Rachel and Lizzie_Night PBL Website
+ The Holocaust +
Cambodian Genocide
The Holocaust, from 1939 to 1945, and the Cambodian Genocide, from 1975 to 1979, took the lives of many bodies and wrecked the hearts of even more. Many similarities lie between The Holocaust and the Cambodian Genocide, such as millions of people were not only killed, but over worked, deprived of their necessities to live, and much more; people also had to suffer from Death Camps in the Holocaust, or Killing Fields in the Cambodian Genocide. Additionally, Pol Pot, head of the Khmer Rouge, and Adolf Hitler, head of the Nazis, both wanted to create a perfect world through their acts of genocide. Although this was true, their ideas of a perfect world, or utopia, were quite different. The main goal of Pol Pot was to abolish all luxuries and classes, as well as return all of Cambodia back to its basic years. Hitler wanted Germany to reign in power, and have all inferior groups exterminated. Also, the United States’ fail to execute plans in Cambodia and unhelpful and disregarding ways during the Holocaust were shockingly similar. Therefore, the Cambodian Genocide and The Holocaust were similar in their intolerance and mistreatment towards certain groups of people and in the United States’ response to these atrocities, but were different because Pot’s and Hitler’s ideas of a perfect world were drastically different. Overall, both genocides were a lesson to the world, and the Cambodian Genocide opened the world’s eyes even wider than they had from The Holocaust, after it seemed to have repeated itself.
“TO FORGET THE DEAD WOULD BE AKIN TO KILLING THEM A SECOND TIME.”
-ELIE WIESEL, Night
Firstly, The Cambodian Genocide and The Holocaust differ because what Hitler and Pot wanted to achieve with the execution of their plans to create a perfect world were unalike. The Cambodian Government had lost the United States government’s support, therefore Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge used this to their advantage and seized control of Cambodia. Inspired by the Cultural Revolution of Communist China, Pot attempted to make his own utopia by “purifying” society. In support of extreme communism, capitalism and city life were expelled. Additionally, religion, foreigners, embassies, and foreign languages were extinguished and banned. Media and news could not be communicated through mail or telephone, and all businesses, education, health care, and parental authority were banned. Cambodia had sealed itself off to the rest of the world. Every city in Cambodia was evacuated, and two million people had to leave their cities for the countryside. Deadly cleansings were also performed to get rid of the “old society;” people who were considered educated or wealthy based on their occupation were executed, along with their immediate family. The Khmer Rouge also attacked minority groups, such as the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Muslims. Pol Pot’s main goal was to create a classless society and return Cambodia back to its earliest days. Unfortunately, this meant performing atrocities beyond belief in order to achieve Pot’s utopia. In contrast, the Nazis during the time of the Holocaust committed similar atrocities but Hitler’s goal was vastly different. His utopia was a world where Germany ruled in power and there were only white Protestant Germans. Hitler’s “Final Solution” was the idea of exterminating the entire Jewish population, and he also annihilated other groups, such as Gypsies and the disables. Although Hitler and Pot has the ultimate goal of achieving two very different ideas, they both attempted to execute their ideas in almost identical ways. These two genocides teach us that plans of execution can be the same even if the product is different. Some may argue that what Pol Pot wanted for Cambodia was smart and would have been good for the future of Cambodia, but Pot’s way of attaining this was simply insane. On the other hand, Hitler was selfish and wanted only what was best for him and Germany; the rest of the world, especially everyone whom he and the Nazis killed, were of no concern. Thus, The Holocaust and the Cambodian Genocide were different in the sense that the ultimate plan of their masterminds, Hitler and Pot, were different.
“FOR THE DEAD AND THE LIVING, WE MUST BEAR WITNESS.”
-ELIE WIESEL
Second, the actions of the Unites States were either minimal or unsuccessful over the course of the Cambodian Genocide and The Holocaust. A number of controversies have arisen about the impact of the United States on the Jews in the Holocaust. The United States limited the immigration of Jews into the country, and the United States did not initiate any action aimed at rescuing or providing safety for victims of The Holocaust in 1944 when the War of Refugees Board was established. By the time that Roosevelt, the president at the time, took action from pressure by the American Jews, four fifths of the Jews who would die Holocaust were already dead. Similarly, the United States’ response to the Cambodian genocide was limited. In 1964, the US entered the Vietnam War and, after several years of fighting, the United States finally withdrew. In the effort to destroy North Vietnamese supply lines, the United States killed approximately 750,000 Cambodians, the opposite of attempting to stop the genocide. The United States actions in the Vietnam war simply created more misery for everyone, including the Cambodians. They had no efforts to end the genocide by the Khmer Rouge, they were strictly focused on the war. The Cambodians happened to get wrapped up in the Vietnam War, unpleasantly for them, and the United States did not only stand by, they killed more Cambodians. The United States’ lack of efforts in both the Holocaust and the Cambodian Genocide demonstrate a number of qualities about the United States government. The United States was just selfish and lazy during the Holocaust. They decided to do something when the Vietnam War started, but then when the Cambodian Genocide came around, the US had just gotten themselves out of the war and did not help the Cambodians; they backed out of the Vietnam War on August 15, 1973 and the Cambodian Genocide began in 1975. Similarly, by the time that the United States starting helping save the Jews that were still left during the Holocaust, an obscene amount of atrocities had been done and the Nazis had killed almost 11 million people. The United States learned that even if there are no problems within the country, they still need to take part in ending such atrocities like the Holocaust because they became a part of the Vietnam War, but then quickly after came the Cambodian Genocide and they did nothing, yet again. Clearly, ending genocides were not at all a priority to the United States government, and knowing that we have to capacity to be able to help stop genocides makes the thought even more sickening. Overall, the action that the United States took was unsatisfactory and limited throughout The Holocaust and the Cambodian Genocide.
Lastly, The Holocaust and the Cambodian Genocide were similar because during the Cambodian Genocide, the 21% of the Cambodians that were tortured or killed were intolerated in a similar way to how the Jews were exterminated. In the Holocaust, Jews were sent in Cattle cars to Concentration camps, where they were used as slave labor and treated like animals. They were given almost no food, and brutal conditions for living. Gas chambers were used to murder the Jews, and there also were crematoria. The living conditions of the Jews could not have been worse, and they were treated inhumanely; they had numbers, uniforms, and all of their hair shaved off. From camp to camp they moved without food, warmth, bathrooms, or anything that a person would need to stay alive. Starved and skinny, the sick had experiments performed on them rather than having medical treatment. Nothing with such inhumanity had ever happened before. Similarly, in the Cambodian Genocide, millions of Cambodians were forced into slave labor in rural areas. Since they were fed almost nothing, and what they were fed came every two days. The Cambodians quickly began to die from disease and from being overworked and undernourished. These deaths created what is known as the “killing fields.” The goal was to convert everyone to peasants through the Khmer Rouge’s “teachings” on how Cambodia should function. Pot saw the cities of Cambodia as the heart of evil capitalism and therefore needed to wipe them out. Almost two million people died in Pot’s process of re-educating and purifying Cambodia. It is heartbreaking to think about what people had to go through in the times of The Holocaust and the Cambodian Genocide; the struggle, starvation, desperation, fear, loss, pain, and trauma was so horrific that people wanted to be dead so they did not have to go through such experiences. The fact that the world stood by and let the Holocaust happen without any significant effort is revolting enough, but then the Cambodian Genocide came around and it happened again. Hitler and Pot are animals themselves to treat the Jews and the Cambodians in such an inhumane and tortuous way. Hitler and Pot, although evil, were quite smart in the sense that they managed to keep their plans in action for such a long time. They partially achieved what they wanted in a sense because they did not only kill, but they dehumanized millions of people. Therefore, the Holocaust and the Cambodian Genocide were similar because Hitler and Pot used the same strategies of torture, inhumanity, and death to fulfill their plans.
In conclusion, The Holocaust and the Cambodian Genocide were tragedies like no other and have changed the world forever. Between The Holocaust and the Cambodian Genocide, almost 13 million people died from circumstances beyond belief, and those who survived went through the same or maybe worse traumatic experiences. The Cambodian Genocide directly shows the world that after the Holocaust, the United States government had not changed much at all because their help efforts were minimal throughout, and the fact that we had just gotten out of the Vietnam War is no excuse. The lives that could have been saved if the United States took action is most likely an unbelievable number. And, the rest of the world didn’t learn from The Holocaust either. With each genocide that happens, our world repeats a part of devastating history that should never be repeated. Who knows what the next massive genocide will bring, or if a current genocide is climbing the genocide stages to become the next genocide at the same scale as a genocide like The Holocaust, but whenever it comes, the world can no longer be a bystander. We need to learn from our past and make sure it does not happen again in the present.