Cambodian Genocide Research Paper

Did you know that some prisoners in concentration camps during WWII were subjected to serious, and sometimes fatal medical experiments done on them? There are three different categories of medical experiments. These experiments were only done to help the Nazis survive during that time. Hitler was originally the one who gave the german physicians permission to do these horrific experiments on innocent people.

If I was going to kill myself, this was the time. ... fifteen steps to go... No. Two steps from the pit, we were ordered to turn left and headed into barracks. (33-34)” Elie was willing to kill himself just to avoid the impending mass burning he thought he was fated to go to, and by tricking the Jews they managed to severely demoralize and drive some to actually commit suicide; they cared not if the Jews died, they were of no significant value. Inmates were broken after this relentless torture; we wonder why there wasn’t a mass revolt within the camps, and this is probably why, they had no will to resist oppression anymore. The sickest part of this all is that of the mass dehumanization played surprisingly by the entire people of Deutschland, now not all people played these sick game; most of the aggression was enforced by the German army. Moishe the Beadle was one of the first to experience this cruelty, “The Jews were ordered to get off... They were forced to dig huge trenches. ... When they had finished... the Gestapo began theirs. ...they shot their prisoners...

Elie discusses his journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, along with the sight of flames he saw from the crematorium at his arrival. Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel recited, “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed” (Wiesel 34). From that night on, he knew his life was permanently altered and there was nothing he could do about it. During the second hanging Elie witnessed three victims being hanged, one of them being a young pipel. After those hangings he stated, “That night, the soup tasted of corpses” (Wiesel 65). One could only imagine how the author truly felt by the disturbing image of his people being killed without

In the book, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account, by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli he tells us his story of his time in Auschwitz. In May of 1944 the author, a Hungarian Jewish physician, was deported with his wife and daughter by cattle car to the Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz. Dr. Nyiszli is a Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp which is located in Poland. Dr. Nyiszli eventually got separated from his wife and daughter, and volunteered to work under the supervision of Josef Mengele, the head doctor in the concentration camp. It was under his supervision that Dr. Nyiszli witnessed many innocent people die. Dr. Nyiszli did anything possible to survive and his main reason of survival was so he could tell the world what happened at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

During the couple of years when Elie and other prisoners were in concentration camps they were being dehumanized. Elie and the other prisoners were being treated like animals, being referred as numbers, they were being killed like animals. In the world today in many places there's so many dehumanization happening, people being treated like animals,being treated very

Thousands of Jewish prisoners were killed per day in concentration camps. The way the Nazis succeeded in killing this much Jews was by creating gas chambers and crematoriums. First, in the novel night, Elie Wiesel described how he witnessed dozens of “children being thrown into the flames.” Wiesel was told when he arrived to Auschwitz that “Here, you must work. If you don’t you will go straight to the chimney. To the crematorium. Work or crematorium the choice is yours.” This frightened many Jewish prisoners, therefore, they worked as hard as they could. They exhausted themselves which eventually led to their death. Second, during the film, the boy in the stripped pyjamas, there were many references to gas chambers and crematoriums. For example,

When Elie first arrived at the camp he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He saw, “Children thrown into the flames” (32). He is seeing children thrown into flames, he is in shock and cannot believe what he’s seeing. The way the author describes this scene gives the feeling that the guards have no sympathy for the people being slaughtered. The author describes the children as dying and helpless, which describes the truly dark nature of the concentration camps. One of the biggest mass deaths was during the run to another camp. Nearing the end of the run Elie observed, “Death hardly needed their help. The cold was conscientiously doing its work” (92). During their run the Gestapo would shoot and kill anyone who fell behind. But as Elie realized people would drop like flies due to thirst, hunger, and most of all, cold. The authors words give a feeling of looming death in this scene, and puts that in a brutally cold winter

In the memoir Night, the narrator Elie Wiesel recounts a moment when the ss officers were transporting all the prisoners from buna to another camp and whenever somebody couldn’t keep running the ss officers shoot them. “They had orders to shoot anyone who couldn’t sustain the peace”(Wiesel 85). The ss officers cruelty to the prisoners led them to give up, they stopped trying. If someone stopped and the officers didn’t noticed, he would probably die under the feet of all the people behind them. As the author describes his experiences, many other examples of inhumanity are revealed. Two significant themes related to inhumanity discussed in the book Night by Elie Wiesel are loss of faith and disbelief.

Guatemala is located in Central America and was once heavily populated with the Mayan population. Ever since the Spaniards took over the land that the Mayans called theirs, the Mayans became enslaved in their home country and have been struggling to regain power ever since. For many years the people of Guatemala have been poorly treated and have been constantly fighting to keep their land against the government. Guatemala has been at civil war for a very long time due to economic and political inequalities which in turn lead to the Mayans protesting against the governments that were causing damage to their land. Although the Mayans believed that these protests would solve the issues that they were facing but in reality the government just invested

In 1944, a Polish-Jewish lawyer came up with the word, “genocide.” However, even seventy-five years later, many people still debate what factors go into making a genocide. Of course, there is mass murder, mistreatment of large groups of people, and difficult life conditions. Take the Cambodian Genocide, for example. People were tortured and killed so much during this genocide that at one of the death camps, “as few as 12 managed to survive” (Pierpaoli). People were robbed, killed, forced to evacuate their homes, and mistreated in many other ways during the Cambodian Genocide. These people had to live in terrible conditions. The same thing goes for what the reader sees of the Holocaust in Elie Wiesel’s Night. Throughout the book, the reader

Night by Elie Wiesel is a book about what Elie witnessed in the concentration camps during the holocaust in WWII and what he had to go through. The film, Hotel Rwanda, featured a similar story except it was about the Rwandan genocide. The reason why both Night and Hotel Rwanda seem similar because they both have ethnic groups that are being hunted down through means of genocide, there are people who are trying to protect the ethnic groups being hunted, and both of the situations that happen in these two stories challenge the morals of the characters.

Jewish people were excluded from public life on September 15th, 1935 when the Nuremberg Laws were issued. These laws also stripped German Jews of their citizenship and their right to marry Germans. When the Nuremberg Laws were established, the Jewish population began the process of losing their identity and eventually themselves. As soon as Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, the human race would be forever scarred. Although it is estimated the number of people killed in the Holocaust was around 11 million, there is a high chance of the death toll being much higher. The sheer amount of lives lost in this horrid time astonishes a large quantity of today’s population. Not only were people being tossed into the concentration camps, but soldiers and civilians were killed in the fight for their lives’. Human beings were given numbers and made to look like clones, as if to hide the misery of dehumanization. Loss of self and personal identity is shown throughout Night by Elie Wiesel.

The Khmer Rouge has taken over Cambodia. This is much like what is happening in the Soviet Union. It may look different but the mass murdering and cruelty has lead both countries into a state which is not looked at kindly. Each country was in the same situation from the standpoint of the citizens. Rights were taken away, torture and cruel deaths occurred, and the death of many was looked at by the powerful as a worthy cause to the country as a whole. These are some of the key similarities of the two countries in their states of distress. But, the biggest point of similarity between the two would be the leaders and how they view the country they are leading. Both Cambodia and the Soviet Union are run by murderous people/groups which have a particular trait in common. They both have vision. Vision for a better country, but neither know how to create better country’s through the growth of their country, both believe that unity and equality is vital among the average person. This creates strife and tension from leader to citizen, unfortunately the result is death to the weaker. We see this outcome in both countries. Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge was responsible

The Cambodian genocide took place from 1975 to 1979; it is estimated that some two million Cambodians were systematically murdered by the Khmer Rouge and its followers (Power 90). In Alexander Hinton’s article, “A Head for an Eye” he recounts in details the experience of Gen, a survivor of the Cambodian Genocide. After the Lon Nol government was overthrown by the Khmer Rouge, the Communists began their witch-hunt in an attempt to identify and kill anyone who was associated with the former regime, as well as the educated, the Vietnamese, the Muslim Cham, the Buddhist monks, and other “bourgeois elements” (Power 101). During the investigation, it was revealed that Gen’s father was a teacher–this fact alone was

“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them for a second time”(Elie Wiesel). 1986 Nobel Prize Winner, Elie Wiesel, narrates his Holocaust experiences in the memoir Night to ensure that people do not forget. Night is based on the childhood experiences of Elie Wiesel during the Holocaust. Wiesel was born in Sighet, Transylvania before the start of the second world war. In 1944 Wiesel and the rest of the Jews in Sighet are sent to Auschwitz the infamous Nazi death camp. Wiesel describes his time in Auschwitz by using nightmarish, gruesome, and horrific imagery. All this, in turn, helps make a personal connection with the reader.