The Holocaust and Khmer Rogue

“Night”, by Elie Wiesel was an autobiography in which Wiesel shares his experiences in Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of Hitler’s concentration camps. Wiesel was one of the Jews to survive the Holocaust during World War II. His family did not make it through with him. On the other hand “When Broken Glass Floats” by Chanrithy Him is a story about life in the Killing Fields when the Khmer Rouge attempted to create an agrarian utopia in Cambodia. About 1.7 million people died as a result of execution, starvation and diseases. While the Holocaust and the Khmer Rouge regime were both genocides, the Holocaust was a pure act of violence, the Khmer Rouge regime was a failed attempt at creating a communist society.

Wiesel and Him were both in essence enslaved by their government in a sense. Wiesel was put in a concentration camp where he was tortured with other Jews. For instance, one of the many cases when the SS officers used violence to punish was when the Kapo Idek, whipped Wiesel twenty five times to keep him quite after Wiesel had witnessed Idek having sex with a Polish girl. In Hims case, she traveled through refugee camps and endured her own fair share of violence. An example, would be Him's uncles and her father were taken away for "new jobs" but they were killed . This was found out later by Hims mother when she saw another man wearing her husbands shirt . In addition, Equiano would understand the plight of Him, and Wiesel. Since he too was a slave and had to endure his own share of tyranny and violence, like when he had to take a trip from Africa. He described how in this trip the captain and his crew were abusive towards the crew. For instance all of them were packed into the ship as if they were cargo being transported. Which is si...

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... the Holocaust. There was no rationing system and the government did not want to take care of you so the prisoners in these concentration camps barely got food. Furthermore, there were no doctors that would treat you if you got injured. Either your injuries healed or you died.

In conclusion, the Holocaust and the Khmer Rouge regime were both genocides which involved deaths of millions of people though they were from selected groups of people. But both of these genocides were very different. The Holocaust was an act of violence against mainly Jews. But the Khmer Rouge regime was failed attempt to make a society communist.

References

Him, Chanrithy. When broken glass floats: growing up under the Khmer Rouge, a memoir. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.

Wiesel, Elie, and MArion Wiesel. Night. New York, Ny: Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.