The Holocaust and the Cambodian Genocide

The definition of genocide is killing a large group of people of a certain origin. The Holocaust was in Germany and started in 1933. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were in charge of the Holocaust. The Cambodian Genocide took place in Cambodia. Cambodia is in Southeast Asia (“Cambodian”). Pol Pot was the leader of Khmer Rouge and the group was in charge of the Cambodian Genocide (“Cambodian”). The Cambodian Genocide started in 1975 and ended in 1978 because Khmer Rouge was ended by Vietnam (“Cambodian”). The Holocaust and the Cambodian Genocide are similar in the administrations’ treatment of their victims and in the fact that their victims were desperate for a leader, but different in U.S. involvement and government motivation.

The Holocaust and the Cambodian Genocide leaders treated their victims similarly. During the Holocaust, Hitler and the Nazi party set up extermination camps in a mass effort to kill Jews. The killings began as “mercy killings” of disabled people and punishment of citizens who defied or angered the government. The situation escalated as camps continued to go up and gas chambers were built. In the extermination camps, workers used cyanide gas to kill Jews and other civilians (“Past”). In Cambodia the people worked long days in agricultural fields with little food. The well-educated people had an increased workload, sometimes double or triple, that was impossible to do, and when they couldn’t keep up they were killed (“Past”). During the Cambodian Genocide, the Khmer Rouge set up camps similar to those in Germany but they also created “killing fields” for the mass execution of Cambodians. These were huge fields where large numbers of victims were murdered and buried. In fact, “In four years, between 1.7 and 2 m...

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