Refugees And Discrimination In The Holocaust

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Like the Jews in the Holocaust, or African Americans in the U.S., all refugees face discrimination as they flee and find home. Refugee: what does that word mean? A refugee is someone who is forced to leave their home due to things such as persecution, war, a natural disaster, or something like discrimination. As we learned Ha was a little girl living in the midst of war torn Vietnam. Even though life there was not the best, it was still all Ha knew so she was reasonably upset to leave behind all that she knew. When her family was forced to leave for their own safety and found a new home, they faced discrimination. Discrimination definitely turns the lives of Ha and her family, along with all refugees, "inside out;" they find hope in turning …show more content…

Amela Kamenica, one of the four teenagers written about in the article "Children of War", fled from Bosnia when it was devastated by war and faced discrimination in Croatia where for the time being she stayed in a refugee camp. "We couldn’t go to school in Croatia because we are Muslims" (Brice 4). Amela was not allowed to go to school because of her religion, which is a type of discrimination. This discrimination is a contributing factor to refugee's lives being turned "inside out". Furthermore, some refugees instead find discrimination in their new homes, such as Ha. In this case as Ha and her family try to complete the simple task of going to the grocery store and requesting the butcher to grind their meat but, "...The butcher sharpens his face, slams down our meat and motions us away" (Lai 217). He refuses to complete this task because they are a foreign family and not the regular Alabama folks he is used to. Ha is not only discriminated against by the grocery workers, but also her classmates in her new school who, "Again they're yelling Boo-da Boo-da..." (Lai 219). Some of her classmates are making fun and discriminating against Ha for her religious beliefs, such as what happened to Amela. These discriminating actions after everything refugees have been through add to how refugees' lives are turned "inside