Holocausts: An Historical Reckoning

Holocaust, derived from the Greek, is a large-scale calamity involving fire. Today, the term is specifically used to describe the German genocide of the Jews. But it has a long history. The European mass murder of Indigenous peoples in North and South America killed 55 million or 90% of the population, between 1492 and 1600, in a little more than one hundred years. More bloodbaths were to follow. In Africa, many millions were killed in the Congo by Belgium. Germany wiped out the Herero and Nama peoples in Southwest Africa. In the Middle East, that was quickly followed by the Turkish slaughter of the Armenians. Then came Auschwitz. Since the end of World War Two barbarisms and genocides continue: Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Myanmar and Gaza. Naomi Klein says, “The Nazi Holocaust is finally being placed in history connected to the terrors that came before and after.”

Recorded at Swarthmore College.

Speaker: Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia, the founding co-director of UBC’s Centre for Climate Justice, and Honorary Professor of Media and Climate at Rutgers University. Her writing has appeared in leading publications around the world, and she is a columnist for The Guardian. The New York Times says, “She is that nearly extinct breed of activist: one who never stops questioning orthodoxies and interrogating her own beliefs.” She is the award-winning author of such bestsellers as This Changes Everything, The Shock Doctrine, No Logo, No Is Not Enough, and On Fire. Her latest book is the highly acclaimed Doppelganger.

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