14 DAY TRIAL // There is no denying that the Holocaust the Nazi engaged in against the Jews, Gypsies, and other minorities, was one of the most atrocious and heinous crimes in the history of mankind. Millions of people were systematically and methodically worked to the brink of death, and then executed in a variety of manners, all in the name of racial purity and a range of other rhetorical and philosophical concepts that were not rooted in anything real. But lately many people have began using the memories of the Holocaust in a manner that would make the Nazis proud.
“The Holocaust is sometimes used by the international community as an excuse for not intervening in new cases of genocide,” says University of Gothenburg researcher Malin Isaksson. He has been studying the way in which the Holocaust is being used in the international community, when it comes to assessing what a genocide is and what is not in the modern world. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was developed precisely so that countries would severely punish any other nation trying to do what Nazi Germany did, but apparently it is not very good at it.
In other words, some people are very keen on using the Holocaust as a reference point in proving that several cases of atrocities that happened after World War II did not meet the definition of a genocide. This is extremely concerning, given the fact that the 20th century saw that largest number of such crimes against humanity taking place than any other period in our planet's history. “The Genocide Convention only comes into force if the case in question is defined as genocide, according to the criteria detailed under the convention. Comparisons are often made with the Holocaust, which means that few cases are recognized as genocide by the international community,” the researcher says.
“This does not necessarily mean that the case doesn't meet the criteria. It is often a matter of the international community attempting to circumvent the obligation to intervene that is set out in the convention. This in turn is down to a lack of political will to intervene. So you could maintain that the Holocaust is sometimes held up not to prevent the re-occurrence of such events but with the very opposite aim,” Isaksson adds. Analysts say that a change in policy needs to take place, if the world is to avoid a similar show of brutality and inhumanity as the one that took place in the mid-20th century, AlphaGalileo reports.