Nazis and Khmer Rouge

The Cambodian Genocide and Holocaust are two significant events remembered in history. During the Cambodian Genocide and the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot targeted minorities that had unique identities that would put them in danger and make them weak to resist. There were several planned events that led up to the occurrence of both genocides. Both Hitler and Pol Pot aimed to take control of their country by organizing ways to kill off multiple people at once. Hitler created concentration and extermination camps while Pol Pot had killing fields. These two leaders killed millions of lives because they practiced a religion that was disliked or had a job that made too much money for the leader’s liking.

The victims in both genocides were desperate for a leader. In both cases, the brutal regimes recognized that their victims were poorly organized, defenseless and lacking leadership. World War I had a negative impact on Europe. There were millions of deaths and damage to the land. Jews were desperate for a leader because they were economically unstable after World War I (“Before”). Hitler saw that the Jews were weak and started the Holocaust. Similarly, in 1973 the United States bombed Cambodia which killed 150,000 people, leading many Cambodians to support Pot (“Genocide”). When the United States bombed Cambodia, the citizens of Cambodia no longer trusted the United States. Cambodians started liking

The memoir Night illustrates how having power is one of the easiest ways to become corrupted, as many people who have power end up abusing it. This abuse would not be possible without the abuser’s power, so it leads to corruption. The memoir Night is about a boy, the author Elie Wiesel, and his experiences throughout the Holocaust. The book recounts events from the time he got the death camp, to the time left the camp. The book shows how power ultimately leads to corruption through three authoritarian people and groups, named Frank, Idek and the Schutzstaffel (SS).

In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. His words are strong and his message clear. Wiesel uses themes such as hunger and death to vividly display his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main purpose is to describe to the reader the horrifying scenes and feelings he suffered through as a repressed Jew. His tone and diction are powerful for this subject and envelope the reader. Young readers today find the actions of Nazis almost unimaginable. This book more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.

1984 has come and gone. The cold war is over. The collapse of oppressive totalitarian regimes leads to the conclusion that these governments by their nature generate resistance and are doomed to failure. The fictional world of George Orwell's novel, 1984, is best described as hopeless; a nightmarish dystopia where the omnipresent State enforces perfect conformity among members of a totalitarian Party through indoctrination, propaganda, fear, and ruthless punishment. In the aftermath of the fall of capitalism and nuclear war, the world has been divided among three practically identical totalitarian nation-states. A state of perpetual war and poverty is the rule in Oceania. However, this is merely a backdrop, far from the most terrifying

The Cambodian Genocide and the Armenian Genocide have similar methods of how the victims were killed. They similarly murdered their victims, starved their victims and targeted government officials. They were different in that the Armenians were deported but the Khmer Rouge targeted Cambodians based of their class and had re-education camps.

The genocide of a major Religion can bring out the good and the bad of people. “Night”, by Elie Wiesel, is a memoir about when he was fifteen, and taken to Auschwitz, where his family was murdered. In “Night”,Wiesel shows Good people can be corrupted, whether it be through, propaganda, lies, or through violence.

Elie Wiesel’s purpose of this text was to discuss the parallels of the experiences he survived through during the Holocaust and the events in Kosovo that were going through ethnic cleansing. Wiesel has intended this speech to an audience of President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton. Throughout this speech, Wiesel also expressed his gratitude towards President Clinton for the “...justified intervention in Kosovo...a lasting warning that never again will the deportation, the terrorization of children and their parents, be allowed anywhere in the world.” The author feels that this message is important because “We are on the threshold of a new century, a new millennium” and the injustice lessons of the past must be remembered. This shows that Wiesel cares for the

Horror struck on January 30, 1933, when Germany assigned Adolf Hitler as their chancellor. Once Hitler had finally reached power he set out to complete one goal, create a Greater Germany free from the Jews (“The reasons for the Holocaust,” 2009). This tragedy is known today as, “The Holocaust,” that explains the terrors of our histories past. The face of the Holocaust, master of death, and leader of Germany; Adolf Hitler the most deceitful, powerful, well spoken, and intelligent person that acted as the key to this mass murder. According to a research study at the University of South Florida, nearly eleven million people were targeted and killed. This disaster is a genocide that was meant to ethnically cleanse Germany of the Jews. Although Jewish people were the main target they were not the only ones targeted; gypsies, African Americans, homosexuals, socialists, political enemies, communists, and the mentally disabled were killed (Simpson, 2012, p. 113). The word to describe this hatred for Jewish people is known as antisemitism. It was brought about when German philosophers denounced that “Jewish spirit is alien to Germandom” (“Antisemitism”) which states that a Jew is non-German. Many people notice the horrible things the Germans did, but most don’t truly understand why the Holocaust occurred. To truly understand the Holocaust, you must first know the Nazis motivations. Their motivations fell into two categories including cultural explanations that focused on ideology and

Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lived changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4). This would change in the coming weeks, as Jews are segregated, sent to camps, and both physically and emotionally abused. These changes and abuse would dehumanize

Throughout history, instances of genocide, mass murder, and extreme acts of violence are widespread and pervade through every culture and society. As demonstrated by Panh, Lifton, and O’Brien, similar examples of excessive violence can occur in widely different situations. In order for such violence to occur, there first must exist certain systematic factors. In this paper, I will argue that conditions of instability within a country allow for changes in belief and perception, and these changed perceptions leads to dehumanization and the loss of human rights. The Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide and the Vietnam War, all follow this pattern to some extent. First, I will compare and contrast the ways in which the Holocaust and Cambodian genocide follow this pattern, as well as explore the separate factors within each and possible solutions to these factors. Next, I will discuss the dramatically different Vietnam War, compare and contrast it to the other two, and explore how the uniqueness of the Vietnam War impacts the possible solutions for the loss of human rights within this situation.

Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night (1958), follows a young Elie who discovers that there are detrimental consequences to standing by inequity and beneficial effects to taking action to the subjugation of an individual. While integrating anaphor and metaphor, Wiesel reinforces his theme by illustrating the environment of detestable concentration camps in Poland to initiate the conflict of the struggle between protecting others over personal interests. His objective is to disseminate his unjust experience to ensure society never loses knowledge of the atrocity and to prevent repeated history. Through unveiling his arduous journey, Wiesel creates an atmosphere of despondency and regret for readers to encourage standing up to injustice. In addition,

There were many steps in choosing my NHD topic. I had to keep in mind the theme, Explore, Encounter, and Exchange. I thought of many different things such as the African American Rights, World War I. And then I thought about the Holocaust. That topic really intrigued me to think about, it was a awful event that changed our history forever. I started doing more and more research on different genocides that have occurred in our history. I saw so many different genocides, that I haven’t really heard about. I decided that the Cambodian Genocide seem the most interesting to me. My family is Vietnamese and therefore my dad talks to me a lot about when he lived in Vietnam and lots about his different experiences there. My dad told me a lot about what the Cambodian Genocide was about, and I found it more and more interesting. This topic affects me in a personally way, which intrigued me to know more about it.

The Communist Party of Kampuchea, also known as the Khmer Rouge, took control of Cambodia on April 17, 1975, which lasted until January 1979. For their three-year, eight-month, and twenty-one day rule of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge committed some of the most heinous crimes in current history. The main leader who orchestrated these crimes was a man named Pol Pot. In 1962, Pol Pot had become the coordinator of the Cambodian Communist Party. The Prince of Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk, did not approve of the Party and forced Pol Pot to flee to exile in the jungle. There, Pol formed a fortified resistance movement, which became known as the Khmer Rouge, and pursued a guerrilla war against Sihanouk’s government. As Pol Pot began to accumulate power,

Located in Southeast Asia between Thailand and Vietnam, Cambodia was home to one of the bloodiest political regimes to exist in the 20th century. In a country, in which American government reports in 1959 documented, was full of “ ‘docile and passive people…[who] could not be counted on to act in any positive way for the benefit of US aims and policies’”, the United States conflict in neighboring Vietnam brought about incredible changes to an unsuspecting people (qted. in Dunlop 70). The countryside was bombed by the United States in order to uproot suspected North Vietnamese holdouts and supply routes starting in 1969. These bombing raids, which devastated