WCU student recognized for genocide thesis
PAMELA BATZEL , Staff Writer
Daily Local News
07/15/2004
Standing in front of a barracks at a former death camp in Poland, with
a survivor in front of him recalling the horrors he experienced and
witnessed, a question hit Jonathan Coull.
Coull, a West Chester University student, wanted to know: “Where did
the Nazis get their ideas?”
The question gnawed at him.
After that two-week trip to Poland and the Czech Republic in the
summer of 2002, he stayed in Europe to backpack but found himself
interviewing residents and researching in museums, hoping to learn who
taught the Germans how to kill millions.
After he returned to West Chester, Coull abandoned plans to teach high
school history and enrolled in the university’s Holocaust and genocide
studies master ‘s of arts program and doggedly pursued an answer to
his question.
After two years of research, which included interviews with a local
survivor of genocide and research of primary documents, Coull had a
thesis that argued Germany had practice in the science of genocide
that preceded Adolf Hitler and World War II.
His efforts were recently recognized by the Pennsylvania Association
for Graduate Schools. He won “Distinguished Thesis Award” this spring
from the association representing 45 colleges and universities from
across the state. Coull was also one of the runner-ups for the
association’s outstanding graduate student of the year.
Brenda Sanders Dede, co-chairwoman of the committee that selected the
winner, said that Coull’s topic was unique and timely and his
recommendations from West Chester professors and project directors
excellent.
William Hewitt, a professor of history at West Chester who helped
advise Coull, said the work was “above and beyond the expectations of
the (Holocaust and genocide) program,” which was created five years
ago.
A master’s level thesis is typically about 100 pages. Coullâ=80=99s
touches 300. And his scholarship, which was strong, calls attention
to what is little known, Hewitt said.
Coull’s paper argues that the German government nearly exterminated
the Herero, a tribe in the African nation of Namibia that Germany
colonized. The Germans used that experience to help the Turks kill
between 1.5 and 2 million-plus Turkish Armenians in 1915, he argued.
By the time Hitler came to power, genocide had been institutionalized,
said Coull, who is 33.
“When you’re going to kill 6 million Jews in a residential complex,it
takes a lot of know-how,” Coull said. “If you practice killing groups
of people that are pariah — supposedly inferior groups — over a
period of 40 years, you’re going to get better at it.”
Coull’s work shows that genocide “doesn’t happen in a vacuum, there’s
a lineage to these horrors. They’re connected,” Hewitt said. “That
connection hadn’ t been made by many people.”
Coull acknowledged that some scholars do not agree that the Germans
played a central or leadership role in the Armenian genocide, but he
maintains that they did. “The documents I found support direct
involvement, they were involved in the killing. I found an
eyewitness.” His eyewitness, Charles Mahjoubian, lives in Paoli.
The Turkish government does not acknowledge the genocide, nor does the
United States, he said.
Coull said it is important to acknowledge and understand the
connection and progression of genocide.
In Germany, he said, “The whole government was created around the idea
that foreign policy is conducted by committing genocide.”
In each instance, the country justified the killings by arguing racial
superiority, Coull said, adding that the effort to wipe people out was
partof government plans to access resources and land.
In Turkey, for instance, several nations, including the United States,
were angling for access to mineral and railway rights as they saw the
Ottoman Empire crumbling, Coull said. Germany saw it could get closer
to the Turks by offering to help them kill the Christian Armenians.
“A lot of so-called inferior groups have been caught in between power
brokers in the world for a long time,” he said.
The Carter administration backed the Khmer Rouge after the Vietnam War
because the Khmer Rouge opposed the Vietnam War, Coull said. The Khmer
Rouge, who were Communists, is reported to have killed nearly 1.9
million people.
In 1989, Coull said, the United States backed Saddam Hussein who,
recent reports indicate, then killed between 600,000 and 1 million
Kurds. The Kurds were fighting for autonomy.
“It’s a real problem. It keeps happening over and over again. People
don’t even know it,” said Coull. “We live in an age of genocide. It’s
happening right now. It’s wrong.”
Coull, who hopes to enroll in a doctoral program in the fall of 2005,
said he wants to conduct research in Sudan.
A recent report from Reuters said as many as 30,000 black Darfur
Africans may have been killed by the Janjaweed, the Darfu militia,
with support from Sudan’ s military. Humanitarian officials say the
violence has made 1.2 million people in Darfur homeless, living in
barren areas.
Coull said he is in particular interested in the role missionaries
play in genocide.
“They need to be aware of their role and they need to be aware that
spreading their faith only instigates more killing,” he said. “Their
role needs to be redefined.”
Coull said he is interested in doing human rights work and developing
a model of intervention.
Coull said his passion for pursuing truth and humanitarianism has its
roots in his childhood.
He said he was about 11 years old when his father took him to see
“Gandhi,” which he described as the first “real” film he ever
saw. Shortly after he saw “Victor Victoria,” another movie with “a
universalist ideal of what people are,” he said. And, around the same
time, he read “The Rise and Fall of theThird Reich,” by William
Shirer, a well-known American journalist who covered Nazi Germany for
the American press.
“Right away there’s a system that’s being put in my head that’s
humanistic, individualistic and universalist,” he said.
His dad was a dean at the Haverford School and his mom was a reading
teacher. His stepmother has taught art and special education students
and several other family members teach.
In 1993, he joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps, carrying on a
family tradition of offering service to the armed forces. Coull said
he was quickly disillusioned.
He said he went in believing that the United States was the “bearer of
true, high-minded values” but that his experiences changed that
perception. He said he saw the Army as abusing its power.
After college and his service in the Army, Coull went into social
work. But the work was exhausting and it seemed never to solve the
underlying causes of incarceration, rape and child abuse.
“It was a burn-out and I felt I was capable of doing more,” he said.
He decided to go back to school to get a certificate to teach
history. He said he wanted to relate his humanistic outlook. How
people understand history defines how they perceive the world today,
he said.
But after his first year, he participated in the two-week tour of
ghettoes and death camps from World War II in Poland and the Czech
Republic and was confronted with the question that led to his thesis
and his pursuit of a doctoral degree.
Dede, of the association for graduate schools, said that another
reason the committee chose Coull’s project over other candidates’ was
because he plans to continue his research in a doctoral program.
Coull added he hopes as more and more scholars bring attention to the
problem the public will take more notice — and interest.
“This topic is gaining momentum,” he said, referring to Anne
Applebaumâ=80=99s “The Gulag” which won a Pulitzer Prize in
2003. “It’s gaining currency.”
“If we (scholars) keep kicking at this door we’re going to kick it
in,” he said. “It’s going to become an issue.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress