Learning Activity: Genocide
Provide students with copies of the following definition for the concept of “genocide” taken from Leo Kuper’s classic text, Genocide (New York: Penguin Books, 1981, p. 19).
The Genocide Convention*
The Convention on Genocide, approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 9 December 1948, defines the crime of genocide as follows:
- In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Ask students to define what is meant by “genocide.” Have students identify historic and contemporary examples of genocidal acts. Ask students to apply this definition of genocide to the Nazi Holocaust and to crimes against humanity tried at Nuremberg by Robert Jackson. Ask: Why is the convention on genocide as approved by the United Nations in 1948 such an important document?
[*Activity taken from: Teaching About the Holocaust and Genocide: The Human Rights Series, Volume I (The State Education Department, 1985), pp. 26-27. For copies of this publication contact: www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/social.html.]