Definition of Genocide
According to the Dictionary Genocide means the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group. In 1944, Polish-born U.S. jurist Raphael Lemkin coined the term. It was taken from the Greek word geno- which means "race or kind" and -cide which means killing. This is only one definition of the term. It has been defined in many ways by Social Scientist and Historians. As Stated by Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn: "Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator" (The History and Sociology of Genocide , 1990). This is just one of the ways that genocide has been interpreted. Another way that the term was interpreted as stated by Steven T. Katz: "the concept of genocide applies only when there is an actualized intent, however successfully carried out, to physically destroy an entire group (as such a group is defined by the perpetrators)" (The Holocaust in Historical Perspective, Vol. 1, 1994). From these two examples it shows that everyone has there own way of seeing what this word actually means. But the one thing that can not be denied is that the word means death.
Origins of Genocide
When thinking of the term Genocide most people think of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany. However Genocide existed before Hitler was even born. One of the first documented genocides is Carthage in 146 BC. This had modern tendencies of genocide. According to Kiernan, "Racial, religious or cultural prejudices, gender and other social hierarchies, territorial expansionism, and an idealization of cultivation all characterize the thinking of Cato the Censor, like that of more recent perpetrators. The tragedy of Carthage, its details lost with most of the works of Livy and other ancient authors, and concealed behind allegory in Virgil's Aeneid, became known to early modern Europeans from briefer ancient accounts rediscovered only in the 15th century, as Europe's own expansion began". So we see here that the concept of genocide has existed for centuries.