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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. After Lemkin's death, William Proxmire, a senator from ________________, takes up the movement to have the genocide convention ratified in the U.S.

2. On what date does Raphael Lemkin die?

3. People have often argued that the United States don't know what is happening in countries where ___________ is occurring.

4. What proportion of United Nations member states must ratify a measure before it becomes international law?

5. What is the name of the Polish diplomat and Roman Catholic who infiltrates first the Warsaw ghetto and later a death camp in order to report on Jewish suffering?

Short Essay Questions

1. The Armenian genocide began when Turkey's interior minister decided that the Turkish Empire would target which group of subjects?

2. After Lemkin's death, William Proxmire, a senator from Wisconsin, took up the movement to have the genocide convention ratified in the U.S. What was the date of Senator Proxmire's first genocide speech?

3. Which senator from South Dakota believed that genocide was taking place in Cambodia and wanted the United States to contribute military forces to make it stop?

4. Why was Raphael Lemkin worthy of an entire chapter of this book? What is his significance to this survey of genocide?

5. How do we know that the United States and British governments had a great deal of intelligence on Hitler's extermination of Jews that belied their feigned ignorance of the atrocities?

6. What did Lemkin do while interacting with officials and the public regarding the Holocaust that he thought would make them believe his, and others', claims about Hitler's atrocities against the Jews?

7. Which specific instance of genocide has American society committed itself to remembering and preventing a repetition of, which makes their slowness to react when genocide occurs disturbing to say the least?

8. In coining the term "genocide," what did Lemkin write concerning those who committed it?

9. What was the concern that several U.S. policymakers had with the ambiguous language of the UN genocide treaty?

10. What does the author say is the first reason the United States has been slow to recognize and act when genocide has occurred?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Using the text to support your arguments, analyze and explain why the Iraqi brutality against the Kurds was viewed by U.S. policymakers and journalists as an understandable means of suppressing rebellion or as a result of the Iraq-Iran war.

Essay Topic 2

When the term "genocide" was coined, some welcomed it as a way to motivate any who used it to stand against the atrocities it represented; others argued that a word was just a word, and that using this word would not change official stances. Compare and contrast how the world reacted to the various acts of genocide expounded upon in A Problem from Hell's as you develop an analysis that explains which opinion history has, so far, proven to be correct.

Essay Topic 3

Using the text as backup, investigate why, during the postwar period, the Holocaust was rarely discussed in general American society and glossed over in, if not omitted entirely from, books and films of the period. In particular, focus on the role American Jews had in encouraging this approach toward the Nazi atrocities against their people and why they did so.

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