Rosenbaum Intro, 4, 7, 14

Intro: Rosenbaum introduces his book by explaining to the reader that there has been a lot of new research, studies, and comparisons made using the Holocaust. He goes on to say that the word genocide is really synonymous with the Holocaust and most people think of it as the most important "genocide." An interesting approach to a subject that has stayed the same for the most part in the last fifty or so years.

4: Steven Katz bounces around between a few different large scale killings to try and give the reader some type of context, I believe. He talks about something that I have thought as well and that is that the Holocaust isn't unique because of the numbers of killings. The uniqueness comes from the how the killings were thought out and performed.


7: In this chapter Robert Melson writes about something I was waiting to read about. I knew there had to be at least a few genocides long before the holocaust that I had never heard about and that's what I learned after reading this chapter. He writes about an Armenian genocide that was trying to establish the same type of hegemony race that was superior to all the rest. This essay was one of my favorites to read because it just shows that even though when we think genocide we probably all say Holocaust or Rwanda, but there are so many more that I'm sure we've never heard or read about for various reasons. This is why, to me, the Holocaust is not unique in the sense of a genocide. I believe its only uniques lies in the way the killings were done, Auschwitz/Dachau, etc.


14: In the last chapter of this weeks reading we get to read more about the comparisons between the Holocaust and Rwanda. If there were a list as to the worst genocides in history I would put these two number one and two. The problem between comparing these two genocides lies in the outcome and not so much what led to each event. This seems to be the problem in most comparisons between the Holocaust and other mass killings, its really difficult to compare events like these because of the huge differences between time, reasons, religious and cultural implications, all of that. To me, the only way to compare things like these genocides is only by the numbers as compared to the total population. Other than that it is hard to draw parallels besides maybe race.