Cambodian Genocide And Holocaust Similarities

The Holocaust and the Cambodian genocide are acutely similar in many ways. The Holocaust took place under Adolf Hitler, which was the country’s sole leader. On January 30, of 1933, Adolf Hitler was named the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (An Introductory History). At the same time, the Cambodian genocide, who also had a sole leader, was named Pol Pot. Pol Pot’s entire outline was to reconstruct the country, just as Adolf Hitler had (Cambodia 1975). To reconstruct Cambodia, Pol Pot had been influenced by Mao Zedong, who had turned China into a communist country (“Cambodia 1975”). During the Holocaust, a countless amount of deaths occurred. About 11 million people had been killed during the Holocaust and only about

Over about two million deaths took place caused by disease, lack of food, and execution (“Cambodia 1975”). The majority of the population was put into farms to work as laborers and were starved and tortured. Lastly, during the Holocaust, the United States had not gotten involved. In Holocaust encyclopedia, it states that, “Despite the ongoing persecution of Jews in Germany, the State Department's attitude was influenced by the economic hardships of the Depression, which intensified grassroots antisemitism, isolationism, and xenophobia (“The United States”).” The Holocaust had taken place right after the U.S. had gotten out of World War I and the Depression had been an aftermath of that. In like manner, the Cambodian genocide had no help from the United States as well. In a PBS magazine article, Samantha Power writes, “Yet, despite an impressive postwar surge in moral resolve, the United States has never intervened to stop the one overseas occurrence that all agree is wrong, and that most agree demands forceful measures (Power).” In this sentence, she is discussing how in the Cambodian genocide, the United States had not had the momentum to intervene. All things considered, the Holocaust and the Cambodian genocide are immensely similar when looked at from an extensive and more

Similarly, both had tremendous mass murders, however, they differ in the individuals targeted. The Holocaust victimized against people that Hitler found not useful in the new society. The entire German military had targeted Jews, gypsies, mentally and physically disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals (Rosenberg). Hitler found that certain groups were not needed in the society that he was creating and the Jewish were the most famous rejection. In opposition, the Cambodian genocide had targeted smart and intelligent people. Pol Pot discriminated against lawyers, scientists, teachers, engineers, doctors. Many monks were killed and all religion had been banned. (“Cambodia 1975”). The Cambodian genocide was more focused on the idea of people being smarter than the army or their leader, and this was taken care of by killing the one’s they thought were a threat. Another difference between the two events was that the Holocaust’s army was called the Nazis. Jennifer Rosenberg explains that, “The term "Nazi" is an acronym for "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" ("National Socialist German Worker's Party") (Rosenberg).” The Nazis were an extremely destructive group of inhumane people and did anything their leader demanded them to do. During the time of Pol Pot’s leadership, the army was called the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge had an well thought out