Genocide is the systematic killing of any particular group of people, typically marked as ethnically, racially, religiously, or nationally distinct. The Eight Stages of Genocide involve a process of marking certain groups of people as Other and acts of violence including dehumanizing and mass murder. Not all cases of genocide follow the Eight Steps like some sort of template, and there are wide variances in the progression of violence over time as well as methods. Studies of the Holocaust show that it typifies this Eight Step process. Let's consider each of the steps and how events of and leading up to the Holocaust fit into this model.
The first stage of the Eight Steps is Classification. Though anti-Semitism is a very old problem in Europe, in early 20th century Germany it was taken to a whole new level. In the post-WWI social context of Germany, people were suffering and wanted someone to blame. The growth of nationalism came to pinpoint the Jewish community as a scapegoat for the troubles of (ethnically "pure") Germany. Scientists and government officials went so far in their attempts to mark Jewish people as Other that racial and ethnic categorization became a regular practice and a system of assigning value in society. Under the Nazi regime, the ideal "Aryan" German citizen had blonde hair, blue eyes, light skin, and was of Northern European descent. Anyone who was of Jewish (or African, Middle Eastern, or Asian) descent or appeared to be non-Northern European was considered lesser. Charts dictating social status based on markers of "racial purity" drawn from descent, eye color, hair color, and skin color were used by the Nazi party to determine who did and did not fit into their ideal society.
Having created an "us versus them" mentality among the German people, the government next implemented a way to even more visibly mark people deemed un-Aryan as Other. The second step in the progression of genocide is Symbolism. Leading up to the Holocaust, all ethnically Jewish people in Germany were made to wear the Star of David visibly on their clothing. In this way, even people who did not look Jewish according to the racial categorizations of the Nazi party would be visibly marked as Jewish. In addition, it also served as a badge limiting people from access to certain public spaces and activities. Around the time the Star of David patch was made mandatory, restrictions were placed on what kind of activities Jewish people could do and when. In the concentration camps, distinctive patches were also used to identify homosexual people, Roma people, Jehovah's witnesses, and criminals. In contrast, all members of the Nazi party were readily identifiable by the swastika displayed on their uniforms.
The third step is Dehumanization. After dividing society into "us versus them" and breeding hostility towards the Jewish people, the door was opened to dehumanize them in further, systemic ways. In this stage of genocide, people may be publicly dehumanized or criminalized by media or individual persons and denied human rights. Propaganda posters using racial slurs or encouraging the mistreatment of Jewish people were used in Nazi Germany, and government action like the Nuremberg Laws made it illegal for Jewish people (even converts) to marry or have intercourse with Germans. The Laws also revoked the citizenship of Jewish people and so denied them any governmental protection. Jewish businesses were destroyed, Jewish children removed from schools, and it became illegal for Jewish people to be out past a curfew or travel.
By the time the Nazi party came to power in 1933, the German people already regarded Jewish and other "inferior" groups as social pollutants who needed to be done away with. So what was to be done? The Nazi party began to organize the paramilitary group known as Schutzstaffel (or SS) into their most powerful forces and it became the group in charge of carrying out the Final Solution. The government had already legitimized violence against the Jewish people and was now organizing it.
The fifth step, Polarization, was already well under way in German society, but also became state-sanctioned. Propaganda was used to distort the public image of Jewish people into something monstrous, full of racial slurs and encouragements of violence. Anti-Semitic film, radio, and posters became commonplace. No longer was Anti-Semitism just a current in German culture, it became defining of German-ness. During this stage of the genocide, attacks were openly made on Jewish people. Kristallnacht involved attacks on Jewish homes, businesses, and places of worship over a two-day period. While police and fire fighters stood by, hundreds of synagogues and thousands of Jewish businesses and homes were looted and destroyed.
The Preparation stage of the Holocaust involved rounding up and separating Jewish people from the rest of society in order to make the later steps more easily. Jewish people were forced to live in Ghettos-- walled-off sections of the city which were in very poor condition. Some people were only in Ghettos for a few days, while others lived in Ghettos for years. Thousands of people died of starvation or disease in the Ghettos, as there was no regular access to healthful food and plumbing was next to non-existant.
Stage seven of the Holocaust was Extermination. Camps had already been in use for several years as informal prisons for people who opposed the Nazi regime, and the Nazi party had already begun implementing euthanasia of disabled people at these camps. By the hundreds and thousands, Jewish people were packed into trains and taken from the Ghettos to concentration camps. Upon arrival, those deemed unfit for work were sent immediately to a gas chamber. The rest of the people were subjected to intensive labor, starvation, and medical experimentation until they died of malnutrition, were shot by SS, or sent to a killing center or gas chamber.
The eighth stage is Denial, and Holocaust Denial persists to this day. After Liberation and the end of the Holocaust, many Nazi officials fled to avoid punishment for their actions. Adolf Hitler and others at the top committed suicide. Many German citizens claimed that they didn't know about the concentration camps or laws legitimizing violence against Jewish people, or that it was not state-sanctioned. To this day, some people argue that the war crimes carried out were only done at the hands of a very small portion of the Nazi party. Some people even say that the Holocaust is a hoax and was all invented by the European Jewish community to gain sympathy. Denial only prolongs the legitimization of violence against particular groups of people, disrespects the legacies of those who have been lost to the violence, and devalues the voices of people of that group today.
The Eight Stages have been similarly carried out in the Rwandan and Armenian genocides, but the events of the Holocaust read like a case-study of the progression of genocide.
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