Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

The world looked away

A great deal of attention has been given to the horrific extermination of more than 6 million Jews in Adolf Hitler’s Nazi holocaust. It was a state-sponsored, systematic murder of men, women and children. Incredibly, the world knew what was going on – but turned its face away. Desperate refugees packed ocean liners, but were refused sanctuary. Even the United States chose to look the other way until our troops liberated the death camps and General Dwight Eisenhower ordered the horror be documented and the news crews be given full access. Then the world learned. But the terrible truth is that such atrocities had happened before. And such horror has happened repeatedly since.

The Congo

The first holocaust of the 20^th Century – the elimination of much of the population of Africa’s Congo during a brutal colonization led by Belgium’s King Leopold II – actually began in 1888, according to historian Roger Casement who in 1904 reported that as many as 3 million had died of disease, torture or execution. The number was raised to 5 million in Martin Gilbert's History of the Twentieth Century. Historian E.D. Morel estimated that the Congo’s population was 20 or 30 million when the Belgium reign of terror began and bottomed out at 8 million. Fredric Wertham’s A Sign For Cain: A Exploration of Human Violence (1966) estimates the death toll at 21.5 million. Peter Forbath in The River Congo (1977) put the total at 5 million; John Gunther in his Inside Africa (1953) estimated 5-8 million deaths.

Russia’s Nightmare (1917-54)

The death toll of the Bolshevik Revolution from starvation, disease, war and execution has been estimated between 7 million and 10 million by such historians as Robert Cowley and Geoffrey Parker in their Reader’s Companion to Military History (1996), Norman Davies in Europe, A History (1998) and Norman Lowe’s Mastering Twentieth Century Russian History (2002). However, the Soviet Union suffered even worse at the hands of brutal dictator Josef Stalin in horrors described in Alexandr Solzhenitzen’s classic One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago. Nanci Adler in her Victims of Soviet Terror (1993) cites the following Russian historians: Chistyakovoy, who says 20 million were killed during the 1930s alone; and Dyadkin, who estimated 56 to 62 million "unnatural deaths" for the USSR overall with 34 to 49 million under Stalin. Norman Davis in Europe A History (1998) estimates the number of Russians killed by fellow Russians at 50 million between 1924 and 1953, excluding WW II war losses. Solzhenitsyn estimated 60 million.

Mao’s China (1949-69)

Although the People’s Republic of China still venerates its Communist founder, Chairman Mao Zedung, history takes a grim view of his rule. Estimates vary widely, ranging between 49 million and 78 million Chinese killed as he seized power, then consolidated it. Millions died in his invasion of the traditionally neutral mountain nation of Tibet, which had no army. However the greatest death toll came in his Cultural Revolution in which Mao turned on the Chinese population, summarily executing anyone suspected of being an enemy – which included anyone with an education and anyone resisting the whims of the Red Guards, nationwide vigilantes dominated by young zealots who waved aloft Mao’s “Little Red Book” of quotations.

Pol Pot’s Cambodian Holocaust (1975-78)

After five years of bloody civil war, the Khmer Rouge marched into the capital of Cambodia and forced the entire population to evacuate on foot. Those who refused were shot, as were hospital patients who were unable to walk. The roads out of the city -- and every other city in Cambodia -- were clogged with bewildered people clutching a few belongings. Children were separated from their parents; the old and infirm who could not keep up were left to die. The whole country was turned into a vast forced labor camp. Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot announced he was restoring Cambodia’s peasant economy. Anyone with any connection with the previous regime was eliminated, including the educated and the skilled. Pol Pot declared: “We are building socialism without a model. We do not wish to copy anyone; we shall use the experience gained in the course of the liberation struggle. There are no schools, faculties or universities because we wish to do away with all vestiges of the past. There is no money, no commerce, as the state takes care of provisioning all its citizens.” Instead, the population starved, according to Grant Evans and Kelvin Rowley in Red Brotherhood at War (1984). The death toll has been estimated between 1.5 million and 1.7 million.

The Rwandan Genocide (1994)

On April 6, 1994, one of the shortest but most dreadful campaigns of mass murder in recorded history was unleashed upon the Tutsi tribe of Rwanda. In just 100 days, an estimated 800,000 to 1 million people were slaughtered with machetes and clubs. Rebelling Hutu tribal leaders first killed the nation’s president, then opposition politicians, Rwandese journalists, human rights activists and anyone else who might present an accurate report to the outside world of the campaign of mass murder. In the towns of Nyamata and Ntarama, 15,000 men, women and children were slaughtered in church sanctuaries where they had sought refuge – believing they would be safe.