With Intent to Destroy

Colin Tatz

ISBN 1-85984-550-9  *  160x215 mm  *  $34.95  *  222 pp hb

Published by Verso

'I remember quite vividly the trigger to my leaving South Africa at the end of 1960. A regular blood donor, I went to give a pint. As the attendant detached the bottle, she affixed a label showing a white circle. "Is that what I think it is?" "Yes," she replied. "We've been told to practice for the new legislation which will forbid the transfusion of the blood of any one racial group member into a person of another racial group." The legislation passed soon enough.' A South African, Australian Jew, Colin Tatz provides a personal yet analytical and critical account of race politics, and the termini to which related policies and practices have led in Germany, Australia and South Africa. Each case study offers a series of reflections on the subject of genocide: how logical, if monstrous, was the transformation in 1930s' Germany from a cruel and institutionalised antisemitism into the Nazi killing machine; what constituted the colonial genocide practiced for many years in Australia; whether or not the word genocide can be applied to the appalling events that prevailed in apartheid South Africa. Framing these studies are a moving autobiographical chapter which describes the author's South African childhood and an essay which addresses responses (official and otherwise) to genocide: the matter of denialism, the war crimes trials, the Vatican's apology and Australia's National Sorry Day, among others. The book closes with the author's reflections on the teaching of genocide. In focusing mainly on Westerners' experiences of genocide, Colin Tatz raises uncomfortable questions about the human, rational people we believe ourselves to be, and exposes this Enlightenment-bases self-image as dangerous complacency.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Definitions of Genocide

Prologue

1 Breaking the Membrane: Journey Towards Genocide

2 Approaches to Genocide

3 Germany: The Genocidal Engine

4 Australia: Defining and Interpreting Genocide

5 South Africa: Genocide or Not?

6 Reflecting on Genocide: Denialism, Memory and the Politics of Apology

Epilogue: Teaching about Genocide

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Index