected, finally reaching a painful death after years of living in misery and hopelessness all the time....That's why we need to remember year after year to help prevent a future like this past.
In my own way i want to remember this day bringing some attention not only to the Nazi Holocaust but taking a look and remembering at all other holocausts and genocides around the world; without the intention of comparing, i can say that they brought, for other nationalities, the same misfortune, fate and the suffering that the Jews suffered in their day. Let's remember them all together as if they were one...because they are...a crime against the whole human race.
❶ Cuban Concentration Camps (1896)
Many people do not know that the term “concentration camps” was coined by the spanish occupation forces during the second part of the “Ten Years War” fought between Cuban Rebel Forces and the Colonialist Spanish Army cantoned in Cuba.
As a state policy, the “Reconcentración” (Reconcentration – in english) was an idea of the spanish general Valeriano Weyler back in 1896 that sent thousands of Cubans into concentration camps. Under his policy, the rural population had 8 days to move into designated camps located in fortified towns; any person who failed to obey was shot.
The housing in these areas was typically abandoned, decaying, roofless, and virtually unihabitable. Food was scarce and famine and disease quickly swept through the camps. By 1898, one third of Cuba's population had been forcibly sent into the concentration camps. By the end of the War over 400,000 Cubans died as a result of the Spanish Reconcentration Policy.
Fig 2. *Spanish General Valeriano Weyler and some victims of the reconcentration process in Cuba during the Independence Wars (www.radio26.cu)*
This policy aimed to prevent the Cuban rebel forces to get some help from the rest of the people livig in the countryside and apparently preserve the life of thousands of innocent people by pushing them away from the battlefields. However it actually got the opposite effect by killing thousand of innocent people and yet Spain finally lost the war leaving Cuba devastated and with a big black spot in its history.
❷ South Africa: Second Boer War Concentration Camps (1899 – 1902)
During the Anglo-Boer War between 1899 and 1902 the British army stablished concentration camps as part of their military campaign against two small Afrikaner republics: the ZAR (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State (both Boer states) to house Boer families forcibly displaced by Britain's scorched-earth policies.
As we can imagine, those camps lacked the minimum conditions to care for a large number of displaced people. Apparently the British Army followed the same thoughts that the Colonialist Spanish Army cantoned in Cuba back in 1896 when they stablished their concentration camps, the idea was quite clear: remove the main source of support for the Boer commandos.
At least 40 concentration camps were constructed, holding in all some 150,000 Boer refugees (white people) and another 60 camps were constructed to house the 115,000 native Africans who had worked as servants for the Boers...nearly 300 000 people concentrated living under the minimun aceptable conditions and mostly in tents hurriedly constructed to house them: diseases and hunger took their toll really quickly.
Fig 3. Boer mother with her dead child living in a tent in one of the concentration camps built by the British Army during the Boer Wars (http://boers.co.za)
Between July 1901 and February 1902 death rate was, on average, 247 per 1000 per annum in the white camps being lower in the camps hosting black servants to the surprise of the military even. By the end of the war at least 28 000 white people and 20 000 black people died in various camps in South Africa, 80% of them children.
❸Armenian Genocide: Deir ez-Zor camps (1915)
The Deir ez-Zor Camps were concentration camps in the heart of the Syrian desert where many thousands of Armenian refugees were forced into death marches during the Armenian Genocide. Those Armenians who survived the genocide were forced to march in two directions they were able to “choose”: to Damascus or to a desert zone along the Euphrates to Deir ez-Zor.
By the end of the armenian Genocide almost 30,000 Armenians were encamped in various camps outside the town of Deir ez-Zor ruled by then by the Arabs whose governor, Haj Fadel Al-Aboud, provided them with food and housing and means of livelihood and security, however they were too many. Despite the efforts made by the town's governor still many refugees were arriving, including women and children, it was by that time when the real nightmare began: they cooked grass, ate dead birds, and although there was a cave near the Deir ez-Zor for prisoners to store until they starved, no “camp” seems ever to have been planned for the Armenians.
Fig 4. *Armenian leader Papasyan seeing what's left after the horrendous murders by Der-ez-Zor in 1915-1916 (https://en.wikipedia.org)*
“For Armenians, Deir ez-Zor has come to have a meaning approximate to Auschwitz” – wrote once Peter Balakian – “it was a vast and horrific open-air concentration camp”....almost 150 000 people died there according to some studies....the truth is that we will never known the exact number as nobody took the trouble to count the dead...
❹ Russian Gulags: forced labor camps (1930-1953)
During the reign of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, between 14 and 18 million people ended up in a Soviet gulag, where they were forced to literally work themselves to death. Gulag was rçthe acronym for Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei – Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and they were the place where millions of post-war prisoners, disaffected to the Stalin regime, political prisoners, common criminals and prosperous peasants, known as kulaks met the end of their lives in a miserable way.
Gulag prisoners could work up to 14 hours per day under heavy weather conditions with even worse feeding treatment and almost an inexistent healthcare system. People worked literally to the bone, using usually outdated supplies to do intense labor in a heavy and deadly environment.
Fig 5. *The dead bodies of political prisoners, murdered by the secret police, lie inside of a prison camp in Tarnopil, Ukraine, 1941 (https://allthatsinteresting.com)*
No one was really safe from going to a gulag, even women and children. Female prisoners were often the victims of rape and violence at the hands of both inmates and guards. Many of the gulag children (who were born there) were shipped to distant orphanages and papers were destroyed making a future meeting almost impossible.
By the time the last Soviet gulag closed its gates, millions had died. Some worked themselves to death, some had starved, and others were simply dragged out into the woods and shot. According to some studies between 1.5 and 1.7 million people died as a result of their incarceration in the Gulags system.
Final thoughts...by now
There is no doubt that the Nazi Holocaust has been the most documented, explained and covered of all genocides in the whole world; however, as you can see, dear reader, it was not the only one. It seems like the human being has some kind of predisposition for making their peers suffer a lot.
From my point of view, Nazi Holocaust cannont or should not be seen as something appart. Despite the fact that it is widely covered each year by news media and has its own day to remember those lives lost, we, as humans must remember on this day not only the tragedy and death caused by Nazis but we should take this day to remember, and never forget, all those lives lost across the whole human story as part of different genocides....Let's do it....let's make one minute of silence....for all of them....
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