ABSTRACT
The Profiteers are those perpetrators who get involved in mass atrocities because they profit from doing so. The way in which and how they profit can differ very much. They can be after material gain such as money or property or personal profit such as advancing one's career or getting rid of a romantic rival. In Rwanda many perpetrators joined the genocide because it gave them the opportunity to loot. The profit is not always merely individual and small scale. Sometimes making profit is organized by groups or units while in others large-scale organizations such as companies and even states profit from war, foreign occupation, colonization, repression or large-scale human rights violations. For the private military companies (like Blackwater and the Wagner Group) and the arms dealers, like Viktor Bout, war has become a booming business that makes them tremendously rich. Also, smaller groups, like the Colonne Henneicke, and individuals like the Dutch traitor Anton van der Waals, can profit via denunciations, some continue business as usual, like the oven builders in Auschwitz. A particular brutal example of taking advantage of others are the medical experiments conducted on the inmates at Auschwitz by Nazi doctors like Josef Mengele.
