A genocide is the deliberate killing of people, especially those of a specific ethnicity, religion and nation. The term “genocide” is coined by lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944 during the Holocaust. Genocides have been happening since the beginning of time, ones with the coined terms could be the Armenian Genocide which started in 1915-1923, when Armenians living in the Ottoman (Present day Turkey) Empire were rounded up, deported and executed on orders of the government. They are still happening today, we are dealing with ISIS.

The Holocaust is the most knowed genocide and the one with the most recorded deaths.”The Holocaust was a genocide, because they killed 6 million people just because they were jewish”, said Zoe clark,  8th grader.The Holocaust was when Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, deems the Jewish population racially inferior and a threat, and kills an estimated six million Jews in Germany, Poland, the Soviet Union and other areas around Europe during World War II.

Even though history has showed us it only ends up in war, death and in deception they haven’t stopped, could they even stop at one point.”No because when most people don’t have an open-mind, and have been raised based on an idea they are not going to change even if you tell them to”, said Clark.“I want it to stop, unfortunately no because you can’t get rid of all the bad and all those close minded cruel people”, said Mallory Urbina, 8th grader.When people are raised to hate something about a religion or race it’s hard for genocides not to happen.

It must be really impossible to stop genocides there’s still a hopeful future of less of them, there’s plenty of ways to avoid them.”It starts with respect, everyone should respect each other’s religion even if it’s not theirs”, said Lindsey Villarreal, 8th grader.It starts from the root of life: education and being raised to accept different ideas and to be open minded with people and peoples culture. Once their teenagers or adults, you can’t change the way people think or much less their beliefs and if you can it’s tedious consistent work.

Most kids or even adults don’t know what a genocide is or that they are still happening, so the idea to embrace them at school has appeared. “Yes, we should emphasize genocides, because I think most people don’t know it’s still happening and people can’t comprehend that it’s a terrible thing”, said Clark. Kids shouldn’t be kept in a bubble and teaching and acknowledging the Holocaust could be helpful to know about how cruel one person can be and to show them that it doesn’t solve anything, a history that should not repeat itself.

To find more Information about genocides/the sites I used for this article:

 http://endgenocide.org/learn/past-genocides      

 http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/20/world/genocide-fast-facts/

 http://www.horizonweekly.ca/news/details/60622