Krakow Holocaust and the Nanking Massacre - Research Paper Example

Krakow Holocaust and the Nanking Massacre Brief outline of the project and your aims and objectives The project compares Krakow Holocaust with the Nanking Massacre. The objective is to look into the reasons why the Nanking massacre rests in such obscurity whereas the Krakow Holocaust (the Jewish Holocaust in general) is highlighted so frequently that it has become mainstream. The paper looks at the atrocities committed in both the areas and tries to find out if there is any reason besides the facts that the dominant party writes the history, for the obscurity of the Nanking Massacre. Primary research and research methodologies Primary research includes scholarly journals, books and peer-reviewed articles that either give information about the Holocaust/Nanking massacre, or the compared them. The research considers a piece of information and tries to analyse it according to the narratives set by the opposite party. Theoretical input you employed and why this was useful The premise or the theory behind this research is to stay as neutral as possible. This neutral approach proved very successful because it helped in preventing any bias. It does not undermine the Holocaust nor does it unnecessarily promote the Nanking Massacre. The purpose of this stidy is to balance out the two narratives so that people who are oblivion to Nanking Massacre can be educated about it. On the same note people, especially the Chinese, who do not know much about the Holocaust can become aware of those events. Individual inputs (e.g. archive management, field research, photography/visual/audio documentation, etc.) _____________________________________________________________________ Acknowledgement I am truly grateful to my professors, my parents and my friends for guiding me and helping me with this project. I could not have finished this project had they not been there for me. I also want to pay my deepest sorrows to the victims and survivors of all atrocities ever occurred throughout the history of mankind. Methodology Primary research includes scholarly journals, books and peer-reviewed articles that either give information about the Holocaust/Nanking massacre, or compare them. The research considers a piece of information and tries to analyse it according to the narratives set by the opposite party. The methodology is to analyse both the genocides. Popular movies like The Flowers of War and Schindlers List and various other journals are inducted into the research. The former movie depicts graphic violence and rape that took place at Nanking in 1937 (Morris et al., 2014). They are useful because they help communicate how the progress in historical research has led up to this moment where movies are made to highlight important issues and maybe to set narratives. Alternative Representation The Holocaust of the European Jews is considered one of the most atrocious and tragic incidents in human history. As a result of this massacre almost 6 million people perished. The term Holocaust is specific to the genocide of the European Jews. This massacre has achieved a preeminent status that has no parallel and the mainstream media regularly highlights it. The Jewish literature bubbles over with stories from Krakow (Wiener, 2011). Krakow is the old capital of Poland that became the seat of the Nazi occupied general government in 1939 (Niewyk & Nicosia, 2000). Goldstone comments on this and no other genocide in history have created a response from the international academic community (MacDonald, 2002). Rubenstein considers this event of the 20th century as the one that became the object of most persistent and intriguing event (MacDonald, 2002). Syndor considers it having an impact in a variety of languages and making its presence count in vast literature (MacDonald, 2002). And Levin considers it a huge proliferation in literature, movies and TV programs (MacDonald, 2002). In short the ripples of this incident have reached far and wide. Such a huge impact on history has created many questions about the standardized status that Holocaust has achieved among the darkest atrocities. The Jewish Holocaust has been industrialized and commemorated to such an extent that it has triggered a debate whether this genocide can be compared to other human atrocities. Another interesting question is whether the term Holocaust can be applied to other tragedies where certain groups seek to commemorate their own catastrophes. Each atrocity is different; people in Krakow ghettos were told by the Germans that their relatives were sent to Ukraine to work in war factories when in fact they had been killed (Schiff et al., 2007). The majority of historians does not approve the idea of borrowing a term to highlight the tragedy. Some historians consider it hijacking the term as if there is a grotesque competition of suffering. A type of victimlogy needing to proliferation of suffering. Whatever reasons the historians might give the overall mood is that no atrocity can be compared to (or should not be compared to) the Holocaust or the genocide of the European Jews. Either it undermines the level of brutality that the Nazi campaign inflicted, or it creates a race in the books of history about finding who suffered more. However, a great number of Holocaust historians have started studies to compare other genocides with the Jewish Holocaust. But their efforts are biased towards promoting the Holocaust in terms of this uniqueness. So the result of this comparison is undermining or weakening the significance of the other atrocity. Katz is among such historians who have downplayed and sometimes denied other atrocities (MacDonald, 2002). These tragedies include the genocide of the Armenians and of the North American indigenous people. Bauer puts Holocaust on the history map but consider it a genocide of the higher degree where it planned was made and executed to physically kill every single person belonging to an ethnicity (MacDonald, 2002). Hence, the term Holocaust has become specific to the Jewish Holocaust. Similarly Melson gave his four stage model that explains it genocide (MacDonald, 2002). This model puts the Holocaust in a separate class which is above the total genocide. But there are those historians who consider comparing and borrowing necessary. Moshman contests that people have started to think about genocide in terms of the Holocaust therefore historians have very little choice but to go along with this stereotype or prototype for comparing other human tragedies. According to Flanzbaum the Holocaust have attained the status of the touchstone of victimization (MacDonald, 2002). These active academic debates have primarily focused on the Jewish community. So the results of such debates revolve around the Holocaust research itself, the moral responsibility of the Jewish community, and the emotional impact on Holocaust survivors. It might not be intentional but the general assumption has become that other groups need Holocaust highlight their tragedies. They benefit from the Holocaust by invoking another one. It gives them the leverage of promoting their own version of history. Such a trend has triggered a study of comparative genocide offering a large selection of non-Jewish groups that use the Holocaust as a tool to represent their past histories. Rosenberg considers these groups as ‘trivialists’ (MacDonald, 2002). It means that they agree with the calamity that haunted the Jewish community in Europe. Therefore, the common notion among these trivialists is that Holocaust with a capital H is specific to the Jewish genocide but a Holocaust with a small h can be used by any group who wishes (MacDonald, 2002). From this premise there were a few holocausts that plagued the pages of history in the 18th and 19th. The Chinese Holocaust is among the major genocide that is also remembered as the Asian Holocaust, the Pacific Holocaust or the forgotten Holocaust. The problem with comparing the Chinese Holocaust with the Jewish Holocaust is that it victimizes Chinese history that often leads to distortion of truth and misrepresentation. No two events or incidents are alike therefore direct comparison results in false dichotomies. It distorts history and seriously undermines the authenticity of the Chinese Holocaust. Iris Changs book The Rape of Nanking (1997) is arguably one of the most relevant books on the Chinese Holocaust. Her work specifically analyzes this problem of comparison. During the 1930s and 40s the Japanese soldiers massacred a huge number of Chinese. The Nanking massacre of December 1937 is considered the biggest atrocity of the China incident (Levene & Roberts, 1999). The exact death toll is very hard to estimate. According to the popular notion between one and six million people perished from Japanese brutality during the whole war (MacDonald, 2002). When other war crimes like starvation, looting, bombing and medical experimentations are factored in, the death toll reaches 19 million (MacDonald, 2002). Of course there are others who give a lower estimate of under 10 million. But the Chinese activists frequently quote a large number of death toll, around 35 million (MacDonald, 2002). This notion is also supported by the Peoples Republic of China. The Japanese atrocities against the Chinese might seem a repetition of the usual war crimes. However, certain events are specifically horrendous. The invasion and occupation of Nanking in December 1937 is worth mentioning because the atrocities committed here can be compared or related to the horror that the world witnessed at Nuremberg and Auschwitz. Nanking stands out among the larger war and it might be the worst places where the Japanese massacred the Chinese. Northern China and Inner Mongolia were already captured by the Japanese by December 1937. Nanking was strategically important for China because after Shanghai, Nanking was the only free chief city. Nanking was not unique in terms of war crimes because it was only a repetition of Japanese brutality that the world had witnessed in other Chinese cities. An estimate suggests that the Japanese killed 250,000 civilians in Shanghai while another 300,000 on the way from Shanghai to Nanking (MacDonald, 2002). However, Nanking still stands out for all the wrong reasons because the scale and intensity of massacre was unprecedented during that war. And also because the atrocities were witnessed by neutral observers. There was a significant number of Westerners present there. They witnessed and documented the war crimes committed by the Japanese. It also means that other Chinese cities might have suffered worse but due to neutral witnesses Nanking has more authentic documentation. Until 13 December Japanese forces continued dropping bombs on Nanking. After that they invaded the city boundaries and a six weeks long siege followed. The Japanese soldiers did not stop killing even after this six week duration (Hu, 2000). This siege was marked with murder, rape and mass brutality. The massacre of the Chinese was not limited to any particular area, every section of the city was under attack. Chang (1997) paints a horrific picture with words such as ‘rivers of blood’ and ‘moaning and screaming’ (p. 46). It might not be authentic but 20,000 women are said to have been raped. Some historians go further in describing the brutality. They state that it is false to assume that the brutality was only confined to rape; these women suffered torture and were killed later in the head chopping contests (MacDonald, 2002). The intensity and scale of this rape and murderous savagery was so much that it even alarmed the Japanese High Command. There are historians who dismiss the gang rape violence. Some historians noted that the soldiers remained disciplined throughout the invasion that they stayed with their units and behaved even when there was murder and mayhem. But rationally speaking the duration and the volume of the massacre indicates that it was not a temporary failure of discipline, it was a major policy. The predefined goals of the Japanese invaders was to use terrorist tactics to make China submit (Li et al., 2001). The victims of Krakow also suffered forced labor and rape (Friedman, 2010). Some historians also state that it was not only the soldiers violating the code but it was the officers who were directing the loot. So the gradual minimum to maximum death toll at Nanking is reported at lower than 42,000. And then there is a middle ground which shows a figure between 200 and 300,000, whereas Chang (1997) reports a figure in excess of 350,000. Also Joshua A. Fogel almost agrees with this number giving a total of 340,000 (Fogel, 2000). In comparison with the Krakow Holocaust, the Nanking Holocaust is somewhat forgotten. It has been dealt as an obscure incident, while most of the historical literature of the United States have neglected it. And it is not very hard to prove this point because a simple survey of secondary school history texts can validate this argument. The Jewish Holocaust and the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are well known whereas the massacre at Nanking remains virtually unknown. The Diaspora Chinese have specifically targeted this point to expose the unjust handling of the Nanking massacre by the historical scholarship. So when it comes to comparison it is the much remembered Jewish Holocaust and then there is the forgotten Chinese Holocaust. a. Jewish artists doing controversial work around Holocaust engaging with the sublime Jews gold teeth It is no wonder that the Jewish Holocaust has taken the main stage in the list of genocides. It is a very serious debate whether to undermine the Holocaust by stating the obvious that the media and the mainstream historians are either Jewish or pro-Jewish, which is why everyone knows about the Jewish Holocaust and not about the Nanking massacre. One does not need hard-core courtroom evidence to support this claim because so many Hollywood movies are based around the theme of Holocaust. Such bias is not hard to miss. Movies like Schindlers List (1993), The Pianist (2002), Out of the Ashes (2003), The Reader (2008) etc. are profoundly based around the theme of Holocaust. It is said that what cannot be achieved through power and politics can be achieved through aesthetics (Kaplan, 2007). Aesthetic power of arts is effectively used by Jewish artists to remind the world about that incident. b. Turn the attitude to Jews into something of beauty There is an idea of the ‘other’ who is different from ‘us’. As long as we see the Jewish community as the ‘other’ there will always be feeling of alienation and hostility. In the historical context and literature such as Shakespearian notion of ‘one pound of flesh’ and other similar narratives can never free ‘us’ from our own bias. The world belongs to the powerful and the dominant. If a certain group is dominating the popular media or writing historical books it means that they have earned their place. They have either dominated the world economically or by any other means. It has been the rule of the nature that the winner writes the history. If the Chinese had been as dominant and powerful as the Jewish lobby people would be more aware about the Japanese brutality in China during the 1930s and 40s. Then a similar context would have arisen where the Jewish Holocaust would have been undermined and someone like Iris Chang would be writing to highlight the atrocities that the European Jews suffered at the hands of the Nazi administration. The general attitude towards the Jewish community is either of hate or jealousy. Both of these emotions are useless because they benefit neither. So instead of criticizing the Jewish ways of living one should think about improving their ways of life. And one must not forget that there was a lot of hate and anti-Semitism in literature and the history (Sterling, 2005), therefore such convicted and pro-Jewish work in history and literature was required to make things neutral. Moreover, the young generation of Jewish people right after the Holocaust wanted to know about their history and heritage. The social and political changes during the 1980s changed Poland and hence effective the Jews that remained in Krakow and Poland. So the young generation started asking questions about the Jews who had been the part of Polish history (Zimmerman, 2013). d. Must cover politics of representations Regarding atrocities and genocides there are chiefly two types of political representations; “identity politics” and the “culture of victimization” (Finkelstein, 2003). Getting away from the debate of Chinese vs. Jewish massacre for a moment; the Armenian genocide portrays this notion very well. The Armenian Diaspora is seven million and American Armenians are around one million and have wealth and political influences, which is why they successfully set the agenda about their victimization and Turkey’s rejection of genocidal claims (MacDonald, 2007). e. How do we as students from China and UK embody the holocaust representations? The student studying in the UK are well aware about the Holocaust. They have been taught about it in the textbooks and there is enough media advertisement or promotion of the Jewish suffering where Hitler and his Nazi administration is portrayed as the real evil of the Earth. The Nazi military symbols have been turned into terrorizing signs by the popular media. When the students learn about other atrocities and genocides like the Armenian or the Native American or the Nanking massacre they are somewhat surprised. The going to the same complexity that this paper has discussed very deeply that they start comparing. It is only natural to question where other genocides stand on the scale of brutality. If a student has been taught about the Holocaust all his or her life and then when they are independently studying for researching, they come across that the genocide. Dave would be asking the question: why I didnt know about this before? Chinese students on the other hand would be at a disadvantage because they are well aware of the Nanking massacre. But they do not see enough discussion debate or historical references about this atrocity. Committing war crimes or genocide is horrendous and inhumane but forgetting about ones atrocities or simply denying is adding salts to the wounds. It is for this reason the Chinese student with considers themselves the victims of forgetfulness. g. How do we conceptualise raw emotion The raw emotion creates the bias or prejudice. A Japanese studying about the Nanking massacre would be a perplexed situation where his or her bias would be urging to negate any allegations. In their subconscious there would be a voice nudging them that perhaps it is a little bit too exaggerated or perhaps it is all a bunch of lies. On the other hand if survivor of the Nanking massacre would be biased because of their conceptualized raw emotion. When they see Hollywood mainstream movies only highlighting the Holocaust and almost forgetting about other genocides. Such raw emotion create this galvanized society. It is the fear that turns people into fundamentals. It is this bias that makes them realize that perhaps their whisperers will not be heard until and unless they yell at the top of their lungs about their narrative. The hatred against the Jews was apparent from the Krakow ghettos where a member of the blue police was executed in 1943 for giving Jews the “Aryan” papers (Piotrowski, 1998). h. What do we theoretically mean about being emotional There is a notion that energy in motion is considered and emotion. A common misconception is that emotions are being things that reside within us (Shibles, 1995). We get emotional all the time. They get angry when we are not paid on time they get happy when you get a pleasant surprise. And we get emotional when they are denied our rights or simply left in the dark when one needs the world to know that he or she is the victim. Being emotional is it part of being human. We are not robots. It was Iris Changs emotions that led her to write that book. She simply could not let all of the war crimes slip into abyss. She was emotionally motivated to write such a book that would reveal to the world what it had been missing. Ethical implications of the Holocaust, use ‘dark tourism’ It really does not matter if the Holocaust has become part of the mainstream culture or narrative or not. There is no doubt that the Nazi administration carried out a massacre in one of the most brutal fashion. The ethical responsibility here is to acknowledge and learn a lesson from such dark pages of history. Adopt a strong attitude of disapproval of killing actions (Jones, 200). Also the ethical implication is that one should not forget about other genocides that the other nations, ethnicities or tribes suffered. It genocide is horrible whether it happens to the Jews or to the Chinese. This ethical implication is very hard to achieve because a Jew would be emotionally motivated about the Holocaust while a Chinese would be more emotionally attached to the survivors of the Japanese war crimes. And there way to look at the ethical implication is the case in 1997 when 10 Chinese survivors of the Nanking massacre filed a lawsuit in Tokyo Japan. There was a group of lawyers and other citizens who were willing to pay them the compensation (Brooks, 1999). The best way to achieve a neutral ground in such polarized environment would be to show the survivors of the Holocaust but the pictures and documents of the Nanking massacre. Dark tourism can help achieve this. When the Chinese will go to the remains of the concentration camps they will understand that there are other victims of genocide too. On a similar note the Jewish community can tour the museums and archives of other genocides in the world and can learn that a human is a human. Belonging to an ethnicity or religion does not make him or her superior or inferior. References 1. Brooks, R. L. 1999. When Sorry Isnt Enough: the Controversy over Apologies and Reparations of Human Injustice. New York University Press. 2. Chang, I. 1997. The Rape of Nanking. Pearson Education. 3. Finkelstein, N. G. 2003. The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. Verso. 4. Fogel, J. A. 2000. The Nanking Massacre in History and Historiography. University of California Press. 5. Friedman, J. C. 2010. The Routledge History of the Holocaust. Taylor and Francis. 6. Hu, H. 2000. American Goddess at the rape of Nanking: The courage of Minnie Vautrin. SIU Press. 7. Jones, D. H. 2000. Moral Responsibility in the Holocaust. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 8. Kaplan, B. A. 2007. Unwanted Beauty: Aesthetic Pleasure in Holocaust Representations. University of Illinois Press. 9. Levene, M. & Roberts, P. The Massacre in History. Berghahn Books. 10. Li et al. 2001. Nanking 1937: Memory and Healing. M. E. Sharpe. 11. MacDonald, D. B. 2005. Forgetting and Denying: Iris Chang, the Holocaust and the Challenge of Nanking. International Politics. p. 1-25. 12. MacDonald, D. B. 2007. Identity Politics in the Age of Genocide: The Holocaust and Historical Representation. London: Routledge. 13. Morris, et al. 2014. Imagining Japan in Post-War East Asia: Identity Politics Schooling and Popular Culture. Routledge. 14. Niewyk, D. L. The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust. Columbia University Press. 15. Piotrowksi, T. 1998. Polands Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic. McFarland. 16. Schiff et al., 2007. William & Rosalie: A Holocaust Testimony. University of North Texas Press. 17. Shibles, W. A. 1995. Emotion in Aesthetics. Springer. 18. Sterling, E. 2005. Life in the Ghettos during the Holocaust. Syracuse University Press. 19. Wiener, A. 2011. From a Name to a Number. AuthorHouse. 20. Zimmerman, L. W. Jewish studies in Holocaust education in Poland. McFarland. Read More