Below is a map of some genocides that occurred throughout history.
Bergamo DH: Chiara - Genocides Dashboard
Description
Individual final project in summer 2022 Digital Humanities (DH) course at University of Bergamo.
The goal of my project is to carry out a reconnaissance on one of the darkest themes of history (past and present): that of genocide.
After a survey of the Shoah, to which we are dedicating the Day of Remembrance nowadays (27th January), the word will pass to the critical comments of some philosophers (Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas, Emmanuel Lévinas); finally, there will be an autobiographical account of a visit to the Terezin concentration camp.
The term "genocide" refers to violent crimes committed against certain groups of individuals with the intent of destroying them.In 1944, a Polish Jewish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959), tried to describe the Nazi policies of systematic extermination which also included the destruction of European Jews, coining the word "genocide" combining the prefix geno-, from the Greek "race" or "tribe", with the suffix -cidio, from the Latin "to kill". In proposing this new term, Lemkin had in mind "The set of actions designed and coordinated for the destruction of the essential aspects of the life of certain ethnic groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves".
Terezin
I was a child three years ago.
Then I dreamed of other worlds. ❀
(Hanus Hachenburg)
Galleries, Timelines, and Maps
Below is a gallery of images about some genocides that occurred throughout history.
When I was 14 I had the opportunity to visit the Czech Republic for three days in middle school. Over the days I have had the opportunity to learn a lot about the Jewish community and the work of the Nazis in the State.
One day we visited the city of Terezin, with particular attention to the Theresienstadt concentration camp: it was an experience that required a lot of strength, sensitivity and respect, as you feel very strong emotions.
Built between 1780 and 1790, it was born as a fortress-city at the behest of Joseph II of Habsburg-Lorraine; during the First World War, Gavrilo Princip, killer of Archduke Francesco Ferdinando, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was imprisoned in the small fortress and died there.
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A temporal contextualization of the events concerning the Terezin camp follows.
Below is a collection of images relating to the Terezin concentration camp, which I visited.
Pages
Individual Entries
The historical events, political decisions, economic implications, social processes and personal choices that took place in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 and led to the concentration camps and the planned extermination of Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, Freemasons, Soviet prisoners and homosexuals are hard to disentangle.
Focusing on such a complex process is a challenge as it requires looking into the darkest side of mankind and Philosophy, with its claim for truth, clear language and complete explanations, proves essential in this task; the first step is to look into the facts with open eyes and an unbiased mind.
Germany was defeated in the First World War on 11st November 1918, the Wall Street crisis of 1929 destroyed what remained of the German economy, Germans were desperate, with no hope for their future and no trust in democracy; in 1933 the Nazi Party and its leader Adolf Hitler were elected by the majority.
The political manifest of the Nazi Party...
Martin Heidegger and his controversy.
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), author of Being and Time (1927), is one of the most influential philosophers of the past century, however there is a controversy regarding his choice to remain in Germany while the majority of his colleagues emigrated to the USA or to other countries because they were Jews, or persecuted by Nazis for their ideas.
How could a man like Heidegger accept Nazism? He answered that he believed, like many others, that Hitler and Nazism would have started a new phase for Germany. Besides, Nazism appeared to him the only protection of the Da-sein (existence) from the Communist menace.
Thus Heidegger joined Nazism because he thought it would have protected the community, the projects and the language of Germany. However, after the war Heidegger, retracing his steps, defined Nazism as the expression of the Nihilism of the world-wide technical civilisation that made nothing.
Hannah Arendt and the Banality...
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