Worse than War – Panel Discussion on Genocide in the 20th and 21st Century
University of Basel, 26th October 2011

Worse than War – The Documentary Film:

“Worse than War” is “the first major documentary to explore the phenomenon of genocide and how we can stop it”, featuring leading scholar and best-selling author in this field, Prof. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. The film documents Prof. Goldhagen’s travels to sites of past genocidal attacks around the world and records his numerous interviews with victims, relatives, witnesses, the perpetrators of atrocities as well as authorities, local and international politicians and journalists. Covering, among others, the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the genocide of the Maya in Guatemala and the mass murder in Bosnia, the film sheds light on the disturbing facts, backgrounds, patterns, dynamics and aftermaths of some of the most abysmal crimes in history. In a moving sequence, Prof. Goldhagen accompanies his father, the historian and retired university professor Erich Goldhagen, to a Ukrainian town where Erich Goldhagen was nearly killed during the Holocaust. In the face of the sheer insufferable, Prof. Goldhagen poses the poignant and thought-provoking question of whether current public international law and its institutions can be regarded as effective means to succssfully tackle the global combat against genocide. His conclusions may be deemed provocative at times, but they provide a compelling starting point for a discussion on an issue which has – in different contexts – time and again left the international community in dismay and – at the same time – tragic inability or even unwillingness to act in time”

Panel Discussion With:

– Prof. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
– Prof. Paola Gaeta, University of Geneva
– Prof. Nicolas Michel, University of Geneva and Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
– Prof. em. Christian Tomuschat, Humboldt University of Berlin
– Ambassador Jürg Lindenmann, Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs
– Prof. Anne Peters, University of Basel

Download program