The title I have chosen for these reflections is the question Lang decided not to use as a title for the opening chapter of his study, opting instead for “the evil in genocide.” The book’s purpose ...

ABSTRACTThis review article asks: what defines mass violence in the twentieth century as particularly modern and how does the Holocaust figure in this history? The article compares the work of two path-breaking historians—Mark Levene and Timothy Snyder—while also discussing recent research by other scholars. It argues that the emergence of nation-states, together with technology and scientific knowledge to alter the environment, created the conditions for distinctly modern violence aiming to destroy diversity in societies and the environment. The article examines the relation between genocide, including the Holocaust, and the rise of twentieth-century nation-states. It follows the persistent idea that the Holocaust is unique in a way that establishes a hierarchy of Holocaust/genocide/other mass violence. As Levene argues, the contextualization of the complex set of events and processes called the Holocaust within the violent history of ethno-national and ethno-religious “homogenization” of nation-states challenges this framework. The article then turns to Snyder’s argument that, since Hitler’s worldview of racial struggle over land and food rejected agricultural science, genetic engineering in agriculture is one way to heed the Holocaust’s warning. A discussion of the devastating impact of genetic engineering in agriculture—in the frame of the violent implications of modern “development”—underscores how the destruction of societies perceived as “backward,” particularly indigenous groups in the Global South, follows the destruction of their biodiverse habitats and agriculture to make way for monoculture genetically engineered crops. A focus on case studies of such mass violence and the responses by indigenous groups facilitates, finally, a discussion of the recent turn to microhistories in Holocaust scholarship. These offer another contextualized view: of the societies that faced the assault of nation-states. The article concludes that the complexities on the social level, each rooted in specific circumstances and histories, challenge the analytical value of the general term “Holocaust.”

The year 1965 marked a dramatic turning point in Indonesian history. On 1 October, a shadowy group of left-wing military officers calling itself the 30 September Movement kidnapped and killed sever...

ABSTRACTThis article examines the impact of a new sustained focus in Indonesian human rights activism on connecting historical experiences of violence to ongoing impunity, in order to assess what forms of memory activism are effective in breaking a justice impasse. It does so by using the much more successful case of Argentinian human rights activism for justice for the 1976–83 repression as a point of comparison. Soon after the end of authoritarian rule, Argentinians held a truth commission and trials of key military leaders. Then, following a period of stalled justice, activists were able to create a new societal consensus on the need for further redress including extended trials. In Indonesia, meanwhile, a proposed truth commission was abandoned and there have been no trials of military leaders, and no other forms of redress initiated by the government for this case. Despite the limitations of almost all justice measures in fully addressing past human rights crimes, the lack of use of any measures acceptable to victims of the violence signals that the Indonesian government does not consider such cases pressing enough. In order to assess how activists might move such cases back onto a national agenda, my analysis focuses on the Argentinian group H.I.J.O.S. (Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio/Children for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence), whose members led a successful campaign for a resumption of trials. I compare the similar emphasis in their activism on exposing impunity to that in the work of the Indonesian group KKPK (Koalisi Keadilan dan Pengungkapan Kebenaran/Coalition for Justice and Truth). I assess their efforts alongside the different political contexts of both countries, arguing that a focus on impunity may be crucial in cracking impasses in justice measures.

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on the formation of memory in relation to the mass violence of the years 1965/68 in Semarang. This port city offers a unique opportunity for studying both the violence of 1965/68 and its long-term effects from a local to a global level. Once nicknamed the “red city” and famous for its Chinese community, the events of “1965” deeply affected the city. Many (alleged) communists from Semarang were sent to prison camps in other parts of Indonesia, while many members of the Chinese community sought refuge abroad. As a result, the mass violence in Semarang continues to reverberate not only in the city, but also throughout and beyond Indonesia. The article is based on the results of two workshops in Semarang, during which a group of Indonesian students studied the memory landscapes of “1965” by combining oral history with site observations. The central question is how the memory of violence, shaped primarily by everyday interaction and communication, relates on the one hand to the urban space in which the violence largely took place, and on the other hand to the official state narratives that deliberately created memory gaps regarding this violence. We focus on three sites representative of different aspects of the mass violence of the years 1965/68 in Semarang: the Sarekat Islam building, the Mangkang mass grave and the Chinese Karang Turi school. Scrutinizing these three sites has taught us that people in Semarang make sense of “1965” through stories and activities that, while interacting with the official narratives, include the missing and the dead. Communism might have been “crushed” with success, but the Indonesian state clearly failed to eradicate the memory of state-supported anti-communist violence.

ABSTRACTSince the end of the Suharto New Order regime and Indonesia’s transition to democracy in 1998, the country has struggled to address past serious human rights violations, in particular the 1965–66 anti-communist violence. Half a million members and sympathizers of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI) and its mass organizations were killed and hundreds of thousands were detained, most without trial. Although these individuals seem to have the clearest claims to victimhood, they still cannot easily gain such recognition, facing opposition from the military and representatives of civilian organizations implicated in the violence. The contested nature of the status of victim, and in particular how to accommodate claims from those who were less central to the experience of political persecution but who nonetheless suffered as part of the government and military’s anti-communist strategy, is the subject of this article. Drawing on scholarly literature on victims, victimhood and collective memory, I analyse a case study of a group of villagers in south Blitar, East Java and how their being implicated in providing support for leftist fugitives in that area in 1966–68 has influenced how they are perceived by society. Representations of this group of villagers by the military and government have resulted in the rise of a collective victimhood across generations, but a victimhood that nonetheless remains striated by victim hierarchies and difficulties in identifying as victim. As a result of these factors, this complex victim group has, by and large, been excluded by mainstream transitional justice processes, except for limited efforts by two small non-government organizations in the local area, discussed in this article. The resurgence of anti-communism since the election of President Joko Widodo, however, creates new difficulties for the victims and these organizations.

ABSTRACTThis article presents an overview of new evidence recovered from the former Indonesian Intelligence Agency’s archives in Banda Aceh that is able to prove, for the first time, military agency behind the 1965–66 killings in Indonesia. The military leadership, these documents show, initiated and implemented the killings as part of a coordinated national campaign. This campaign was described by the military leadership as an “annihilation operation” and was implemented with the stated intention to “annihilate to the roots” the military’s major political rival, the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). This new evidence fundamentally changes what it is now possible to know about the 1965–66 killings, specifically as regards the question of military intent. Likewise, the process by which the military’s target group was identified and targeted for destruction can now be understood using the military’s own accounts of how this process occurred. This article argues that this new evidence strengthens the argument, advanced by genocide scholars since the early 1980s, that the 1965–66 killings should be understood as a case of genocide.

ABSTRACTThe biography of Raphael Lemkin has emerged of late as a highly contested lieu de memoire in charged political debates in Europe, the United States and the Middle East about the meaning, past and present, of the Holocaust and genocide. At the same time, scholars have attempted to demythologize Lemkin by reinscribing his life into its pre-World War II Polish context. Yet thus far no one has identified the precise political activities and affiliations that shaped Lemkin’s concept of genocide. In this article, I show that Lemkin, far from being a Jewish Bundist, a Polish nationalist or an apolitical cosmopolitan, was an active member of the interwar Polish Zionist movement, from which he drew the ideas that inspired his idea of the crime of genocide. In the first part of this article, I use his published writings from the 1920s and 1930s in Hebrew, Yiddish and Polish to recover a rich Jewish political framework in which his concepts of barbarism and genocide first began to emerge. In the second section, I ask how this crucial dimension of Lemkin’s life and thought vanished from the historical record, and why it has yet to be recovered in spite of the boom in biographical scholarship. Finally, I suggest how the recovery of Lemkin’s Zionism helps to reframe the current political impasse in the historiography of Holocaust and genocide studies.

ABSTRACTThis article explores genocide recognition politics (GRP) with a specific focus on Saddam Hussein’s Anfal campaign (1988) against the Kurdish population in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). In the context of a pending referendum on independence in the KRI, this study investigates the evolution of GRP in relation to secession, nation-building and commemoration as well as the social, political and economic drivers in the process. In addition, the study zeroes in on the internationalization of genocide recognition claims via diaspora lobbying and the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq (KRG)’s bureaux of representation in Europe. The results are based on extensive fieldwork conducted with KRG representatives, diaspora entrepreneurs and other stakeholders between 2012 and 2016 in Europe and Iraqi Kurdistan. The KRG’s genocide recognition claims are not explicitly associated with secession, but instead are employed to legitimize local rule by referencing collective trauma and shared victimhood. In this way, Anfal – as the ‘chosen trauma’ – has become a component of (local) nation-building mechanisms. Nevertheless, recognition claims can become instrumentalized for secession so long as the political circumstances in the region become favourable to Kurdish independence. In the diaspora context, GRP serve to establish a link to homeland through commemoration practices, but they also provide greater space for lobbying and transnational advocacy networking.