Genocide History Essay

When it comes to violence and murder, no excuse can be made. Acts of heartlessness can never be justified. Genocide, or mass murder, has no other purpose but to destroy a nation. Netherlands, in this case, has suffered its ordeal because of the rising tensions in Europe during the Second World War. German troops took over the Netherlands on May 10, 1940 and the people suffered for five long years. Germany took interest in invading the Netherlands because 75% of the Netherlands’ population during that time was Jews. In fact, the Nazis deported hundreds of thousands of Jews, where only 5000 people were able to reach their homes. The people left in the Netherlands had to hide, and there were 30,000 who tried to survive (Laub, 2008). The Netherlands suffered the most number of deaths during the Holocaust, and this country surely knows what genocide means for a country, be it a nation of power or a nation of helplessness. Aside from that, the Netherlands was an interest for the Germans and genocide was something they did not have second thoughts of, because the Netherlands is easy to invade considering its cultural and geographic features (Laub, 2008). To make the picture clearer, anyone who tries to escape the Netherlands will surely fail because the countries surrounding this nation are all controlled by Germany. If not, the Netherlands is surrounded by bodies of water in its Northern side. Anyone who tries to escape safely into the waters will find danger along the way, because the waters were controlled by the Germans, too. That being said, genocide was at its worst, and everyone was there to kill or get killed. Because of the unlikely behaviour of humans that time, the Dutch people learned to regain their independence. They focused on their own nation, nationality and of course, freedom. Fighting hand in hand was not too bloody, because the Netherlands thought that the Germans will outlast the situation in the sense that they may get tired of causing chaos (Julius, 2000). The Netherlands did not use blood to counterattack the power of Germany, but they had campaigns and policies to live by, which can be shown with how the butch wore orange carnation or how they designed their postage stamps with orange colours, or how they wore orange to symbolize Dutch ruling family. Some of them rushed into hiding because they did not want to sign an oath that calls for loyalty to the Germans. The Netherlands succeeded without the use of weapons. Publishing and speaking were their means of survival and resistance, which can clearly be seen with how Anne Frank spread peace, honesty and awareness on genocide, and the Holocaust in general, through her diary (Julius, 2000). However, because of too much fear of being killed from the genocide taking place in the Netherlands, the Dutch slowly forgot about the Dutch Jewry in which small oppressive situations took place. While the Dutch Jewry enjoyed the equal citizenship, they started feeling out of place in a country they considered home because the some of the real Dutch put the blame on the Jews. After all, the Germans went after the Jews for killing (Julius, 2000) Genocide took away lives, but it also took away the more important things that keep nations alive and the world peaceful, like equal rights and plain peaceful coexistence. Jews were soon banned from serving as air-raid wardens. It was not too long ago when they were asked to leave the coastal towns of the Netherlands like the Hague. Changes were too extreme to the point that the Jews were no longer welcome in civil service (Amnesty International, 2008). The evil, here, is not the Dutch. It may not even be the Germans, but it is especially not the Jews. We can not simply erase a race to give rise to a new and expectedly better one. We can not support genocide and choose who to exist in this planet. The culprit of disorder and social unrest is the desire and greed of humans, and genocide in general. Genocide has, in a way, changed the Dutch not exactly in the way they wanted because they didn’t have a choice. References Amnesty International.2008. The Netherlands: The Detention of Irregular Migrants and Asylum Seekers. Amnesty International. Retrieved August 26, 2008 from http://www. amnesty. org/en/library/asset/EUR35/002/2008/en/4c629481-482d-11dd-a377-f5461cc8d4de/eur350022008eng. pdf. Julius, A. (2000). Combating Holocaust Denial Through Law in the United Kingdom. Jewish Policy Research. Retrieved August 26, 2008 from http://www. jpr. org. uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index. htm Laub, D. (2008). Holocaust Trauma Project. Genocide Studies Program, Yale University. Retrieved August 26, 2008 from http://www. yale. edu/gsp/trauma_project/index. htm